An Angry Rant About Server Lag and Blizzard’s Lack of Communication

Let’s put it straight: I’m starting to go low on my mental mana. There’s a curse put on me, a dot that slowly is draining me on whatever energy I have, sucking the fun out of my WoW playing. It’s spelled l-a-g.

I’m not talking about the “normal” kind of lag, that all players every once in a while will encounter, which basically is caused by faults in our own computer. We all know that if a 25 man raid suddenly decides to aoe a crapload of trash mobs, you can expect the fps to go down in the drain, turning the game into a still picture show. And there’s a lot we can do about it, such as turning down our graphics, refraining from the use of addons or simply by investing in a better machine to play on. I’ve been there and I’ve done that.

No, the kind of lag I’m talking about is beyond any description, and it has affected the server I’m playing on (Stormrage, EU) for several weeks by now. Since the patch last week though, it has gone from bad to catastrophic.

Complete malfunction
To be fair, I don’t think “lag” is an appropriate word for the phenomena; it’s rather a matter of complete malfunction of the game. However it only appears at prime raiding time, between 7 pm and 9 pm, after which it slowly decreases to disappear around 10 pm. It doesn’t show on the ms meter. Judging from that, everything is business as usual. But looking at the consequences of it, the ms number should be six-digit.

The lag feast starts already as we’re logging in. The log in screen is somewhat pretty, but I assure that after studying the “tips of the day” for five or even ten minutes, and you know the raid is supposed to start soon, it starts to become rather annoying.

And then it goes on in the same manner. We all know that interacting with vendors can be a bit of a pain in Lagaran, but now this slowness has spread to Ironforge. If you’re one of the poor souls dwelling at my server, you can expect the NPCs to ponder at minimum of 30 seconds before deciding whether to buy your trash or sell you some reagents.

Maybe you want to check what’s in your mail box next? Well, count on waiting for a minute before you can even see what’s in your box. And good luck if you want to loot them for your latest AH bargains. Won’t happen.

Would you like to make some potions or buff food before your raid? Forget it. You’ll probably smash your pc out of pure frustration before you’ve even made one stack.

In the old days world lag used to be a lesser issue once you entered the raid instance. But this has changed. The Gunship battle, that used to be amusing, with the fancy, silly rocket jumping, is insanely boring when every spell cast takes you at least five seconds and your feet are like glued to the ground. We spent at least half an hour just getting thorough it last raid, after wiping the first time, because of the complete randomness that the delay will cause. It definitely didn’t work as intended.

And while I normally love progression raids, wiping on new bosses, learning the encounter, this has become a pain. Every wipe results in that we have to zone in, and therefore once again getting stuck on the loading screen for several minutes. Sure, you can try to avoid it as much as possible, dying near the entrance and ressing people on the spot. But should this really be necessary?

To this you should of course add the "additional instances can't be launched" issue, which forces our officers to come online at least an hour before we're supposed to start so they can start trying to get us an instance - it will take them a while. It's not the same issue as the server lag, but you bet it's annoying.

Spamming “report lag”
I guess you can hear from my voice that I’m pissed. I really am. And of course I’m spamming the “report lag” button all night long, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. At least they shouldn’t be able to say that we never told them about our misery!

So far it hasn’t resulted in any change. One time I took some time to write a more detailed report, explaining all the problems, including the slow loading screen, which isn’t any option in the “report lag button” feature. But the only answer I got was a standard letter, which suggested me to use the “report lag” button instead and that I should to go to their forums and check out their suggestions how to improve your system performance.

And I tell you my friends, that the pieces of advice you’ll find there are an insult when you’ve been suffering from server lag so badly and for such a long time as we have now.

“Remove your Interface, WTF and Cache folders”. Yada yada yada. It’s about as relevant as to tell the passengers who are waiting for a delayed airplane to polish their shoes or cut their toe nails.

What Blizzard should do
I have no idea what’s causing the server lag. The most common theory I’ve heard is that Stormrage was one of the first European servers and that the hardware is getting old and needs to be upgraded. I’ve seen suggestions also that the bracelet creation boxes of the Valentine event somehow have added more strain on the system. But honestly, we’ve had our prime-time lag for much longer than this event, so I don’t buy that explanation.

Hopefully Blizzard has an idea about what’s going on. I still carry a vague hope that things will improve over time. If not, I’m afraid they’ll lose customers. The game is barely playable at peak times as it is now. And even though players may put up with that for a short period, like immediately after the launch of an expansion, they won’t accept it in the long run. They’ll look for some game that actually works. And now we’re not just talking about a handful of annoyed players with old, sucky computers – we’re talking about a whole server population – or possibly several, since it seems as if it’s affecting the entire battle group. Successful businessmen don’t neglect their customers.

However: I really think that Blizzard should reconsider how they communicate about this kind of problems with the players. They’ve admitted that there are some problems in a post at the EU forums. “We’re aware of that there are some realms where players are experiencing high latency issues”. But that’s far from enough in my opinion. It wouldn’t cost them much effort to provide a server specific message as you were logging in, telling about the state of your current realm. They could list the problems that are reported – the looting, loading screens and slow spell casting. They could also tell us that they’re working on it and an expected time frame, either for when the problem will be solved or – if they can’t tell – when they will update this information.

They should do exactly what professional transport companies do when there are delays in the traffic. You admit it, you inform about the nature of the problem, what has caused it and when you expect it to be fixed. And if you don’t know when it will be fixed, you will set a time for the next update of information.

You see: most players are rather patient, either we’re wearing the title or not. We can accept a ton of annoyances and things not working as intended. After all an MMO is a rather complicated thing to run. A ton of things might go wrong. We understand it and we accept it. But we want something in return: communication! Confirm to us that there is a problem going on. Inform us about what you’re doing to solve it and when we can expect a change. That’s all it takes to keep us calm.

It’s strange that they haven’t figured that out by now. Damage reduction. The most basic of PR activites. Ever heard of it?

Doh.

When I’m logging in for the raid tonight, there has been another server maintenance taking place. Maybe they figured it out this time. Maybe.

I’m really running out of mana. My pigtails are turning pale and lifeless. And the lag dot keeps ticking.

Puh. I think I'm done. This was quite a rant. But if you for some reason haven't had enough and want more angry testimonies about the current state of the game from a lag perspective, you can go to Screaming Monkey, Bio Brake and Slashgab.