Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Lag stole my Illidan experience

Sunday night I saw Illidan die for the first time. Or rather: I almost did, because I dc:d when he had his little end rant. It was the end of a miserable fight from my perspective.

Now I probably sound like a grumpy old lady. Shouldn’t I be jumping with joy, killing the end boss of the original TBC? It wasn’t the guild first kill, (I missed it since it was my turn to sit out the raid), but it was my first encounter with him and he went down on second try, so what’s my problem? After all I could log in again and the loot was still there, even though I decided to save my dkp since the things I’d hoped for didn’t drop.

I’ll tell you about the problem. It has three letters. F, p and s. The whole fight is full of cool fiery effects of all kinds and my pc went nuts as it does on those occasions. It was like watching pictures one and one instead of seeing things actually moving. And moving is pretty necessary if you want to get rid of parasites and get away from fiery stuff.

Patch made it worse
My fps has never been very impressive, but I’ve been able to live with it. When it’s at it’s best, questing on my own in a lonely spot, it’s up to 60 fps. In Shattrath it drops to 25. And in 25 man raids it’s been about 20 during the fights, which isn’t good but acceptable.

After the latest patch however, things have gone from so-and-so to really bad. It doesn’t help that I’ve turned the video settings to a minimum, saying goodbye to all the new cool stuff like beautiful shadows. I still lag horribly, in spite of the fact that my PC by far exceeds the required standard.

I’ve lost track of all the hours I’ve spent googling, searching forums, looking for a clue what to do. It seems that there may be an issue with my “dual core processor”. But I can’t say I get any information that will clearly tell me what to do about it. One thing is clear to me: if I don’t get any improvement I won’t be able to raid in WotLK. And the very thought of it breaks my heart.

I’m not alone
The only comfort I get out of all of this research is that I’m far from alone in my misery. Did you know that all over the world there are thousands of other players, sitting with pretty new, good computers, still not being able to play the game the way it’s supposed to be played? If you have a machine that works properly you’re probably not aware of it. But all of you out there who are in the same situation as I am know what I’m talking about. If you happen to read my blog, I send you my biggest warming hug and my best buffs whatsoever. I know how you’re feeling (it's just like having a bad toothache or like when your car has broken down, if anyone's wondering). I know about your frustrations. I can’t help you but you’ve got my full sympathy.

So what am I going to do for my own part? I really want to get Illidan killed again, being able to enjoy it. So I’ve decided to turn over the computer to a computer service and reparations company, hoping that they’ll find a solution. It could be as easy as upgrading some drive routines, changing graphic card or simply cleaning the whole thing (never done). I know turning in the pc is always a huge risk. It could end up in a complete wipe. From previous experiences I don’t fully trust technicians. But as things are now I can’t see any alternative.

Keep your fingers crossed it will work out. To me being able to raid in a fluid manner would beat any kind of epic gear upgrade or achievement in the game you could think of.

9 comments:

David said...

That sucks to hear about your Ili-lag. It's like watching the climax of a great movie only for the projector to cut out suddenly. Sure, they start it again and the whole thing plays out, but the experience is lessened overall.

Post-patch for me, flying through the city gets super choppy (it could be the tons of zombies though). I used to hear people comment they can't do business in Shat because of the lag issues and I thought 'What lag? I'm fine'. But now with this patch I'm tasting the bitter taste of lag and fps issues.

When I went to get the Jenkins title, the 50+ whelps almost crashed my computer it got so bad. Hopefully some optimizations before or around release of WOTLK will help smooth things out. Until then my graphics sliders are staying down.

Anonymous said...

Alas, you are not alone for sure.

I have been having lag issues since the patch which i read is down to my graphix card :-(

Hope they fix it tommorow woth a hotfix or something.

Funeral said...

I too have noticed a significant decrease in performance since the patch. Previously I was running at around 115fps in Shat, now I'm down to around 50fps. While by no means is it hindering my gameplay, it's still an annoying change.

The biggest problem has been lag on the server side, but it's strange that it seems to be graphical lag, not actual latency issues.

Anonymous said...

for me it's not just lag after patch. my wow is unstable. crashed every now and then. wiped out my addon configs. i think i spend more time config my addons and settings than playing.

Unknown said...

Hmmm.... yeah on my other PC I used to have 60fps now down to 30fps or even 25 sometimes.

I also get DCed specifically the first few minutes I log on for the day say in the evening that's almost 100% guarantee.

Gevlon said...

Same thing here, had to decrease graphics settings on a nearly-high-end machine and my girlfriend had to quickly buy a new CPU.

I think they will either patch it, or we have to accept that max setting are for really-high-end machines and for raiding you have to turn settings down.

BTW if the FPS suddenly drops, machine restart helps. So before raids I use to restart and during raids when others do the corpserun to res, I also restart. Keeps machine stable.

Of course the machine need to be checked for viruses. Unused and useless background processes like web browser, download, office assistant must be killed.

Anonymous said...

Patch was bad on my experience too.. it could have been contributed to all the people doing acheivements and the information that is now fed back and recorded.. add to that my 1st couple of zombie experiences where a black screen -
When I first used Quartz as a cast bar and I 'felt' how smooth casting was I was over the moon - and in the days where I've been lucky enough to be Yellow lag its a complete difference feel.. and when your lagged so bad that you have bashed through your spell rotation and your still casting spell 1 and then only to be told 'not ready yet' you get rather frustrated. Hyjal add waves for the 1st two bosses used to stuff up my Pc every now and then.. esp when all the mages did their AOE.. yet i would watch while the tanks would DC in the next two bosses waves and I was fine..

Anonymous said...

Thank you everyone for your stories. It's somehow comforting knowing that you're not the only one. Even though it doesen't help me killing Illidan in an enjoyable way.

I really really hope the planned service will help. Else... I'll turn into a very very unhappy little gnome.

Anonymous said...

I had been having pretty annoying fps issues for months and ended up using that plus the incoming expansion with its lack of support for non-Intel Macs as my excuse to buy a new computer. I have certainly raid healed in Mount Hyjal at 2 fps, but I would prefer to never do so again, which made it worthwhile.

Good luck!!