View Full Forums : Can anyone help me? Blizzard can't be bothered to.


Anka
06-22-2005, 06:51 PM
Description: When there are a large number of creatures or players in my area, the game slows to become unplayable. It would typically take a minute to say anything, cast an instant spell, or open the bank. This happens even when most players are offscreen. Ironforge with 50+ people is almost unplayable. Raid instances such as Scholomance are entirely unplayable. Other times the game runs smoothly. Can you advise me please on how to improve things. I have a cable modem connection and have no problems with connection otherwise in WoW or in other applications.

Hello,

With regards to your enquiry, we are sorry, but the technical support department is unable to help with your in-game issue.

If you encounter a problem with a quest or a character you can ask for help from a GM in-game by pressing the question mark icon on your toolbar, and selecting the relevant option.

Best regards
Blizzard Entertainment Europe
Marios A.
Technical Support
www.wow-europe.com

---------------------------------------------------------

Can anyone help? This is not an occassional problem. I am severely lagged every time there are a large number of creatures about, without exception, and the game can become entirely unplayable in places like scholomance.

Badgemagus
06-22-2005, 07:08 PM
Have you tried adjusting your video settings? What hardware do you have in your machine? I upgraded from 512 Megs to 1024 and saw a good improvement in my machine. Also come on over to the horde side, our lag problems in Orgrimmar are probably not nearly as severe as Alliance Ironforge. :P

Yrys
06-22-2005, 07:14 PM
Yeah, upgrading RAM can help a lot for that if you don't have much. CPU and graphics card/settings didn't seem to help as much, though they do help a little.

Anka
06-23-2005, 08:55 AM
The video settings can be set down to absolute minimums and it has no effect. I've also changed the graphics card and put in the latest drivers. I don't think it's any normal graphical lag as I get the problem even if all creatures are offscreen and even my own chat text can take minutes to get back to me.

I'm running with 512MB ram so I'm on double the minimum requirement suggested by Blizzard. I'd rather try some new configurations before buying extra hardware.

Yrys
06-23-2005, 09:21 AM
Ah, 512 isn't much especially when we're talking about all the people in IF. :P I noticed a pretty big improvement with 1gb ram, and a smaller improvement with 2gb.

Fadė
06-23-2005, 02:00 PM
It sounds more to me like a problem with your PC's capability handling the information that it is recieving than with your video card or connection. Like the others said, RAM is a big big factor. Additional factors are your CPU speed and type, motherboard speed, and your hard drive speed and available disk capacity. Are you running a Pentium III, Celeron or Pentium IV? How many megahertz? What is your bus speed? How big is your hard drive, how much space do you have available?

Things to remember when your PC slows down: If it runs out of RAM, it starts sending data to the hard drive, which is much much slower. If you start to run out of hard disk capacity and RAM then your system will slow down tremendously. That's why RAM is always the first and easiest upgrade for your PC. If you have a slow motherboard bus speed, then the information can't get to your CPU fast enough. If you have a slow CPU, the information can't process fast enough. Then you want to start looking at your video card... :)

Fadė

Cedre
06-23-2005, 02:01 PM
One GB seems to be the minimum for crowded areas like IF. Also check your hard drive. In a crowded area where the game needs to load new models for characters and equipment as people move inside your clip plane, a slow hard drive can lag the game to the point you will disconnect.

Bovus
06-23-2005, 02:24 PM
All good suggestions. I'm also wondering what kind of processor you have. I originally started playing WoW with 512MB - and never had the problems you described, except in raids of more than 30 vs 30 and tons of AE going off. Going to 1GB did help in those situations, but it's also possible there were some upgrades on Blizzard's end (anyone else have 10 sec lag in large pvp raids months ago?).

FYI: My proc is a 2.6 GHz Pent 4, and my Video card is a gimp GEforce4 MX420. Hardly a power gamer system.

Some general things that might help you:

Defrag your hard drive
Turn off player names
/leave general and trade channels in cities

By comparison, my work laptop (I sometimes like to login on the road) is a Celeron 700 or 900 MHz with only 256MB ram. I can login, tradeskill and travel around somewhat. Soon as I get near the bank/AH in Orgrimmar it's all over though.

goa
06-24-2005, 03:25 AM
Try yo switch to windowed mode. video setting - click box that says windowed mode.

Mossrunner
06-24-2005, 07:21 AM
Or, if you are in Windowed mode, try full screen. I've read that's faster. The common denominator people are speaking of is RAM. <3 RAM! =D I have less than the system stated above (Athlon 2.13, ATI 9500) but I have a gig of RAM and rarely encounter a lag problem even in cities. So rare, that I attribute it confidently to server issues.

One question no one asked, I think, are you on high speed or dial up?

Stormhaven
06-24-2005, 09:22 AM
Anka, if you ever run Task Manager while running WoW, you'll notice that in heavy areas it normally takes up to 300MB of RAM easily. If you know your way around Window's Performance Monitor you can easily set up a few counters to try and see what's causing a bottleneck while you're playing WoW.

Start up Perfmon (Start > Run > Perfmon)
Click on Performance Logs and Alerts
Click on Counter Logs
You should have a default counter set in there - System Overview - Double-click on that
-If you don't have that, just right-click and New
Make sure that the location for the log file is a valid one - the file can get sort of big, so make sure you have space (at least a few hundred megs). Also, if you have more than one physical disk, make sure it logs on a drive separate from your Windows Page file.
Click on Add Counters and add the following counters:
-Memory (just select the "All Counters" radio button) and click Add
-Processor (all counters)
-Physical Disk (all counters) - note: you may not have this one by default
Click "OK" until you're back to the Perfmon screen.
Right-click the counter set and select "Start" - close perfmon.

Go into WoW play around and try to reproduce your lag problem. Don't play around too long because the amount of stuff the perfmon is logging can make the log file huge and cumbersome, so the quicker you can repro the problem, the better.

Once you've reproduced the problem, exit out of WoW and start up perfmon again.
On the left-hand side, select "System Monitor" then click somewhere on the graph window and hit Ctrl+L (or you can click on the "View Log Data" icon across the top).
Open the perflog that you created before.
Click on the Plus sign - this will bring up the Add Counters dialog again and you'll be able to select from the counters you added before.

Good counters to look at for basic system performance are:
Memory / Available MBytes
Memory / Cache Faults/Sec
Memory / Page Faults/Sec
Memory / Pages/Sec
PhysicalDisk / Current Disk Queue Length
PhysicalDisk / Split IO/Sec
Processor / %Processor Time
Processor / Interrupts/Sec

Once you have some of this info, it'll be easier to troubleshoot your problem.

hertzsae
06-25-2005, 09:20 PM
Simple way to check, alt tab to Windows, hit ctrl-alt-del, pull up the Task Manager. Go to the performance tab. If your MEM usage is over 512000, then you need more memory. Game ran fine for me with an athlon 2500, 1 gig of ram and an ATI 9600SE. I lagged horribly in populated areas with only 512 of memory.

Aidon
07-06-2005, 09:58 PM
...

First question to ask is Are you using Cosmos and do you have Thottbott data collection on?

That was the biggest culprit of poor performance for a good number of people while I was playing. Thott was never quite able to figure out why, as I recall.

grenthor
07-07-2005, 04:34 AM
anyone else have 10 sec lag in large pvp raids months ago?).

FYI: My proc is a 2.6 GHz Pent 4, and my Video card is a gimp GEforce4 MX420. Hardly a power gamer system.

Actually your 10 second latency has a lot to do with your Video Card and it's ability to handle the game with that much stuff going on.

Whilst its not a huge expense I would suggest upgrading your video card to even a 5200 or something you will find the game performance in all aspects improves dramtically.

barks
07-07-2005, 08:40 AM
Are you using any UI addon's I had a a problem as well some UI mods. Also the MX420 is in need of upgrading. If you don't know http://www.pricewatch.com/ it is a great resource for finding good deals on equipment.

Anka
07-07-2005, 08:59 AM
I'm not using any add-ons, mods, or background apps at all other than a firewall and anti-virus. I typically reboot before playing. I ran a quick test with the anti-virus and firewall removed and the lag was still as bad.

I don't think it's a regular video card issue. Apart from turning corners into lots of people, I can run through Ironforge much as normal when the lag starts, but anything I say takes about a minute to get back to me and it then takes me a minute to even just logout in an empty corridor. I'm using a Radeon 9800 PRO now, and that worked fine on a friends PC playing WoW previously.

My PC has 2x256 memory at the moment, so there will be some redundancy in any upgrade. I'm also not too keen on upgrading a game that is supposed to need 256MB to run. I can accept that it would be laggy, but this is pretty unplayable.

I'm running Windows ME and haven't got the task manager option. The corresponding apps aren't giving the same info but I'll have another look later to see what I find.

A friend has replaced the USB internet connection with a network card for me and the connection speed does seem better. When a group of monsters suddenly appear I can often handle that now. However, once the lag hits it still hits very hard and it still takes me a minute just to logout in Ironforge. Just to confirm, it does just take me half a second to log out in the inns elsewhere.

Thanks for the advice. At least you've confirmed that this isn't some common problem and isn't fixed with just game settings. Does anyone know if the message filtering (for pet misses and the like) is on the server or the client?

grenthor
07-07-2005, 07:38 PM
I'm not using any add-ons, mods, or background apps at all other than a firewall and anti-virus. I typically reboot before playing. I ran a quick test with the anti-virus and firewall removed and the lag was still as bad.

I don't think it's a regular video card issue. Apart from turning corners into lots of people, I can run through Ironforge much as normal when the lag starts, but anything I say takes about a minute to get back to me and it then takes me a minute to even just logout in an empty corridor. I'm using a Radeon 9800 PRO now, and that worked fine on a friends PC playing WoW previously.

My PC has 2x256 memory at the moment, so there will be some redundancy in any upgrade. I'm also not too keen on upgrading a game that is supposed to need 256MB to run. I can accept that it would be laggy, but this is pretty unplayable.

I'm running Windows ME and haven't got the task manager option. The corresponding apps aren't giving the same info but I'll have another look later to see what I find.

A friend has replaced the USB internet connection with a network card for me and the connection speed does seem better. When a group of monsters suddenly appear I can often handle that now. However, once the lag hits it still hits very hard and it still takes me a minute just to logout in Ironforge. Just to confirm, it does just take me half a second to log out in the inns elsewhere.

Thanks for the advice. At least you've confirmed that this isn't some common problem and isn't fixed with just game settings. Does anyone know if the message filtering (for pet misses and the like) is on the server or the client?

Okay next thing to check is actually what applications are running in the background. I would guess you might have some spyware or something possibly taking up your bandwidth.

Step 1:

I suggest you download the Microsoft free antispyware application from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=321cd7a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&displaylang=en

Run this and remove anything that it reports.

Step 2:

Goto the start menu and select Run. Type in msconfig and hit OK

Step 3:

Goto the Startup section of this and look at what applications are actually booting up on startup. Anything that is not Critical uncheck it as many of these types of things take up quite a lot of memory and quite possibly bandwidth if they have automatic update etc on.

Finally after you have done this let us know how it runs.

Cheers,

Grenth

Anka
07-09-2005, 11:41 PM
I'm not 100% sure that my PC is free of all gremlins, nobody ever can be, but it does have updated anti-virus, updated anti-spyware, updated firewall, windows updates, driver updates, etc and I'm as sure as a regular home user can be that my PC is clean. The start-up config has been stripped down and kept down for the life of the PC. Nothing has an auto-update or a background connection if I can help it. There are no added applications, add-ons, or mods running at the same time.

grenthor
07-10-2005, 07:46 PM
I'm not 100% sure that my PC is free of all gremlins, nobody ever can be, but it does have updated anti-virus, updated anti-spyware, updated firewall, windows updates, driver updates, etc and I'm as sure as a regular home user can be that my PC is clean. The start-up config has been stripped down and kept down for the life of the PC. Nothing has an auto-update or a background connection if I can help it. There are no added applications, add-ons, or mods running at the same time.

Hmm okay.

When was the last time you defragged your Drive?

Also another thing to do to just help things along is clean out your registry although uninstalling programs removes the application in many cases it leaves traces in the registry this can actually cause very long boot periods and other issues as the registry gets bigger over time.

I know recently on the cover of many Computer Magazines they have had Registry Cleaning software for free maybe look for PC Utilities Magazine that generally always has one on it.

Ok another thing to check might actually be your RAM itself there maybe some faulty memory locations of the RAM chips use something like memtest86 and do a complete examination of your RAM. Note if any errors do come up in many cases I hate to say this it means replacing your RAM which sucks :mad2:

Without actually being able to sit in front of your PC and see the issues for myself it's very hard to knuckle down where the exact problem is. Hopefully one of these will at least give you a little bit of help.

One other thing you can do is download an application called HijackThis run that and save the output to a log file then post the output from that up here for me so I can examine it in detail.

Cheers,

Grenth

hertzsae
07-11-2005, 11:16 PM
I'm almost positive it's a memory problem. I don't remember the name of the utilities, but there is a performance monitor program in ME (atleast there was in 98). That will monitor your memory usage. I think it's under start-programs-accessories-system tools, but I could be wrong. When I ran Warcraft and nothing else, my computer was using around 650 mb of memory while in IF. If you only have a 512 mb of memory, then your computer has to go to the hard drive for the other 138 mb of memory. Hard drives are much, much slower then RAM.

If you find that your computer is using less then 512 of memory, then a ram upgrade would be a waste of money. If you are using more, then you will notice a big difference upgrading.

Arienne
07-30-2005, 12:43 PM
Ok... I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a computer guru. Pretty much, I know where the on-off button is and I can't even get this thing off as much as I should, but I can tell you of my own experiences.

I have an older computer, but refuse to get a newer one just to play games on. It does fine for e-mail and online resources. I have a P4 1.4 GHz and up until about a month ago I had 512RAM and an Nvidia 64 MB GeForce2 video card. I connect at 24.4k dialup.

I could play WoW without any real issues as long as I played Horde. Ogrimmar was a bit laggy, but doable. Taking a gnome into Stormguard, it would be about 3 minutes before I could see other chars and shopkeepers. I followed a friend in once and the text lag was more than 5 minutes.

I bought a new video card. Raedon 9800 Pro with more memory. I could turn up the graphics and see the game a *bit* better, but it didn't affect lag for me. I still had Ogrimmar lag and Stormguard was no better. I upgraded RAM to 1024. It fixed everything for me.

I Played EQ1 in a high end raiding guild from Velious to GoD. My 24.4 dialup was never a huge problem. Lag was only an issue for me in SoL midway through the release (not our first Emperor raids, but the last ones) until they did something to the game when they released PoP. Then all my lag disappeared again. I didn't have lag issues in EQ1 from that point up to when I left before the end of GoD. If you played EQ, you know how demanding that game is on your computer, so I added this paragraph as a point of reference.

My vote is to go with more RAM if you do nothing else. :)

Fadė
08-02-2005, 09:57 AM
A friend of mine just had a problem with Lag due to having shadows turned on in another game, so one thing that you may want to start with is to go into your in-game graphics options and start with the lowests settings and test how you run, then slowly start bring the settings up and test, and up and test. :) Also, make sure that you have the most recent driver update for your graphics card for your operating system.

But, I, like Arienne, also suggest more RAM. :) Remember, just because the game can RUN on "256MB" of RAM, it doesn't mean that it can run WELL.

Arienne
08-02-2005, 11:56 AM
Oh, there is one more thing....
I started out with Windows ME, too. About a year or so ago I changed over to XP Pro. Though not a huge difference, it did make some. If you don't want to keep pouring money after the problem, forget I posted this. But eventually you might want to change to a newer OS.

Aflat
08-10-2005, 02:00 PM
I run on a laptop. Well, desktop replacment really. Its a P4 2.6 or something close to that. I was playing with 512 megs of ram, and got the lag you are describing exactly. I put in an extra 512, and the lag went down to just about 0. Its all about the ram.

Artigus
10-04-2005, 05:05 PM
I will agree with the other posters re: more RAM. I upgraded from 512 to 1GB a while back, and it fixed all of my problems.

However...
I had a problem almost *exactly* the same as the OP when I was playing EQ a couple of years ago. I did everything I knew, and my friends knew to try to fix the issue.

Now, I know this is gonna sound wierd, but what kind of keyboard do you have?

If it's one of the Microsoft keyboards with the extra buttons at the top (internet, sound controls, etc), the drivers for that keyboard may be the cause of your problem. Replace the drivers with generic ones, or swap the keyboard out entirely and see if that helps. I uninstalled the software for mine, and EQ ran like a charm after that.

It's kind of a longshot, but easy enough to troubleshoot/fix.

Oh, and get rid of WinMe. :-)

Iroxorsju
10-04-2005, 10:00 PM
Did this issue arrive after 1.7, or have you had it the whole time?? When 1.7 went live alot of people had graphics issues and had to revert back to old drivers for the lag to go away. Once i get home i can look up what driver to use to fix it if this is indeed the problem. I am at work now and I am unable to remeber off the top of my head what driver i had to revert back to.

Dr. Woo
10-06-2005, 07:41 AM
More RAM.
Get XP, for the love of God. Hell, get 3.1 or something...just GET RID OF Me.
Disable your antivirus when running WOW. Buy a cheap router and get rid of your software firewall.
Defragment HDD.
Regularly run Spyware removal tools.

Nytewalker
10-06-2005, 12:16 PM
Get XP, for the love of God. Hell, get 3.1 or something...just GET RID OF Me.


/agree I read someplace that ME had more lines of broken code than in there were in XP total. ME is widely regarded as the worst mistake by Microsoft EVER.

Nyte

Yrys
10-06-2005, 12:39 PM
I never understood the WinME bashing. Frankly, Win98 was much worse IMO. I used WinME for a few years and never noticed any undue bugginess.

Nytewalker
10-06-2005, 12:54 PM
You sir, are the first person I've ever heard say that. I'm not even joking. I've NEVER heard anyone say they didn't have a problem. I have never had more problems keeping a system running that when that came out. The worst thing is that the OS before and after are good solid builds. Almost everyone in a windows environment is either 2000 or XP. I just can't understand how that fell through the cracks.

Sorry to hi-jack again.

Nyte

Yrys
10-06-2005, 01:01 PM
2000/XP are better, sure, but ME is based on the 95/98 core, so it's a different sort of beast, like 95/98, only with more bugfixes (in my opinion).

I'd rather use ME than 95 or 98. I'd rather use 2000 or XP than ME. :P

Taithos
10-17-2005, 12:41 AM
ME isn't based on the 98 core, its a total rework and a bad one at that.

My guess its something to do with the I/O, like the mouse or keyboard, perhaps even their respective ports. Try unplugging them and using USB mouse and keyboard if they're using PS2 ports.

If you're using USB already, try using PS2, then totally reinstall the USB hub drivers.

Next, try removing your sound card (if its a PCI card) and if its internal, disable it in the BIOS or in WIndows if you can't do it in the BIOS. The sound card has been the culprit for more wierd (totally unexplainable and usually unrelated) issues than any other hardware device in my years of computing.

RAM upgrade would be nice of course, but with your configuration, you shouldn't need it though its a really nice to have the extra speed in load times. Keyboard delay on games is usually attributed to video, input or sound issues.

Yrys
10-17-2005, 12:59 AM
ME isn't based on the 98 core, its a total rework and a bad one at that.

Err... no? I beta-tested ME, it is based on the same code as 95/98. It was a stop-gap solution as Microsoft didn't feel Win2K was consumer-friendly enough to be marketed in place of 98.

It wasn't horribly good, but reports of its bugginess are exaggerated.

Besai
10-22-2005, 06:33 PM
Grenthor and Dr. Woo have good suggestions. Just because you have anti-virus/spyware/firewall software installed doesn't mean you can't get hammered by it. My SO is the computer guru type and I've been lucky enough to gleen knowledge from him. It's important to run the software periodically, we do it about once a week, and it will always find stuff. Not as much as the first time we ran it. That was hideous! And on a protected machine at that! Behind 2 firewalls...

Also make sure your HD is well maintained. Defrag it, clean it up, run check disc on it about once a month or so.

And really, the best way to check about the RAM is to check the Task Manager => Performance tab WHILE you are having the lag issues. Just alt+tab out of the game, ctrl+alt+del and bring up the task manager, which will take awhile if it's a RAM problem, and check. If you're running close to or at your max RAM, then there's the issue. Quickest/easiest way to determine that. Hate to say it, but I'd be surprised if it was something else.

Let us know how it turns out. :)