Volan

[Tharkkun]

See, that's the first I've heard of WG not causing the servers to shit themselves. The running joke on the WoW forums was that any time WG battle happened, the entire server participated due to the lag that was experienced in other Northrend zones.

Are you talking about your computer eating shit, or the servers themselves eating shit with massive delays ect? I'm confused now.

It was Dalaran, the zone under it and Wintergrasp that experienced the lag. They were all connected. The other zones were fine.

---------- Post added 2013-01-14 at 03:45 PM ----------

Dealing with 40 "actors" in a zone is pretty easy for my client. If 20 of those actors were other toons (in my raid), and the other 20 were raids (representing 400 other toons), things would probably run more smoothly across the board.

They might even consider using the ground render radius to show people in my immediate vicinity, if the above technique opened up sufficient resources.

What Daoc used to do was lower the rendering on the local client dynamically. Actually Wow does this also but this won't help in this situation. It's a pure bottleneck on server resources. But, this gives Trion the chance to attack a fairly complex issue where throwing hardware at won't necessarily fix.

[Kelimbror]

*snip*

That seems logical. The calculations being performed don't really matter based on what numbers are being calculated, but on how many calculations are being done at once as I understand it. If they could drastically reduce the number of calculations, it would naturally reduce the stress on the server. Basically removing anyone not in your raid group other than the sum of their actions would be awesome.

I know nothing about programming, so I wouldn't be able to say that this would actually work or is feasible to implement. It sound great 'on paper' though.

[DeltrusDisc]

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic about Deepwood, because its 100% awful due to how many people are there.

Though your troubles with the fight taking so long don't replicate what I experienced at all. It didn't take us more than a half hour if I remember correctly, with Volan bugging for about 5 minutes near the beginning. Even with people like me able to do almost no dmg to the boss, 300 people tend to destroy things quickly.

Oh you're on Deepwood. O_O Didn't realize that.

[Rajadog20]

Well, there isn't much of anything Trion can do about this. They would have to get a whole new engine to get most people with decent frame rates during these events. They basically screwed themselves by using the gamebryo engine. Warhammer suffered from the same problem. Its still an awesome event, but I agree, it would be much better with an engine designed around hundreds of people around.

[Azuri]

it would be much better with an engine designed around hundreds of people around.

I agree it's a huge choke when you got 300+ people in close proximity I'd love to know a engine that can do this. Even Tera that runs like a dream explodes when you put a ton of people together. Nexus raids crapped out to the point your character just freezes place.

[Tharkkun]

I agree it's a huge choke when you got 300+ people in close proximity I'd love to know a engine that can do this. Even Tera that runs like a dream explodes when you put a ton of people together. Nexus raids crapped out to the point your character just freezes place.

The previous version of the Embryo engine which Dark Age of Camelot used worked. I can't count how times I defended keeps with 75 Midgard players and we'd get a report "150 Albions attacking xyz keep" from the game. Also Conquest is visually laggy but the abilities lag doesn't exist. So in theory Trion should be able to find a solution to this event area.

[Ighox]

Instancing these events would ruin the whole point of them and they would just become an easy, boring, pointless raid.

But I am pretty sure Trion would never even consider instancing them, so the only real option is for them to find a way to make their servers handle it.

It was Dalaran, the zone under it and Wintergrasp that experienced the lag. They were all connected. The other zones were fine.

That's definitely not true, during WG battles in the beginning even instance servers were affected.

I agree it's a huge choke when you got 300+ people in close proximity I'd love to know a engine that can do this. Even Tera that runs like a dream explodes when you put a ton of people together. Nexus raids crapped out to the point your character just freezes place.

Darkfall did it pretty well, FPS was horrible but the server rarely had problems.

[Lathais]

The previous version of the Embryo engine which Dark Age of Camelot used worked. I can't count how times I defended keeps with 75 Midgard players and we'd get a report "150 Albions attacking xyz keep" from the game. Also Conquest is visually laggy but the abilities lag doesn't exist. So in theory Trion should be able to find a solution to this event area.

Conquest is iffy if you actually have 30+ players in one spot though. Unless things have changed, one side does not always stay in one big Zerg which would only be 200 anyway, it's normally 2-3 raids, or 40-60 people against another 40-60, so only 120 people. Even 4 raids on 4 raids is only 160 people. So really almost no comparison due to exponential growth of processing needed with 300 people.

[Slipmat]

People need to stop using Mum's Dell that she plays Farmville on

Talks of nerfing, instancing, shortening the Volan encounter? looool, todays gamer, right

[Fencers]

People need to stop using Mum's Dell that she plays Farmville on

Talks of nerfing, instancing, shortening the Volan encounter? looool, todays gamer, right

Hehe.

It's a World of Warcraft thing. A lot of the current active MMO player base is used to playing World of Warcraft, especially users of this website-- a game designed to not only run on "mum's Dell" but to appeal to both mum and the person(s) using mum's Dell.

Of course it isn't literally true of every player. However, World of Warcraft is definitively meant to be played in the most accessible manner possible, from hardware to actual game design. And there is little denying the majority player base of today are "new MMO" players (i.e. post-Warcraft).

[Lathais]

People need to stop using Mum's Dell that she plays Farmville on

Talks of nerfing, instancing, shortening the Volan encounter? looool, todays gamer, right

It's not just that it's mum's Dell, it's that people do not research before they buy nowadays too. I know people, who instead of asking me, have walked into Best Buy to buy a computer and listened to what some schmuck floor guy told them and bought a computer with on board video for gaming. They even said they asked him if it would play games well and he said yes. People buy laptops without dedicated graphics and think they should be able to play games on max settings. Heck, at my last job I worked with people who could not even check their own e-mail without their wife's help. It's sad, but people just don't know jack about computers, then they try to get into gaming. It's why consoles do so well, and will continue to do well. You don't need to know anything to buy a console, or make a game work on it. You just buy it, plug it in, and put the game in. Done. Also why WoW did/does so well. It works on just about any old piece of crap with a 3 gen old media vid card.

[Kelimbror]

Also why WoW did/does so well. It works on just about any old piece of crap with a 3 gen old media vid card.

People have been joking about this in this thread, but it's a slightly embellished claim. I had a Dell XPS2 when I got out of highschool, before I knew anything about computers, and that's what I played WoW on from it's launch. It lasted ok through TBC, but WotLK had serious problems. It certainly could not run the game hardly at all at a certain point.

Granted it was like 5 years old at this point, but this was a computer advertised for gaming. People with a name brand computer, with 1-2g of ram, and onboard video really can't play the game unless they are off questing on their own in a corner of the world and never go to a city or do a raid. If they do either of those things, the computer explodes.

I think most basic models come with just enough to stay in the basic requirements range now. But anyone using 5 year or older basic computers won't be able to play WoW either.

[Lathais]

People have been joking about this in this thread, but it's a slightly embellished claim. I had a Dell XPS2 when I got out of highschool, before I knew anything about computers, and that's what I played WoW on from it's launch. It lasted ok through TBC, but WotLK had serious problems. It certainly could not run the game hardly at all at a certain point.

Granted it was like 5 years old at this point, but this was a computer advertised for gaming. People with a name brand computer, with 1-2g of ram, and onboard video really can't play the game unless they are off questing on their own in a corner of the world and never go to a city or do a raid. If they do either of those things, the computer explodes.

I think most basic models come with just enough to stay in the basic requirements range now. But anyone using 5 year or older basic computers won't be able to play WoW either.

That's funny, my friend during cata had a 5 year old used laptop that he bought for college and used to play WoW, including raids, on min settings with 10-15 FPS. He considered that fine and played that way.

[Kelimbror]

That's funny, my friend during cata had a 5 year old used laptop that he bought for college and used to play WoW, including raids, on min settings with 10-15 FPS. He considered that fine and played that way.

It must have had better innards than an XPS2 then, because mine just couldn't do it anymore. Being in Dalaran made my computer explode. I had to have other people log on my account and get my character to the raid instance so I could log in without crashing most of the time. In raids I had to play on the lowest graphic setting to get 10fps. It did not take me long to get another computer and I also quit raiding in Ulduar because of it.

[Lathais]

It must have had better innards than an XPS2 then, because mine just couldn't do it anymore. Being in Dalaran made my computer explode. I had to have other people log on my account and get my character to the raid instance so I could log in without crashing most of the time. In raids I had to play on the lowest graphic setting to get 10fps. It did not take me long to get another computer and I also quit raiding in Ulduar because of it.

He also avoided Dalaran if at all possible. However, like you, he was able to play, and that is the point. You said it was an embellished claim, yet you admit you could raid with it. Not so embellished at all.

[Kelimbror]

He also avoided Dalaran if at all possible. However, like you, he was able to play, and that is the point. You said it was an embellished claim, yet you admit you could raid with it. Not so embellished at all.

I also 'defeated volan' the other night with 1 fps and 20s ability delay. This is a pretty bad concept to stake a claim on.

It is absolutely embellished. Saying it will perform on lower machines better than most games is a given truth. Saying it will run on *insert facetious metaphor here* is just being ridiculous. We all know that 'running' is not the same as a game being 'playable'.

I don't know what the general population has for computers, but I'm assuming people that would get into these games now are buying computers now and not using 5 year old machines. In this respect, you are completely right. Even though buying a computer from Best Buy would be the worst idea ever, it will more than likely play WoW.

[Lathais]

I also 'defeated volan' the other night with 1 fps and 20s ability delay. This is a pretty bad concept to stake a claim on.

It is absolutely embellished. Saying it will perform on lower machines better than most games is a given truth. Saying it will run on *insert facetious metaphor here* is just being ridiculous. We all know that 'running' is not the same as a game being 'playable'.

I don't know what the general population has for computers, but I'm assuming people that would get into these games now are buying computers now and not using 5 year old machines. In this respect, you are completely right. Even though buying a computer from Best Buy would be the worst idea ever, it will more than likely play WoW.

I didn't say it would perform, I said it would play. Also, saying that WoW will play on a 3 generation old media card is not embellishment at all and nowhere near saying it will run on an XPS with an on board video card. An example of a 3 generation old Media Card would be like a GT440. Saying that a GT440 will play WoW is not an embellishment of any kind and that is what you quoted when calling these claims embellished. However, me saying that caused you to mention a computer with on-board graphics and compare that to my statement about a 3 year old media card.

[Deleted]

So I finally went to the Volan event last night.

I might get a lot of crap on here for this, but it was one of the most negative experiences I've ever had playing an MMO.

When I got to the area with my guildies, it was pretty amzing. I hadn't read anything about it, talked to anyone about it, just knew that it was supposed to be amazing. Just seeing him for the first time was pretty awesome. I thought that Trion had seriously outdone themselves. And to be honest, the story, the action, the phases are all pretty brilliant.

If anyone had more than 1 FPS that is. You all knew that this was coming. I understand the load that the server is under, combined with my computer struggling with the hundreds of players and effects, but come on. This is ridiculous. If you are going to put an event that will attract so many people, surely you should make sure that it's kind of smooth. Even 10 fps would have been a drastic improvement. Not to mention that so much damage can get dished out in the course of your frame lag, I spent a lot of time running back to my body the whole time.

I turned all my settings to low, low rendering, etc, and do you know how much it improved? Not at all. Not even 1 FPS. I know people will say get over it, etc, etc...but this is as bad as the Ilum fiasco in SWTOR. A huge and important event in the game is practically broken b/c the game and PCs can't handle it. We even managed to break the boss for 5-10 minutes, where after the first or second phase he just stood there doing nothing but emoting.

If that wasn't bad enough, somehow my autoflag for PvP kept enabling itself. Which was pretty convenient considering a handful of douches go there with their flag on, just to hope someone hits them and then the grief them until their flag wears off. After the first phase of Volan I got several achievements, one of which was for killing another player. Which is odd, since I didn't use aoe and surely couldn't have beat someone on accident. Unless of course the server 'saved' all the commands I was trying to do on Volan, then he 'died' and it auto selected the nearest hostile and unleashed all my abilities on them. It's the only explanation I can think of.

So yeah, sorry to just blast something that is clearly supposed to be incredible...but I can't even imagine what kind of computer is needed to make it the least bit enjoyable. I loathe when it happens again, knowing that the rewards are too good to pass up, but then again I can't really damage the boss so I doubt it's even worth it.

*frustrated*

PS- Still loving the game though. Just subbed for 6 months, since I know I'll be playing for a while.

I had a problem with pvp flagging in zone events too, there is an option in the settings to make it that if you cast on a pvp target it will just refuse to cast on them, say i tab target a defiant on accident, and i try to dot them, it will just not cast at all. its in the settings menu.

---------- Post added 2013-01-15 at 04:25 PM ----------

I'm actually amazed at the fps I had on my Volan fight, afternoon on Icewatch and I had a steady 15!!. But I agree, it was a complete mess because the ability lag was CRAZY. I heard they don't get that on US servers, hope Trion takes a look at this. Wockys suggestion seems like a good idea with max amount of people. But I don't think it should be necessary.

Do you remember when we first got the mega servers, and trying to raid whilst conquest was up? Icewatch closed down everytime the event started and there was at least 5+ seconds ability lag. fun memories, killed my raid on akylios at 22% was so upset.

---------- Post added 2013-01-15 at 04:27 PM ----------

People have complained about rifts optimization since launch, i read a solution for it somewhere, uprgading it with something? can't remember. but i do agree something needs to be done to stop so much fps and ability lag, before i got my new pc i got 0 fps in conquest, now with my nice new £700 rig i get a nice 8 fps with ultra on and about 15-20 on rendering.

[Deleted]

That's funny, my friend during cata had a 5 year old used laptop that he bought for college and used to play WoW, including raids, on min settings with 10-15 FPS. He considered that fine and played that way.

Man that's nothing. I used to play wow on a mechanical computer I built in Minecraft on a 5year old used laptop, try to one up that.

---------- Post added 2013-01-15 at 04:38 PM ----------

Man that's nothing. I used to play wow on a mechanical computer I built in Minecraft on a 5year old used laptop, try to one up that.

I can run Rift, WoW, TERA, GW2 just fine on XPS, grated it's from late 2012. Out of all those games Rift is the biggest resource hog although it doesn't look as aesthetically pleasing as TERA or even GW2.

[Kelimbror]

Saying that a GT440 will play WoW is not an embellishment of any kind and that is what you quoted when calling these claims embellished

I chose the wrong quote to get my point across. I wasn't saying that your statement with the video card was the embellishment. Just that the overall concept was the embellishment. That's why I clarified it in my last post.