High latency at akamai.com

Elsonso

Lelldorano wrote: »

So I just tried out mudfish VPN to see if it would make any difference. Went from a 300+ ping with horrible spikes to 220-250 and no spikes! This is connecting from NZ on spark fibre. You get some free credit when signing up so don't have to pay anything to try it.

The fact a VPN works like this proves that it isn't our fault, right ?

Where is your VPN coming out? Do you know? (trace route)

Lelldorano

lordrichter wrote: »

Lelldorano wrote: »

So I just tried out mudfish VPN to see if it would make any difference. Went from a 300+ ping with horrible spikes to 220-250 and no spikes! This is connecting from NZ on spark fibre. You get some free credit when signing up so don't have to pay anything to try it.

The fact a VPN works like this proves that it isn't our fault, right ?

Where is your VPN coming out? Do you know? (trace route)

Using a US west node (San Jose). So basically I connect straight to the states, then to ESO, bypassing all the dodgy international akamai servers.

Tracing route to 198.20.200.155 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.254.106.1
2 174 ms 174 ms 174 ms 10.254.254.1
3 174 ms 174 ms 174 ms 10.255.242.46
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 196 ms 207 ms 187 ms 45.32.142.65
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 176 ms 178 ms 177 ms xe-0-0-14-2.a00.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.207.197]
8 175 ms 175 ms 176 ms ae-8.r11.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net [165.254.191.154]
9 175 ms 175 ms 175 ms po110.bs-b.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.184.200]
10 175 ms 175 ms 175 ms po587-10.bs-a.sech-ams.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.1.201]
11 175 ms 175 ms 176 ms ae121.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.184.205]
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 214 ms 213 ms 213 ms 198.20.192.3
14 214 ms 213 ms 213 ms 198.20.200.155

Trace complete.

That reflects the ping I get in game when using the VPN.

Kiwi

8 137 ms 139 ms 141 ms akamai.prolexic.com [198.32.176.228]
9 137 ms 138 ms 140 ms po111.bs-b.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.184.202]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 138 ms 138 ms 138 ms ae121.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.184.205]
12 177 ms 192 ms 175 ms a72-52-29-88.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.29.88]

...

8 142 ms 139 ms 137 ms akamai.prolexic.com [198.32.176.228]
9 137 ms 139 ms 140 ms po111.bs-b.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.184.202]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 138 ms 140 ms 137 ms ae121.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.184.205]
12 177 ms 174 ms 175 ms a72-52-29-88.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.29.88]

hmm ok whats 10?
10 = po587-10.bs-a.sech-ams.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.1.201]

C:\WINDOWS\system32> ping 72.52.1.201

Pinging 72.52.1.201 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 72.52.1.201:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)

the game use to work fine, i spent some money and the very next day it refused to stay connected for more than a couple of minutes and has done so ever since
i have been playing other online games the whole time without any problems, gw2, poe, fo76 etc ZERO problems
its ONLY ESO servers, nothing else

Lelldorano

Just to compare here is a trace without the VPN.

Tracing route to 198.20.200.155 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms 125-239-247-1-adsl.sparkbb.co.nz [125.239.247.1]
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 10 ms 11 ms 10 ms ae8-10.akbr6.global-gateway.net.nz [122.56.116.5]
5 11 ms 10 ms 10 ms ae7-2.akbr7.global-gateway.net.nz [122.56.119.53]
6 32 ms 32 ms 32 ms xe5-0-3.sgbr3.global-gateway.net.nz [122.56.127.182]
7 36 ms 36 ms 35 ms ae7-10.sebr4.global-gateway.net.nz [122.56.127.214]
8 39 ms 38 ms 38 ms i-0-11-0-0.sydp01.bi.telstraglobal.net [202.84.220.210]
9 37 ms 38 ms 38 ms i-0-1-0-6.sydp-core03.bi.telstraglobal.net [202.84.220.209]
10 151 ms 151 ms 151 ms 202.84.138.45
11 151 ms 151 ms 151 ms 202.84.138.141
12 175 ms 175 ms 175 ms unknown.telstraglobal.net [202.127.78.186]
13 170 ms 170 ms 170 ms po110.bs-a.sech-hkg2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.2.176]
14 174 ms 174 ms 174 ms po561-10.bs-a.sech-ams.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.1.149]
15 175 ms 175 ms 175 ms ae120.access-a.sech-hkg2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.2.181]
16 224 ms 224 ms 241 ms 93.191.173.93
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

Once it hits the Netherlands Akamai server (93.191.173.93) ... bork.

Aquatorch

Has Akamai addressed this issue yet for anyone here?

MrGarlic

Aquatorch wrote: »

Has Akamai addressed this issue yet for anyone here?

Sadly, no.

SirAndy

Aquatorch wrote: »

Has Akamai addressed this issue yet for anyone here?

Akamai has clearly stated that they won't investigate unless that request comes from their customer, which in our case is ZOS.

So no ...

Elsonso

Lelldorano wrote: »

Tracing route to 198.20.200.155 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.254.106.1
2 174 ms 174 ms 174 ms 10.254.254.1
3 174 ms 174 ms 174 ms 10.255.242.46
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 196 ms 207 ms 187 ms 45.32.142.65
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 176 ms 178 ms 177 ms xe-0-0-14-2.a00.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.207.197]
8 175 ms 175 ms 176 ms ae-8.r11.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net [165.254.191.154]
9 175 ms 175 ms 175 ms po110.bs-b.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.184.200]
10 175 ms 175 ms 175 ms po587-10.bs-a.sech-ams.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.1.201]
11 175 ms 175 ms 176 ms ae121.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.184.205]
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 214 ms 213 ms 213 ms 198.20.192.3
14 214 ms 213 ms 213 ms 198.20.200.155

Trace complete.

I just wanted to caution that the ping times are not accurate in that stack trace. The route is accurate, but the times are not.


Edit: Also want to point out that your before and after traces indicate (to me) that Akamai is dealing with a lot of malicious traffic in Hong Kong and that your VPN, by bypassing that, avoids whatever is going on there. Basically, it is the internet equivalent of going around an accident on a highway.

Gelmir

Simply put folks, its about contracts ZOS made a contract with Scrubber service provider, potentially at least for a year. And paid loads of money for it. They would cancel/bin it only if the damages caused by this service outweighs the cost of the contract. So I'd say, nothing will be fixed within 12 months since this dDOS protection was implemented.

Alinhbo_Tyaka

Gelmir wrote: »

Simply put folks, its about contracts ZOS made a contract with Scrubber service provider, potentially at least for a year. And paid loads of money for it. They would cancel/bin it only if the damages caused by this service outweighs the cost of the contract. So I'd say, nothing will be fixed within 12 months since this dDOS protection was implemented.

Any contract should have some service level agreements as well and it is up to the contractor to meet or exceed these requirements. However it is also usual that the customer has to drive this process so unless ZOS takes the lead and pushes Akamai to fix their issues nothing will change.

chaz

Zenimax! Are we still doing this?

It was ok for 3 weeks then it went back to this ess aich eye tea!

Arunei

I'm not having any issues like this, seeing as I'm in the US, but man that whole thing about better communication from Gina sure is holding up, ain't it? The Undaunted Event has to come and go before any real comment is made about the borked LFG tool, massive issues in Cyrodiil go unacknowledged, numerous threads all over the forums completely ignored...yup, reeeeaaaal good on the communication there, ZOS. A+ for effort.

I'm not one to shame people for spending money how they want, but the sad thing is the people who blow obscene amounts of money in the CS are likely the people making ZOS the most money, so even if droves of people cancel ESO+ and stop buying the occasional Crown packs, it's likely not hurting their bottom line enough to force them into actually putting some of the revenue they're getting back into the game. And, by extension, not hurting them enough to bother with any sort of communication to people being impacted by issues. The sad truth is a majority of players don't even know these forums exist most likely, let alone use them, so even though is this an 8-page topic, it's also taken several months for it to reach that number. In ZOS' eyes that probably means such a tiny percent of players seem to be having a problem so there must be no problem, even if hundreds or even thousands of NZ/AU players are actually experiencing this problem.

EDIT: Not to say that I'm excusing ZOS for their lack of communication or saying any of this is okay or the fault of the players. My point is that ZOS clearly doesn't care since in their eyes it's probably not really an issue. It's frustrating for me personally to see these threads getting no response from anyone at ZOS (aside from the 'we removed comments for baiting please keep discussion civil' posts from mods), even if I'm not having the problems spoken about, because you'd think they'd want to keep the people essentially paying their checks happy.

chaz

OMG The level of my frustration right now is beyond borderline blood pressure. This weekend, with every newbie spank that came out of the closet for the pvp midyear absolutely ruined my gaming experience. I could not stay logged in for any moment beyond 2 minutes, the ping has been a constant 999+ in red.

getting booted, getting kicked, having screen frozen and im the only one moving, getting into a good battle, then BAMMMMMMMMMMM (999+) ping, can't bar swap, can't cast skills, can't dodge roll can't block, then............screen goes still and im the only one moving, then,,,,,,meet the log in screen!

Livid, absoltely just livid! I am so tired of this. Here it is midnight and I'm thinking ok it's my time, and usually everyone logs off, 1 bar ep, 1 bar dc, 2 bards ad. NOPE! All alliances have been poplocked all day and night 24 hours a day unrelentlessly!

UNRELENTLESSLY!

So now cyrodiil, especially in the vivec campaign has every newbie pve player wearing merchant purchased gear running in cyrodiil thinking they're getting something special. They're not. None of are. Dude, don't even sway that way with me, I stayed in cyrodiil all day and night and the next day I had my other toon unpack all those silly boxes and nothing good comes from them. Nothing, junk, garbage. What kind of event is this?

Just marketing ploys to get more people to play, which like year after year, when the event end, we never see these people again. I attend these things every year, except this is the first year I'm not enjoying myself. I'm not entertained by this game. In fact, I should see a doctor because it's causing serious health issues and high blood pressure.

I would not be surprised after they find my dead body in a few weeks, the head stone will read:

Here lies Chaz. Just some poor azzhat that
died of aneurysm in head while playing ESO.

16BC to 2019AD

Funny huh. Listen, one server is clearly not enough. By the time you people ""QUOTE"", realize this and place another server in the oceanic area , I , meaning my body, will long have been turned to bug food and dust, to which at that point my immortal soul won't give a crap anymore.

I can ask you to fix this all day until my windpipe cracks, but we all know that's not going to happen and I just have to wait until your event ends for everyone else to stop playing like they do every year, then I can go back to normal trying to get around this stupid akamai so I can at least play.

It's funny, I have lived all this time on an Island while playing this game perfectly without turns of tide. Then all of a sudden September 2018, where absolutely nothing on my end changed, where something started to go wrong. So tell me, if I have been where I have been, and been reaching your server on the mainland all these years with no trouble, and loved this game so much I poured thousands of dollars into it, how is it that you still believe it's my fault that your server doesn't work anymore for people OVERSEAS???

Korax

I'm tired of TRYING to play this game. This is the 4th month I can't play this game reliably. I can only get a character to load once every like 100 tries and then only for a little while. No thinks, but this is not an online game.

Maybe ZOS don't care because I'm just a dumb **** here in South Africa, but by the 1st February I'm uninstalling this steaming pile of **** for good. I've already lost my guilds, lost the plot of where I actually am quest-wize with all my alts. Enough time has passed since September not to really miss this game and its issues.

If Blizzard games work just fine without issues, I'm sorry to inform you, ZOS, its your junk servers/whatever... not my router, isp or country etc.

Suddwrath

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom still no response to this? Really? How can an issue like this go on for several months without any acknowledgement?

Ulfson

Hello,
First, I'm no expert on the network topology and I don't like the game lag. This is IMHO only.
But this is a hot post and it seems like the pings are misunderstood. Pings are a one time measurement of a special TCP message trip through the network. I have noticed that pings like speed tests can fly through the net and provide no indication that the net is slow. I am told that is because lost packets are a bigger concern and they happen due to arriving too late to be valid. You may have a wonderful ping and loosing 5 in 15 packets which makes your message rate go down and that means lag goes up. Messages may be selectively delayed due to network priorities set by unknown people .

Lag is caused by information not arriving in time.

Pings do not measure successful information rates. At best they may be a theoretical maximum.

I doubt this is a ZOS problem. It's like my complaining to Subaru that Chevron is selling me junk gas. Or me complaining my gas mileage is really low using Mityfine Gas. You may believe that ZOS should be able to buy their way out of this but that may not be true. It could be too expensive. Who do you think will get priority on the net, NFL or ZOS?

I enclosed my tracert from tonight when i was in Cyrodiil during the winter mayhem extravaganza and huge lag.



Happy Trails

Korax

So how is it then that its only ZOS' MMO that doesn't work?

Seri

Arunei wrote: »

The sad truth is a majority of players don't even know these forums exist most likely, let alone use them, so even though is this an 8-page topic, it's also taken several months for it to reach that number. In ZOS' eyes that probably means such a tiny percent of players seem to be having a problem so there must be no problem, even if hundreds or even thousands of NZ/AU players are actually experiencing this problem.

The sadder truth is that the Oceanic latency issue is a routing issue - as best I can tell _all_ of the ISPs (at least in Australia) are now being shunted up into Asia before heading over to the USA - so it's not a per user issue. If ZOS believes that it's a small percentage of Oceanic players having the problem, that's awfully short-sighted of them.

Ulfson wrote: »

First, I'm no expert on the network topology and I don't like the game lag. This is IMHO only.
But this is a hot post and it seems like the pings are misunderstood. Pings are a one time measurement of a special TCP message trip through the network. I have noticed that pings like speed tests can fly through the net and provide no indication that the net is slow. I am told that is because lost packets are a bigger concern and they happen due to arriving too late to be valid. You may have a wonderful ping and loosing 5 in 15 packets which makes your message rate go down and that means lag goes up. Messages may be selectively delayed due to network priorities set by unknown people .

Lag is caused by information not arriving in time.

Pings do not measure successful information rates. At best they may be a theoretical maximum.

I doubt this is a ZOS problem. It's like my complaining to Subaru that Chevron is selling me junk gas. Or me complaining my gas mileage is really low using Mityfine Gas. You may believe that ZOS should be able to buy their way out of this but that may not be true. It could be too expensive. Who do you think will get priority on the net, NFL or ZOS?

This is actually why the net neutrality laws in the USA are important - all traffic should be considered equal and ISPs should not prioritise NFL than ZOS because the NFL will pay them to do so.

Ultimately there's three sources of 'lag' in play here. What you mention is about the bandwidth/congestion of the links between you and the servers. This is where packet loss occurs along the path (and in-game you get the random 999+ spurts, regardless of your in-game location). Sometimes this is your ISP, sometimes it is further along outside the ISP's control.

A second cause is the servers not keeping up - this is often what you see in Cyrodiil when things are sluggish, etc.

In both cases, if your game falls behind by any given amount, you usually get booted to the login screen. This is more noticable in Cyro as more is going on.

The third cause of lag is the route - which is what majority of this and the other Oceanic/VPN thread are about - traffic is heading a lot further than it needs to go, and ultimately additional distance = additional time. In this instance it's Akamai that is causing ESO traffic from the Asia-Pacific region to go to the HK Akamai node. Akamai says that their direct customer (ie, ZOS) needs to bring it up with them. It's been pointed out elsewhere that apparently Akamai have an Australian DDOS scrubbing presence so who knows why that isn't being used. Alternately, Australian and NZ players could be routed to a USA based scrubber rather than up into Asia.

Defilted

Net Neutrality is nothing but government over reach in an attempt to control the content of internet sites. The Net neutrality law would be used just like the commerce clause to regulate things way beyond its mandate.

This was defeated in the congress of the USA and we(USA) are all better for it.

tsaescishoeshiner

Seri wrote: »

Ultimately there's three sources of 'lag' in play here. What you mention is about the bandwidth/congestion of the links between you and the servers. This is where packet loss occurs along the path (and in-game you get the random 999+ spurts, regardless of your in-game location). Sometimes this is your ISP, sometimes it is further along outside the ISP's control.

Is there any way to check whether this is the case? For three weeks, I've had a support ticket open over this issue (PC NA, in Northern California) and don't want to be blaming the nice support people at ZOS for what might be my ISP's (Comcast's) issue. Support told me to contact my ISP with the message:

10 --- 1/ 1 =100% 0/ 1 = 0% 209.200.184.194

But all Comcast support can do is send someone to check our internet box (which appears to be working fine). Running a trace to that IP address above results in "response timed out" for every Akamai hop. When my ESO connection is stalling, other internet connections work fine. Issue started out of nowhere 3 weeks ago, worked fine before.

Point is, is there a way to check whether this issue is on my ISP's side or ZoS'? Have other people successfully fixed this by using a VPN? Thanks

Korax

I think just reading this thread with multiple different responders from different parts of the globe kinda tells you where the problem resides... its not your ISP for sure.

A non-response from ZOS, is in-fact also a response.

chris211

lhttps://www.exitlag.com/

Elsonso

.

Korax wrote: »

I think just reading this thread with multiple different responders from different parts of the globe kinda tells you where the problem resides... its not your ISP for sure.

A non-response from ZOS, is in-fact also a response.

Well, ZOS is not responding because they have likely been told the reasons for the problem, and it is not something they can, or want, to share. Just to be clear, the reason for a lot of the people in this thread, not all of them.

Seri

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Ultimately there's three sources of 'lag' in play here. What you mention is about the bandwidth/congestion of the links between you and the servers. This is where packet loss occurs along the path (and in-game you get the random 999+ spurts, regardless of your in-game location). Sometimes this is your ISP, sometimes it is further along outside the ISP's control.

Is there any way to check whether this is the case? For three weeks, I've had a support ticket open over this issue (PC NA, in Northern California) and don't want to be blaming the nice support people at ZOS for what might be my ISP's (Comcast's) issue. Support told me to contact my ISP with the message:

10 --- 1/ 1 =100% 0/ 1 = 0% 209.200.184.194

But all Comcast support can do is send someone to check our internet box (which appears to be working fine). Running a trace to that IP address above results in "response timed out" for every Akamai hop. When my ESO connection is stalling, other internet connections work fine. Issue started out of nowhere 3 weeks ago, worked fine before.

Point is, is there a way to check whether this issue is on my ISP's side or ZoS'? Have other people successfully fixed this by using a VPN? Thanks

If you're seeing the lag only in ESO that tends to point it in that direction. Beyond that, all you can really do is set up a constant ping to various other points along the route and see where packet drops come in. A tool like PingPlotter would do - plug in the ESO server endpoint and it'll continually ping the entire path, giving an idea of where along the route issues come in.

That said, a single line item along a path showing 100% loss is also not unusual, or problematic. Various nodes drop or deprioritise ICMP ping responses (and it should be obvious that if a node is dropping 100% of pings but you can access everything after it, then it's not that node's fault). What you're aiming for is packet drops that start somewhere in the route and then continue for the rest of the route.

As for VPN, all you can really do is try it. It helps a lot for the Oceanic community because of bad routing. On the other hand, if the issues are closer to home, then the communication to the VPN will have the same problems.

Bazgrim

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_GaryA @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_BillE @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Just wanted to tell you guys I've been waiting 8 months to return to this game because of major ping issues related to akamai.

Every time I return it's the same problem.
Every few weeks I check the forums hoping for a response or that dev's have pinpointed the issue.

I'm sure there are many like me that don't respond to this thread.

Vapirko

Korax wrote: »

I think just reading this thread with multiple different responders from different parts of the globe kinda tells you where the problem resides... its not your ISP for sure.

A non-response from ZOS, is in-fact also a response.

They basically hinted on stream that they won't be fixing the issues. In the 30 or so seconds they spent talking about PvP performance they basically said the problems are too difficult to fix. They stumbled over some old topics like character loading and composite whatevers (which they already optimized previously for a decent FPS boost), but they didn't say anything new and certainly did not address any server lag. So yeah I think its obvious by now that the real problematic type of lag will just be around for the rest of this games life. Also what little fixes are coming MIGHT be in over the course of this year no guarantee.

Korax

So TL;DR: All downhill from here...

Elsonso

Vapirko wrote: »

Korax wrote: »

I think just reading this thread with multiple different responders from different parts of the globe kinda tells you where the problem resides... its not your ISP for sure.

A non-response from ZOS, is in-fact also a response.

They basically hinted on stream that they won't be fixing the issues. In the 30 or so seconds they spent talking about PvP performance they basically said the problems are too difficult to fix. They stumbled over some old topics like character loading and composite whatevers (which they already optimized previously for a decent FPS boost), but they didn't say anything new and certainly did not address any server lag. So yeah I think its obvious by now that the real problematic type of lag will just be around for the rest of this games life. Also what little fixes are coming MIGHT be in over the course of this year no guarantee.

While you could be right, the people on that stream were not the ones that can answer that sort of question. The stumbling that you saw was also due to being asked for an answer that they were not really qualified to give. I have seen this before, with various people from the creative and game play side. They know stuff is going on, but it is not what they do for a living. You need someone from programming, or a producer, to really answer that

On top of that, ZOS does not want to oversell anything they are working on.

Vapirko

lordrichter wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Korax wrote: »

I think just reading this thread with multiple different responders from different parts of the globe kinda tells you where the problem resides... its not your ISP for sure.

A non-response from ZOS, is in-fact also a response.

They basically hinted on stream that they won't be fixing the issues. In the 30 or so seconds they spent talking about PvP performance they basically said the problems are too difficult to fix. They stumbled over some old topics like character loading and composite whatevers (which they already optimized previously for a decent FPS boost), but they didn't say anything new and certainly did not address any server lag. So yeah I think its obvious by now that the real problematic type of lag will just be around for the rest of this games life. Also what little fixes are coming MIGHT be in over the course of this year no guarantee.

While you could be right, the people on that stream were not the ones that can answer that sort of question. The stumbling that you saw was also due to being asked for an answer that they were not really qualified to give. I have seen this before, with various people from the creative and game play side. They know stuff is going on, but it is not what they do for a living. You need someone from programming, or a producer, to really answer that

On top of that, ZOS does not want to oversell anything they are working on.

So, then, given the insane amount of ire concering the performance issues, would it really hurt to bring in someone who is qualified to answer a few questions? Unless of course they’re not doing anything. They definitely aren’t in a position to oversell, even if they told me that performance was going to be fixed I still wouldn’t believe it until I saw it.

Elsonso

Vapirko wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Vapirko wrote: »

Korax wrote: »

I think just reading this thread with multiple different responders from different parts of the globe kinda tells you where the problem resides... its not your ISP for sure.

A non-response from ZOS, is in-fact also a response.

They basically hinted on stream that they won't be fixing the issues. In the 30 or so seconds they spent talking about PvP performance they basically said the problems are too difficult to fix. They stumbled over some old topics like character loading and composite whatevers (which they already optimized previously for a decent FPS boost), but they didn't say anything new and certainly did not address any server lag. So yeah I think its obvious by now that the real problematic type of lag will just be around for the rest of this games life. Also what little fixes are coming MIGHT be in over the course of this year no guarantee.

While you could be right, the people on that stream were not the ones that can answer that sort of question. The stumbling that you saw was also due to being asked for an answer that they were not really qualified to give. I have seen this before, with various people from the creative and game play side. They know stuff is going on, but it is not what they do for a living. You need someone from programming, or a producer, to really answer that

On top of that, ZOS does not want to oversell anything they are working on.

So, then, given the insane amount of ire concering the performance issues, would it really hurt to bring in someone who is qualified to answer a few questions? Unless of course they’re not doing anything. They definitely aren’t in a position to oversell, even if they told me that performance was going to be fixed I still wouldn’t believe it until I saw it.

While this may be Issue #1 for you, they were there to talk about Season of the Dragon, and related game topics. I really didn't expect them to talk about game performance at all, and clearly it was outside of the areas where they had stuff to reveal.

The answer they gave goes back to the whole "onion" thing that they talked about a couple years ago, and since then, they have been walking that path. The answer, while not encouraging, is consistent.

I am with others in thinking that they are skirting around what they know to be the problem, but cannot or do not want to fix, in an attempt to make things better. Polishing the turd, if you want to go crude with it. Without knowing technical facts, it is hard to say more.

And, of course, none of this has anything to do with high latency at Akamai, which is an entirely other question, the answer for which is even further outside of that stream's area of expertise.