Volan

[Kelimbror]

I heard they don't get that on US servers, hope Trion takes a look at this.

Whoever is telling you that is making up stories.

I'm on US Deepwood. We probably had 300+ people there seeing that it was prime time. Volan broke after the first phase. Once he finally went on a rampage and caught up to himself, it was a 5-20s ability lag from the server for the rest of the event.

[Edge-]

I mean I am also too ignorant about the specific subject, but when things like this start to become a common problem for a game company....can't they just upgrade their servers? I know Rift is small cheese compared to WoW, but I know WoW has upgraded servers many times over the years.

If Rift is really looking to push their business this way...which they totally should...wouldn't much higher performing servers be of benefit?

*cough cough Wintergrasp cough cough*

Like every other game that has events that cause massive concentrations of players to this day. It sucks, but I don't know of any MMO that's really dealt with the problem effectively with concentrations of active players that high : /

[Kelimbror]

*cough cough Wintergrasp cough cough*

Like every other game that has events that cause massive concentrations of players to this day. It sucks, but I don't know of any MMO that's really dealt with the problem effectively with concentrations of active players that high : /

I have absolutely no problems with any event in WoW. My FPS never drops below 30 on ultra settings, minus some shadow and water stuff b/c it's not needed to me in a game that doesn't look real anyways. I know with the fidelity/quality of Rift art that it's going to be much harder to maintain high performance...but yeah.

[Fencers]

Yea but like WOW can run on like a TI-84.

[Edge-]

I have absolutely no problems with any event in WoW. My FPS never drops below 30 on ultra settings, minus some shadow and water stuff b/c it's not needed to me in a game that doesn't look real anyways. I know with the fidelity/quality of Rift art that it's going to be much harder to maintain high performance...but yeah.

You rarely, if ever, see a hundred+ people in a contained area with spell effects going off in WoW. During LK, Wintergrasp would cause servers to shit all over themselves with 100ish people active in a single zone. I even remember issues with 80 people in Tol Barad in Cata, though they were minimal for the most part.

That's not to say that WoW runs insanely well, because it totally does and it runs far better than Rift, but it's a systemic problem across almost any MMO that runs with high concentrations of active players in a small area.

[Kelimbror]

Yea but like WOW can run on like a TI-84.

Saw someone testing/bootlegged a program that would run it on a cell phone. It was insanely cool, though you couldn't really do much.

You rarely, if ever, see a hundred+ people in a contained area with spell effects going off in WoW. During LK, Wintergrasp would cause servers to shit all over themselves with 100ish people active in a single zone. I even remember issues with 80 people in Tol Barad in Cata, though they were minimal for the most part.

I play on US Mannoroth. It was a day 1 server. The last time I had such a craptastic lag fest was when the gates to AQ opened (World 1st PvP Server). Even that event, which happened almost exactly 6 years ago was smoother than Volan last night. I guarantee there were as many or more people there for that.

Wintergrasp was never a problem for me, neither TB. And definitely nothing now.

Since they run such few servers, you would think they would be able to at least make sure those were top of the line. Even with the event being so intense, they clearly need some upgrades.

[Deleted]

I mean I am also too ignorant about the specific subject, but when things like this start to become a common problem for a game company....can't they just upgrade their servers? I know Rift is small cheese compared to WoW, but I know WoW has upgraded servers many times over the years.

If Rift is really looking to push their business this way...which they totally should...wouldn't much higher performing servers be of benefit?

It's more about optimizing the way resources get allocated or maybe it's the game engine, you have to remember that they built Rift on gamebryo and not something they cooked up in-house.

[Edge-]

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.

[Kelimbror]

It's more about optimizing the way resources get allocated or maybe it's the game engine, you have to remember that they built Rift on gamebryo and not something they cooked up in-house.

I was reading that...how the current version of that engine is loads better, but would basically require redoing the entire game which will not happen. As great as Trion are, I wouldn't expect that out of anyone.

It's funny how that one thing gets overlooked the most when we discuss why that other game is so successful. It's the only mainstream MMO I know that created their own engine and it seems to allow much more flexibility than any other game has. I think Rift has perfected pushing the limits on what they have.

Who knows though, maybe the next expansion will set another unreachable bar for other companies by redesigning their whole game with a new engine. That would be crazy.

---------- Post added 2013-01-14 at 02:36 PM ----------

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

In Rift it is both. In WoW, I never had an issue with either other than the random times it happens just because. Admittedly I only did WG a handful of times when it launched, so there's a chance I just got lucky? IDK, our server has always been incredibly populated.

[Lathais]

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.

I definitely remember the entire server lagging during Wintergrasp when it was first out, US-PvP-Smolderthorn. I also remember lots and lots of lag in the event itself. Both ends too, since I updated my computer around that time and while there were massive improvements everywhere else, only slight in/during WG.

Also, as for Trion upgrading servers, they just did US-Side shortly before 1.11, to create the current "super-cluster." I think part of the problem was, with upgrading the servers, they also closed some, basically negating the upgrade since they now handle more people. EU side was done a few months prior to US side.

As for the game engine and optimizing it, they really picked the engine for the fact that is is easy to add content and make changes rather than running super-smooth.

[Edge-]

In Rift it is both. In WoW, I never had an issue with either other than the random times it happens just because. Admittedly I only did WG a handful of times when it launched, so there's a chance I just got lucky? IDK, our server has always been incredibly populated.

With regards to your PC: Yeah, the game runs like a pig. Gamebryo engine isn't known for running well on machines. WoW runs insanely well, probably the smoothest running Western MMO on the market, and it competes with how well many of the Korean MMO's run. So you'll pretty much always get better performance out of WoW compared to other MMO's, even with similar visual demands. As Fencers mentioned, the game can pretty much run on a tin can : P

With regards to the servers: My evidence is as anecdotal as yours at this point as I don't have the time/desire to find some supporting evidence. But I know my server shat itself to hell during Wintergrasp while it was still actually populated (it died down after a bit), so when you have 100ish+ in the zone, everyone on the server knew WG was going on. I also posted a ton in the official forums at the time, and remember seeing countless threads complaining about similar issues. Again, it's anecdotal, but I know there have been periods of time where Blizz's servers have stressed themselves out, and with fewer than the 200ish people that you'll see during a Volan event.

[Kelimbror]

Actually, I disagree with that. I was at that event, Kitty. It was the server that was causing the delays. During the event, when I was running about a 2.5-3 second GCD, I checked my computer, and the CPU and GPU were not maxed out. They were doing a lot of coasting, waiting on the server. My FPS never dropped below 15-20, even with all the people, and my computer's 3.5 years old. Of course, I have a Xeon-class i7 from 2009; 2.67 GHz W3520. Rift uses a couple of cores, and generally runs where Windows isn't.

Well I was at 1-4 FPS, so it's definitely not just the server. When I feel like watching a movie through a Zoopraxiscope
would seem like a technological marvel compared to what I experience in the game...there's a lot of issues going on.

But yeah, I agree with what everyone is saying. I'm just afraid it's never going to get better and I really would like it to. Haven't had this much fun in an MMO in a while and can you blame me for wanting everything to be perfect? lol

[Deleted]

It's funny how that one thing gets overlooked the most when we discuss why that other game is so successful. It's the only mainstream MMO I know that created their own engine and it seems to allow much more flexibility than any other game has. I think Rift has perfected pushing the limits on what they have

I think GW2 was made on their own engine, but I might be wrong. I'm sure Aion and Lineage2 were made on NCsoft's own engine.

Back to stress though, WG was so bad because the server had to also handle vehicles+ destructible environments... also someone thought it would be a good idea to place it next to Dalaran in a non instanced world. But tbh I never had that much trouble with WG except maybe for the first month of WOTLK release and I used to play on a very high pop server. If you want to talk about lagfests though the worst was the opening of ahn'qiraj events, the bane of 2006 internet connections.

[Edge-]

I think GW2 was made on their own engine, but I might be wrong. I'm sure Aion and Lineage2 were made on NCsoft's own engine.

Back to stress though, WG was so bad because the server had to also handle vehicles+ destructible environments... also someone thought it would be a good idea to place it next to Dalaran in a non instanced world. But tbh I never had that much trouble with WG except maybe for the first month of WOTLK release and I used to play on a very high pop server. If you want to talk about lagfests though the worst was the opening of ahn'qiraj events, the bane of 2006 internet connections.

GW2 runs off a heavily modified version of the GW1 engine, which was built in-house by ArenaNet. Aion is built on CryEngine (they updated from CryEngine 1 to CryEngine 2 in the 2.5 patch), and L2 is Unreal 2.5 engine. Blade & Soul is running on Unreal 3. So NCsoft's internally developed games are all using licensed engines.

[Kelimbror]

I think GW2 was made on their own engine, but I might be wrong. I'm sure Aion and Lineage2 were made on NCsoft's own engine.

Back to stress though, WG was so bad because the server had to also handle vehicles+ destructible environments... also someone thought it would be a good idea to place it next to Dalaran in a non instanced world. But tbh I never had that much trouble with WG except maybe for the first month of WOTLK release and I used to play on a very high pop server. If you want to talk about lagfests though the worst was the opening of ahn'qiraj events, the bane of 2006 internet connections.

This is true. GW2 is on an improved version of the original GW engine, though I couldn't tell from looking at them. I really don't consider Aion or Lineage to be very mainstream honestly, but that could just be me. I know people like them and all, but I've heard more about LotRO over the years than either of those games. Could be b/c I live in the US, idk.

Even NCSoft signed with Unreal to use the UR3 engine for their games going forward though. So there really won't be anything left but WoW when it comes down to it. Is licensing an engine that much cheaper than creating one, or is it just kinda the lazy way out of doing a shit ton of work? It seems the benefits of creating your own engine would far outweigh the positives, unless you have the demands of a CEO and Investors reaming you for needing to adhere to a specific release schedule, ie yesterday.

[DeltrusDisc]

So... I suppose Deepwood is the place to be to experience it more positively. >_<



Granted I also have a decent computer (2500K CPU and 560 Ti GPU) but 1 fps is pretty absurd.

I will say though, I had my own quarrels with the fight... breaking apart the different parts just became VERY tiring, to be quite honest. I mean this is a 22 minute video cut down from like a good hour+ of fighting. That's just ridiculous. >_<

[Deleted]

GW2 runs off a heavily modified version of the GW1 engine, which was built in-house by ArenaNet. Aion is built on CryEngine (they updated from CryEngine 1 to CryEngine 2 in the 2.5 patch), and L2 is Unreal 2.5 engine. Blade & Soul is running on Unreal 3. So NCsoft's internally developed games are all using licensed engines.

So true, I forgot about that.

Although these fights against gargantuas look fantastic nowadays they are not as enjoyable as say Doomlord Kazzak in the good old days.
Haven't done Volan but I've done Tequatl and The Shatter this week and it was more "meh" than engaging. Then again, maybe it's just me.

[Kelimbror]

So... I suppose Deepwood is the place to be to experience it more positively. >_<

Granted I also have a decent computer (2500K CPU and 560 Ti GPU) but 1 fps is pretty absurd.

I will say though, I had my own quarrels with the fight... breaking apart the different parts just became VERY tiring, to be quite honest. I mean this is a 22 minute video cut down from like a good hour+ of fighting. That's just ridiculous. >_<

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.

Haven't done Volan but I've done Tequatl and The Shatter this week and it was more "meh" than engaging. Then again, maybe it's just me.

This is one of my biggest complaints regarding the poor performance. I could tell there were lots of things you could do in that fight. I tried to launch up to the platforms, managed it once then lagged the whole time and wound up a corpse on the ground somehow. I know there's a way to use grappling hook like abilities, shoot cannons, attack from the platforms and see him at a different angle. Lots of awesome things going on.

You aren't even able to participate in them though. It was horribly frustrating.

[Tharkkun]

It's a 100% server side issue when the zone lags out like that. Don't go changing your system to try and fix it. I did the event on Saturday night around 7:30 and we had 5-10 second ability lag. FPS was fine. On Friday night I did it at 1:30 AM and the event ran full speed. I got 7 more IS as well because I contributed more than the prime time one.

The PVP flag must have been reset in a hotfix. I've had it off since level 51 in SL. It was suddenly back on so that's an undocumented change.

I'm on Wolfsbane btw.

[Onorvele]

Sources of lag:

• Local machine fail
• Server fail
• Network fail

That's it, basically. Either a local resource (CPU/GPU/RAM/HDD) is pegged, a server resource (same set) is pegged, or the connection between the two is pegged.

I think one of the key points brought up is that 300+ people being active in the same area at the same time requires a whole lot of server-side processing - I think the word "exponentially" was used. I know that Rift attempts to mitigate this by loading your raid with priority - and extending this concept further might help. As in, if Trion were to:

• Hide everyone not in your raid from you (or maybe just full raids)
• Communicate only the raid aggregates to each other raid (so you'd see only "RAID 4 does 18k raid damage and 6k raid healing this second")
• Figure out a way to handle item use (like the turrets), public group joining, and PvP flags elegantly

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.