Lag?

[Lewtskie]

Past week+ yeah I've had odd packet drops and slingshots. I started to assume it was Comcast being Comcast or possibly another one of my lines or cables starting to fail (already have had two, lel) but if others might be getting it then maybe I can be a bit relieved.

There have been times that couple days before big patches people start to experience something. I'd say they probably do start tinkering in the server in preparation.

[Anty]

i also have big lag, for like 3 weeks now or so, and its not getting any better.
Never had that before. It gets unplayable. there are several threads about this by now and i didnt see any official answer to that problem.

I'm really getting mad at SE... we get answers to every request that is pure cosmetic like
" when do we get other pony music, or when do i get to dye my mooglehat" or whatnot.
But more and more people experiencing the lag. And yet nothing.

Whatever is going on, we still DO pay the monthly sub. Its not a F2P MMO.
I really expect more from SE. I'm already regretting my Heavensward prepurchase since... who knows if it will be fixed. I don't even wanna think about how bad the lag will be at launch on top of the current problems

[Anty]

Past week+ yeah I've had odd packet drops and slingshots. I started to assume it was Comcast being Comcast or possibly another one of my lines or cables starting to fail (already have had two, lel) but if others might be getting it then maybe I can be a bit relieved.

There have been times that couple days before big patches people start to experience something. I'd say they probably do start tinkering in the server in preparation.

i don't think its related to our providers (at least in most cases) since ive talked with ppl all from totally different countries/continents with the same problems.

[Lewtskie]

i don't think its related to our providers (at least in most cases) since ive talked with ppl all from totally different countries/continents with the same problems.

I'm always suspicious when it comes to Comcast, but yeah, I don't think it's them. I do hate having to wait and see, lol. The safe zone probably won't be until at least a week past HW proper launch.

[Raist]

It usually is an issue either at the exchange points to our ISP's routing partners or within the networks of those routing partners. You don't ride your ISP's network all the way to the XIV servers. One of the most common partners where we find issues is with Level3. One of the biggest top-tier peers in the market, so it's not uncommon to find they carry the larger percentage of our ISP's traffic.

The problem often boils down to our ISP's not arranging for enough upstream bandwidth to properly support all the higher bandwidth tiers they are selling us. Some are still running with the same number of ports at the same speeds they had in place 10+ years ago--but they have more than doubled the size of the bandwidth plans they sell to us. For instance, 40Gbits of upstream may have been just fine to support 4000+ subscribers in a region at 1.5-10Mbit bandwidth tiers 10-15 years ago---but now they've all been upgraded to 6-30Mbit plans, still going through the same 40Gbit exchange point. It is a recipe for disaster if they all consume content en masse--something we see often during major entertainment events like streaming a major sporting event and such...or when a bunch of new games are released/expanded within the same time frame (like when Destiny launched--a bunch of other stuff hit the wire around the same time, wreaking havoc all over the map).

Need to put the pressure on your ISP's Tier3 team to investigate the routes and correct the congestion problems they find--be that working something out with their routing partner, or switching you to someone else that has lower utilization along their routes. It CAN be done. My routing changes peers a couple times a month on average in an attempt to stay ahead of the congestion. I live in South Carolina and I consistently stay between 40-80ms response times for the most part (when it starts hitting around the 120ms mark, my route gets altered). This is done by my ISP, nothing to do with SE---I went to TWC Tier3 with the issues I was having and THEY resolved it...never went to SE to have them fix it, it was all on Time Warner.

There is a pretty simple way to test and demonstrate it. Use a VPN service--it bypasses certain shaping rules that can have a negative impact and/or can dramatically alter the route you take (in some cases, a tunnel may still hit the same congested routing segments--but you can chose a different location to tunnel to, thus avoiding the bad routing segments). Most all of them have a trial period--some even have an ongoing free plan that provides a small amount of data or time per day/week/month (like tunnelbear (500 a month) or CyberGhostVPN (3 hours free), etc.). If you can maintain more stable gameplay through one of their tunnels---it virtually proves there are issues along your route. And the beauty of it is that you can demonstrate the difference on demand.

[HaelseMikiro]

some of my PS4 friends have told me that the HW patch is already downloading since they had updates set to auto, and that's been causing lag for them today. So any console players with unusual lag that started TODAY should probably check if that's the reason