ZOS, Massive Spike in Ping/LAG in Recent Days - What Gives?

Seravi · May 27

Couldn't do any writs this morning for lag. Hit E wait 5-10 seconds then hit R, wait 5-10 seconds. Rinse repeat... I have a 3 ms ping to the server. I don't have issues with anything other than this game. I can see the problem is not with me or my route. What happens to my connection after it hits the server, well I have no idea because I would love to know how my 3ms turns into 999+ once I get logged in.

Something is being done to the server causing the bottle neck/lag. Are they using some type of ddos protection that spams the server lagging it out or is the new hardware going paws up?

My ping report during my 999+ latency in the game:

Pinging 198.20.200.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 198.20.200.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=246
Reply from 198.20.200.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=246
Reply from 198.20.200.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=246
Reply from 198.20.200.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=246

Ping statistics for 198.20.200.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 3ms, Maximum = 3ms, Average = 3ms

I've seen no packet loos on -t either during lag times on the server. I did notice since the maintenance I no longer go through Akami. Before I had 2-3 hops before the server.

My tracert during the 999+ latency in the game:

Tracing route to 198.20.200.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms
2 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms
3 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms
4 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms
5 5 ms 7 ms 7 ms 12.243.129.206
6 4 ms 3 ms 2 ms 12.123.18.97
7 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 12.250.251.14
8 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 198.20.200.1

Herschel77 · May 27

Still lagging real bad. Got several lag spikes while in a Dungeon, and before the group could get to the final boss, I got booted and took several minutes to get back online, login queues. @ZoS what gives? Have you figured out what is causing it? Is there a fix in the works.

Transparency would be really nice.

SaffronCitrusflower · May 27

Today is the worst it's been for me in years. We still ran our PvP raid, but it was a slideshow with most players disconnecting at least a few times.

This level of performance is unacceptable for an alleged triple A franchise. No other game performs this poorly this consistently.

thinkaboutit · May 27

Your
Servers
Are
Lagging
What
Are
You
Doing
About
It
@ZOS_GinaBruno ? @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_Adrikoth @ZOS_KaiSchober ????

furiouslog · May 27

PC-NA, kicked out twice and then login queues (about 7 minutes to start, then moves down more quickly).

RicAlmighty · May 27

[Removed]

barney2525 · May 27

did they do maintenance and take the holiday off?

thinkaboutit · May 27

barney2525 wrote: »

did they do maintenance and take the holiday off?

sure looks like it

Just_Attivi · May 27

approx 12:20pm EST, PC NA Grayhost, ping repeatedly jumping to 999+, pretty much making it impossible to achieve much at all.... very little point in playing lol.

#WhatGamesComeOutNextMonth?

Just_Attivi · May 27

Legit spent more time getting desync'd and moving backward despite holding forward than actually fighting. this is... honestly sad performance. like genuinely, is it april fools? because I sure feel like it must be.

doabhi · May 27

the lag is pretty bad. Now I normally see a little bit of lag, my ping being 170+ is 'normal' for me being overseas from PC-NA, but this last week or two and especially right now it's absolutely insane. Even my usual trick of accessing the game via London over a VPN service that usually makes things way smoother for me and reigns my ping and jitter in to acceptable ranges isn't helping.

It's as if someone is unplugging the Ethernet on the server for a couple of seconds every 10-20 seconds, everything just stops dead and ZOOMS back in to action a few seconds later.

Zos this is really bad, if it wasn't another software goof after the last patch, this almost feels like a bad network interface issue. (again)
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin this needs to be looked in to asap. somethings broken and the games borderline unplayable.

sshogrin · May 27

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, sorry about the slow response. We've seen your comments and have been investigating what's happening here. After yesterday's maintenance, we made a change that we believe should have helped, but given some of the comments this morning, the situation still persists for some of you.

We're continuing to take feedback, so if there is anything specific you've noticed, let us know in the thread. Anything is helpful, like is it specific to a megaserver? Does the situation changes if you fully shut down and reboot? Is it specific to an area or specific content? We'll take your specific issues to our team to further investigate.

I don't think it's specific to "one thing or another", it's all over the place, trials, arenas, IA, Cyro, NA, EU....it's bad lagging and disconnects everywhere. Doesn't matter if you quit game, reboot machine, do repairs, etc.
Sometimes just moving without being in battle you'll get booted. Frozen screen, then you have to force quit or wait until your servers realize we've been disconnected. I have noticed that it seems to be more problematic when fighting and there's lots of ability stuff on screen.

doabhi · May 27

Photosniper89 wrote: »

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

Over 2 weeks now without any word from ZoS.

Some "striving to communicate more".

thinkaboutit wrote: »

Kainarel wrote: »

Something definitely happened with a massive kick of a good portion of players with a login queue afterwards.

Judging by the last post here, seems like the same issue kicked NA players as well as us from EU.

That certainly requires some investigation to see what happened and why.

0 Investigation has been done so far, 0 acknowledgement from ZOS and 0 improvement since the issue has started

All we can do is keep this thread alive and keep positing our experience here. Unfortunately, I don't expect anything from ZOS. I'm positive they are aware but as it relates to PvP they tend to be tight lipped. I'm making the assumption there is/was some internal decision to not comment on performance issues as it relates to PvP.

That's the only logical reason a company of this side would miss the mark so badly on communication. @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_RichLambert @Zos_LiterallyAnyonePleaseSaySomething

@Just_Attivi @Kainarel No, it's happening in PVE too and it's pretty jarring.

ArchangelIsraphel · May 27

Some crazy ping spikes today on PC/NA

ping spiking to 999+ at random intervals (I'm usually 80-90 or lower) rubber banding all over the place while doing simple tasks out of combat in normal overland.

Just DC'ed and am stuck in a log-in queue that counts UP instead of down.

Normally I just calmly go and do something else when issues like this crop up, but I haven't been able to consistently play this game in the way I'd like to since May 7th when all of this began, and nothing I've done to troubleshoot has helped. No PVP, no endgame PVE, neither myself or my friends are able to depend on the game remaining stable.

I'm even running on yet another clean install (I had just reinstalled 2 days before the 7th, and I did so again several days ago just to be sure.)

Admittedly today is the worst it's been in a while, but after nearly a months worth of issues, this is getting pretty tiresome. At this point I'm quite convinced myself, my ISP, and my rig are not the problem.

Tsuriel · May 27

Disconnecting/lag problems during prime-time in Cyrodiil is nothing new but it's been happening more and more frequently lately, thought I'd swing by and mention that. Had to restart my whole internet to get things up and going again in-game, including getting back in that 1 hour pvp queue

Seravi · May 27

Yeah I am in Blackwood trying to quest. Just got kicked twice and lost all quest progression. Seems dungeons and quests that take you to other lands like The Deadlands from Blackwood are super buggy for me today. Kicked then log into a waiting que. Time to call it a day I guess. This is useless doing the same thing over and over and still losing progression because of the kicks.

davidtk · May 27

Ping spikes, lags, frozen screens, disconnects, kicks, unexpected long queues.
It happening on EU and NA, PvP and PvE trials, arenas, dungeons, IA, overland.
Something is really bad with servers or on some connection to servers.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_KaiSchober

Sepultura_13 · May 27

I play on PC/NA exclusively, one account only. Got stuck in a queue when switching between toons to get hireling mail. Tried to play a ToT overland match against an NPC. Won the game, but you wouldn't know it because the game froze after the final hand flipped, then I got the stupid error message. Funny to see that after I had LOST three games in a row. I won a game but got booted, so that counts as a loss, effectively. Very strange lag spikes and DCs occurring over the past few days.

thinkaboutit · May 27

Still happening.

gman04 · May 27

Same on Xbox NA

vsrs_au · May 27

I hope they find (and implement) a fix for this before Gold Road releases.

Jaraal · May 27

vsrs_au wrote: »

I hope they find (and implement) a fix for this before Gold Road releases.

What if it's worse, with all the millions of new scribing variations the server has to keep track of? Not to mention having over twice as many mails with people having to relist and retrieve gold/unsold items far more often? And let's not forget all the new skill styling variations that have to be computed, instead of just the default one.

Going to be quite interesting, to say the least!

Anifaas · May 27

It's really bad as I type this. PC-NA Multiple groups from the random dungeon finder keep dropping due to frequent latency spikes or from frustration with dealing with latency spikes.

eveboufa · May 28

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, sorry about the slow response. We've seen your comments and have been investigating what's happening here. After yesterday's maintenance, we made a change that we believe should have helped, but given some of the comments this morning, the situation still persists for some of you.

We're continuing to take feedback, so if there is anything specific you've noticed, let us know in the thread. Anything is helpful, like is it specific to a megaserver? Does the situation changes if you fully shut down and reboot? Is it specific to an area or specific content? We'll take your specific issues to our team to further investigate.

Kevin,

Not sure if any of this is helpful but, its definitely occuring on PC-NA still as of May 27th, in at least dungeons and Cyrodiil -- I actually never experience lag really in pvp but the "feel" of this lag is the same. It's sporadic, it's like there is a time stop and then everything speeds up and rubber bands. It's happened in base dungeons and DLC (vet and normal), gray host and blackreach campaigns. Our whole group doing vet cauldron is experienced the lag as a team at the same time, not invidually. The latency goes up to 999+ and comes back down to something reasonable anywhere from 90-110.

-eck

Queen_Rhaenys · May 28

Having the same issues on xbox NA. Get massive lag spikes that happen randomly.

ArchangelIsraphel · May 28

eveboufa wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, sorry about the slow response. We've seen your comments and have been investigating what's happening here. After yesterday's maintenance, we made a change that we believe should have helped, but given some of the comments this morning, the situation still persists for some of you.

We're continuing to take feedback, so if there is anything specific you've noticed, let us know in the thread. Anything is helpful, like is it specific to a megaserver? Does the situation changes if you fully shut down and reboot? Is it specific to an area or specific content? We'll take your specific issues to our team to further investigate.

Kevin,

Not sure if any of this is helpful but, its definitely occuring on PC-NA still as of May 28th, in at least dungeons and Cyrodiil -- I actually never experience lag really in pvp but the "feel" of this lag is the same. It's sporadic, it's like there is a time stop and then everything speeds up and rubber bands. It's happened in base dungeons and DLC (vet and normal), gray host and blackreach campaigns. Our whole group doing vet cauldron is experienced the lag as a team at the same time, not invidually. The latency goes up to 999+ and comes back down to something reasonable anywhere from 90-110.

-eck

This exact thing is going on in the overland too. It's everywhere.

Sluggy · May 28

Paske wrote: »

Welp - every time I come back to ESO the game has server issues ...

Ironic considering they havre replaced ( 9 years ) old servers recently.

By recently you mean: two years ago...

blktauna · May 28

I swear its like Lag Swict gone wild out there. Suddenely everything pauses then its a billion skills going off at once and everyone rubberbanding all over the place. I'm paying for this why?

(ed: and I don't mean the cheat thing because I don't)

Kainarel · May 28

Still happening with lag, being kicked out, placed in queue etc, both pvp and pve on PC EU. There are long loading screens and random loss of lobby connection as well.
Quests keep glitching lately with items or NPCs missing in the places where they are supposed to be for proceeding with the quest -- requires logging out and back in to fix, and sometimes even that doesn't fix it and you have to start over.

Very frustrating. We really need to hear from any of the ZOS team, @ZOS_Kevin , please help us.

Sakiri · May 28

It's like something got borked when you guys fixed the NA/PTS thing, because that's about when the complaints started.