Why We Lag Now?

[Cempa]

After attempting several Epic Battle grounds and realizing they are unplayable due to insane lag, I decided to search online for a reason and came across this clip -video is not mine.

Not only did all these additions (azerite gear / corruption on gear) reduce fun for me as an individual player, it looks like it also degraded game play quality.

[melzas]

Pretty sure just pasting your own videos as a "topic to discuss" and nothing else isn't allowed here.

[Dracullus]

I don't know if Preach is right. I had very little lag in 8.3 Uldum/Vale. For comparison Warfronts (open world zones), 8.1 invasions lag was awful. Right now Nazjatar is almost empty and lag make it unplayable.

I think it has more to do with sharding technology than our RNG spells.

[huth]

I don't know if Preach is right. I had very little lag in 8.3 Uldum/Vale. For comparison Warfronts (open world zones), 8.1 invasions lag was awful. Right now Nazjatar is almost empty and lag make it unplayable.

I think it has more to do with sharding technology than our RNG spells.

There's also some bug associated with Shek'zara that makes everything in the Vale slow to a crawl when she's in combat. But that's that specific fight, not a general issue as it would be if RNG would be causing it.

[thebdc]

His reasoning is up there with flat earther "proof" videos. Lag when many players come together has been a thing since vanilla. And looking at the comments of the video gets me into permanent facepalming state. But sure, if people don't understand the difference between server side lag, client side lag, and FPS, then you can sell them anything.

[Dracullus]

His reasoning is up there with flat earther "proof" videos. Lag when many players come together has been a thing since vanilla. And looking at the comments of the video gets me into permanent facepalming state. But sure, if people don't understand the difference between server side lag, client side lag, and FPS, then you can sell them anything.

Youtube/facebook comments always shit 24/7 on WoW with 0 arguments, fansites are paradise compared to them. If youtuber say "WoW is bad cause X", no one will argue with X there.

[Myr010]

I work as a tester and part of my work involves load testing, In principle what he is saying is correct and it is likely to be a contributing factor when you have large groups of people in one area in combat and it is likely that the threshold for the number of people in combat before you start experiencing lag is lower than it has been previously, that said i don't believe that it is the sole cause of the lag seen in game. I agree with one of the posters above that there seems to be a problem with sharding as I've seen issues with lag after switching shards when grouping back to at least the start of BFA and then that lag has persisted after leaving the group and going off and doing something else.

[Kralljin]

I agree with one of the posters above that there seems to be a problem with sharding as I've seen issues with lag after switching shards when grouping back to at least the start of BFA and then that lag has persisted after leaving the group and going off and doing something else.

Sharding doesn't explain the lag in raids however.
If you have a 30man raid, you feel it on bigger pulls.

Heck, you even feel it in 20man raids (Mythic) on certain trashpulls.
And no, not FPS drops, actual input delay.

[Hellobolis]

I don't know if Preach is right. I had very little lag in 8.3 Uldum/Vale. For comparison Warfronts (open world zones), 8.1 invasions lag was awful. Right now Nazjatar is almost empty and lag make it unplayable.

I think it has more to do with sharding technology than our RNG spells.

all the lag comes from wpvp in my experience. which makes it weird you noticed it in nazjatar but never in the new zones when CTA is active there, though it's mostly a reset day issue in the new zones tbh.

[Myr010]

Sharding doesn't explain the lag in raids however.
If you have a 30man raid, you feel it on bigger pulls.

Heck, you even feel it in 20man raids (Mythic) on certain trashpulls.
And no, not FPS drops, actual input delay.

I didnt say it was solely down to sharding, in this case what is stated in the video is likely contributing to this lag

Some of this may just be down to graphical settings though with loads of spell effects going off causing strain on the PC, also could be due to the addons you are using, and also one of the biggest contributors can be displaying damage/healing on targets, try turning that off and see if the lag is as bad

[Hellobolis]

There's also some bug associated with Shek'zara that makes everything in the Vale slow to a crawl when she's in combat. But that's that specific fight, not a general issue as it would be if RNG would be causing it.

it is often very bad in vale.... but i want to believe blizz would still have fixed something like that by now.

it being caused by large group pvp seems way more fundamental and harder to fix than ... a bug with a boss...

[Kuntantee]

I don't know if Preach is right. I had very little lag in 8.3 Uldum/Vale. For comparison Warfronts (open world zones), 8.1 invasions lag was awful. Right now Nazjatar is almost empty and lag make it unplayable.

I think it has more to do with sharding technology than our RNG spells.

Never heard of the term Lagjatar?

[Clozer]

Back in the days the lag was way worse. I still remember not being able to login or if you managed to get in to do anything at all on reset days.

It's just those huge 40+ player actions that are making the servers struggle. I think a year ago at Blizzcon there was an interview with one of the lead tech guys from blizzard saying that there is no solution to this. I think they are even funding research in that area. The exponential server load for every additional player just becomes HUGE very fast.

1 player requires 10 packets
2 player require 100 packets

40 player require 1,e+40 packets. It's just insane what the servers have to handle at that point and every single additional player makes it worse. A lot worse.

[Tojara]

I've only noticed it in four places, one of them being during WoD. Nazjatar constantly lags (mostly during the PvP event though), epic battlegrounds lag (don't know if this has been fixed, but the last one I did a few months ago lagged), and the world boss in Vale of Eternal Blossoms lags. All of the ones listed in BFA have a single thing in common, just a lot of players in a single area and almost exclusively in PvP.

The WoD example is something completely different and only happened during cross-realm heroic raids that I routinely did on the weekends. The lag was pretty crippling, but almost exclusively happened during an opener during lust and was made worse by the amount of BM hunters that were in the raid (BM hunters and stampede were both a popular talent during BRF).

The video you linked is anecdotal, as are my experiences. However, I don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to have the idea that it has something to do with sharding and the amount of people in a particular area or zone. When someone posted a 29 mage heroic fire mage video, I'd probably guess one of the biggest reasons it lags is because of the amount of information that needs to be sent between shards. I'm going to guess that if the same format was performed by people from connected realms (or the same realm), that lag might not exist.

[Okacz]

His reasoning is up there with flat earther "proof" videos. Lag when many players come together has been a thing since vanilla. And looking at the comments of the video gets me into permanent facepalming state. But sure, if people don't understand the difference between server side lag, client side lag, and FPS, then you can sell them anything.

Why is his reasoning bad? I mean, aside of network devs on Blizzards end no one really knows exactly what data is being sent with each package and in what format. Preach could be wrong, but his reasoning is pretty spot on, more random effects mean more server side calculations, which means more lag if too much data needs to be processed. If you know why he's wrong just explain it or something.

[Clozer]

Why is his reasoning bad? I mean, aside of network devs on Blizzards end no one really knows exactly what data is being sent with each package and in what format. Preach could be wrong, but his reasoning is pretty spot on, more random effects mean more server side calculations, which means more lag if too much data needs to be processed. If you know why he's wrong just explain it or something.

I explained it 2 posts above. This has nothing to do with server side math. Just the exponential server traffic for each player. It's cheaper to calculate 100000000000000000 dice rolls than to handle 40 players for 1 second.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

I read the title of this thread in the voice of Chen in the MoP cinematic. "Why do we fight?"


"Wai... do we lag nao?"

[Kralljin]

Some of this may just be down to graphical settings though with loads of spell effects going off causing strain on the PC

That's FPS, not network lag.

also could be due to the addons you are using, and also one of the biggest contributors can be displaying damage/healing on targets, try turning that off and see if the lag is as bad

Strangely, seems to happen to the entire raid at the same time.

[kaminaris]

Back in the days the lag was way worse. I still remember not being able to login or if you managed to get in to do anything at all on reset days.

It's just those huge 40+ player actions that are making the servers struggle. I think a year ago at Blizzcon there was an interview with one of the lead tech guys from blizzard saying that there is no solution to this. I think they are even funding research in that area. The exponential server load for every additional player just becomes HUGE very fast.

1 player requires 10 packets
2 player require 100 packets

40 player require 1,e+40 packets. It's just insane what the servers have to handle at that point and every single additional player makes it worse. A lot worse.

Well, there is a solution. But you are correct, amount of dice rolls is completely irrelevant.

Solution is to slow time like EvE does it.
https://www.eveonline.com/article/in...-dilation-tidi

I believe having time slowed by 20-40% is better than having random teleporting players and shit going insane all over the place.

That being said, it would require some massive work from blizzard as everything is expected to run at real time.

[Aflakk47]

Well, there is a solution. But you are correct, amount of dice rolls is completely irrelevant.

Solution is to slow time like EvE does it.
https://www.eveonline.com/article/in...-dilation-tidi

I believe having time slowed by 20-40% is better than having random teleporting players and shit going insane all over the place.

That being said, it would require some massive work from blizzard as everything is expected to run at real time.

Sounds a lot like their comments on spell batching in regards to classic development. From their post;

"It used to be the norm that combat flow and PvP balance were defined and tuned in a game where spell messages were resolved less frequently. There was a single game loop that processed all messages sent and received every server tick. Nowadays, the game processes multiple loops for messages of differing priorities."
https://www.wowhead.com/news=290910/...in-classic-wow

More data needs to be sent more frequently which causes lag if I'm understanding right.