Awful ping + lag spikes

fatman29

Ever since I resubbed a week ago, I've had far worse than usual ping and pretty bad lag spikes. Whereas I am able to get 30ish ms in every other online game I play, I am stuck with 110 at lowest here. This was irritating enough before the other day when I started very frequently getting spikes of 999+,regardless of the time of day or what I'm doing in game. I checked other games again to make sure my network wasn't unstable, and they were still fine so it's definitely just ESO. What gives?

ZOS_Bill

@fatman29

A variety of factors could be leading to the lag spikes happening in game. To start troubleshooting you can follow the instructions in the link posted below.

What do I do if I have bad latency in game on PC/Mac?

Stevie6

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@fatman29

A variety of factors could be leading to the lag spikes happening in game. To start troubleshooting you can follow the instructions in the link posted below.

What do I do if I have bad latency in game on PC/Mac?

I really don’t want to say this is a canned response but the devs and moderators have to remember that some of us worked in networking and some people have actually done everything including having ISPs run tests on the lines only to get from them “everything is fine”. Connections to the Maryland area is ok 59 to 70 ms. However, after logging into the server people will get large ping spikes which is normal. What isn’t normal is every three to four seconds some players will get ping spikes of 300 to 4500 ms and back to 59ms.

Just once the devs/moderators should look at it from the player side of things and actually look at a few players and see how these ping spikes occur. I’ve noticed yesterday large ping spikes every three to four seconds for several hours while doing basic overland content.

Everything is done on my end. All drivers updated. Window services not necessary disabled. Network checks out, etc. These thread that popped up after the last updated on ping spikes really have been going on for about a year for some of us. Several players will say “we have no problems, it’s you”. I’ve watched my network yesterday while on ESO and at times when no packets are sending or receiving for several seconds huge ping spikes occur.

Maybe the devs should see if there are any connection issues with ISPs in the Maryland area. Could explain why there are huge ping spikes and ask them nicely to fix any hardware / software issues.

I would really like to see an actual ESO server in the Dallas TX area. It would help alleviate overcrowding on the current server using an outdated game engine.

Sorry for the long post / rant. I really don’t want to put blame on anybody. It was a fun game but this is getting old.

Stevie6

Just an update:

Engage Sharpfang World boss in Deshaan solo.. started out at 90 ms then it went to about 500 ms after a second and then up to 2565 ms and stayed there will in combat. It was slow, painfully slow. After boss fight back down to 500 ms and it's staying there. lol

now after a few seconds it's back down 60 ms...

fatman29

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@fatman29

A variety of factors could be leading to the lag spikes happening in game. To start troubleshooting you can follow the instructions in the link posted below.

What do I do if I have bad latency in game on PC/Mac?

Yea, that was completely useless.

Any players/people who will answer without just copy + pasting, if you've had this problem recently and have fixed it please let me know.

Bagatur

It started yesterday for me and several other players who responded to my question about increased ping. I found the ping increase in link between Level 3 communications server and Zenimax EU server. I haven't traced NA server, but I'm having same issues there too.
Just for comparison, I tested all the servers located in Frankfurt with Speedtest site and all of them gave me normal ping, 30-40 ms, so its definatelly not on my end. I tried other ISP, to ensure the line I use is out of the doubts too. Other ISP gave me same results - lag spikes and ping doubled at its lowest values.

Immortalmighty

Can't even play anymore. My usual ping on PC EU is 100 and now it is constant 250 and as soon as I start doing something it jumps to 500 and then to 999+. Definitely something is wrong on ZOS's server side because my ping is just fine everywhere else. It's just ESO that *** up and can't handle such a big amount of people playing at once. Because of CORONA people are home now and much more people are playing ESO now. Servers just can't handle such a load.

Tigertron

You are recommending to people to open ports on their firewall to combat latency issues that occured after your patch?

Aloha

Play RPG solo and wait for new world or next WoW Shadowlands

oxygen_thief

eu folks can you do tracert? i dont work in networking but it seems to me something bad is happening in germany. i have problems since last tuesday or monday

Tracing route to 195.122.154.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

8 27 ms 28 ms 27 ms 110.47.115.62.in-addr.arpa [62.115.47.110]
9 52 ms 54 ms 53 ms 118.134.155.213.in-addr.arpa [213.155.134.118]
10 52 ms 52 ms 52 ms 85.135.155.213.in-addr.arpa [213.155.135.85]
11 145 ms 145 ms 156 ms 80.150.168.161
12 162 ms 139 ms 121 ms 217.0.198.34
13 163 ms 141 ms 131 ms 195.122.154.1

Immortalmighty

Was playing since my previous comment and all was fine but just few minutes ago something went bad again. My ping is 500+ and as soon as I start doing something like moving around or casting skills then it jumps to 999+. Everything else on my pc works just fine and I have also just checked my download/upload speed, they are very high as usual. Something is wrong on PC EU server. Also I am getting error 108 when trying to log back because the game have just logged me out by itself.

Drako_Ei

I have been getting horrible lag spikes, the game is literally unplayable, i will have to tell my guilds that i cant dps for them, because my skills are not firing, they are getting stuck in animations, light attacks are not going off... several weeks ago, i could parse 95k+ just fine, everytime, now the game is literlaly unplayable, and infuriating.

2 months ago I purchased ESO+ for a year, but right now im so mad, i feel scammed, its been a week like this, and i cant even raise a ticket because /bug is greyed out.

Other games keep running just fine, its just eso whats giving me lag spikes, I tried turning off wifi, using ethernet, close all other programs, nothing works.

If these lag spikes are here to stay, i honestly would like a refund, i purchased a year of eso+ thinking i was going to get to enjoy it.

colossalvoids

Most bizarre thing is that after all the chatter with support and them getting you "advanced" tech team member it's same "do it, do that" mantra when you already done every thing and beyond, tracert / isp info clearly states that everything connected to their server ip's having issues and almost nothing significant before it.

DeiwoTwitch

Yday evening the game start lagin for me ping was around 200-800 tooday the same and almost non stop dc, speet test, computer checked all is fine, other game checked ping 25-50, Eso ~500, region EU

Starpulsechic

I’m on NA I had the same issue these last 2 days.

Skills not firing at all (example: doing ice rink in Mal and none of my skills worked all I could do was light attack, couldn’t bar swap, ended up just dying).

Lag causing a delay in processing skills which resulted in all skills simultaneously going off all at once at extreme speed.

BG/s, again delay in cast times. My biggest issue is skill bar swapping feels incredibly delayed/clunky. Yesterday I did a BG were half the game I did I couldn’t bar swap and was stuck healing on my back bar until I died and res’d and then I could bar swap again.

Each time I load into a new location my ping will momentarily sit at 600-999+ for about 15-20sec before dropping back down. I get ping spikes from being idle just in Grahtwood. I don’t dare try cyrodil.

I’ve played this game for 2 years and this is the worst I’ve experienced.

If you want me to provide more information please ask questions. It would be nice if I could at least do BGs considering cyrodil is unplayable.

Louriel

Ping on overland is 2-3 times higher than usual, in trial its just simply unplayable for tank with jumps above 999+... It's not issue with pc, it's not issue with my connection, it's not issue with my addons either, it's on your end Zos.

colossalvoids

They can't care less about issues on their end, better tell to unbound ports and check antivirus lmao

webbbie

For me this game is unplayable during most of the day, even though I have no issues in any other online games.
200-600 ping, people teleporting in Cyrodiil.

Will probably switch to other MMO if this doesnt change. That's sad, because its such a good game.

Deohjo

Receiving hireling mail is also difficult. Unusually slow.

It doesn't matter if you empty your email.

Prrasha

Game has been uplayable on PC/NA during primetime both yesterday and today.

Ping shows no long-latency pings, they're either reasonably fast (93-94% of the time), or just dropped on the floor (6-7% of the time). So the "999+" latency shown in-game is actually packets that aren't going anywhere.

Ping statistics for 198.20.198.110:
    Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 94, Lost = 6 (6% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 111ms, Maximum = 178ms, Average = 160ms

Ping statistics for 198.20.198.110:
    Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 93, Lost = 7 (7% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 103ms, Maximum = 180ms, Average = 160ms

Here are a few traceroutes showing the packet drops (and longer latencies) are happening out in California after the first hops named "San Jose"... it's either Akamai, or ZoS itself.

Tracing route to 198.20.198.110 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.2.1
  2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.0.0.1
  3     8 ms     7 ms    11 ms  cm-1-acr03.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net [96.120
.12.105]
  4     9 ms    23 ms     8 ms  ae-253-1215-rur101.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net
 [96.110.194.141]
  5    11 ms    11 ms    21 ms  ae-34-ar01.denver.co.denver.comcast.net [68.86.1
03.93]
  6    12 ms    14 ms    16 ms  be-33652-cr02.1601milehigh.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.92.121]
  7    19 ms    17 ms     9 ms  be-12176-pe02.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.83.94]
  8    14 ms    11 ms    12 ms  173.167.58.162
  9    43 ms    36 ms    35 ms  if-ae-52-2.tcore2.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [209.5
8.57.17]
 10    40 ms    36 ms    36 ms  if-ae-1-2.tcore1.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [63.243
.205.1]
 11    43 ms    53 ms    50 ms  63.243.205.62
 12    50 ms    47 ms    48 ms  po111.bs-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.
184.194]
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14    41 ms    43 ms    39 ms  ae120.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.
200.184.197]
 15   164 ms   169 ms   161 ms  a72-52-29-88.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.co
m [72.52.29.88]
 16     *      169 ms   165 ms  198.20.192.4
 17   166 ms   157 ms   179 ms  198.20.198.110

Trace complete.

Tracing route to 198.20.198.110 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.2.1
  2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.0.0.1
  3     9 ms     9 ms     8 ms  cm-1-acr03.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net [96.120
.12.105]
  4    15 ms     9 ms    10 ms  ae-253-1215-rur101.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net
 [96.110.194.141]
  5    18 ms    10 ms    10 ms  ae-34-ar01.denver.co.denver.comcast.net [68.86.1
03.93]
  6    19 ms    12 ms    10 ms  be-33652-cr02.1601milehigh.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.92.121]
  7    19 ms    11 ms    11 ms  be-12176-pe02.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.83.94]
  8    11 ms    11 ms    12 ms  173.167.58.162
  9    39 ms    36 ms    36 ms  if-ae-52-2.tcore2.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [209.5
8.57.17]
 10    37 ms    36 ms    40 ms  if-ae-1-2.tcore1.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [63.243
.205.1]
 11    47 ms    49 ms    47 ms  63.243.205.62
 12    54 ms    53 ms    49 ms  po111.bs-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.
184.194]
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14    46 ms    39 ms    37 ms  ae120.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.
200.184.197]
 15   162 ms   167 ms   164 ms  a72-52-29-88.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.co
m [72.52.29.88]
 16   168 ms     *      161 ms  198.20.192.4
 17   159 ms   162 ms     *     198.20.198.110
 18   139 ms   165 ms   164 ms  198.20.198.110

Trace complete.

Tracing route to 198.20.198.110 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.2.1
  2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.0.0.1
  3     8 ms     7 ms     7 ms  cm-1-acr03.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net [96.120
.12.105]
  4    24 ms     9 ms     9 ms  ae-253-1215-rur101.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net
 [96.110.194.141]
  5    19 ms    12 ms    15 ms  ae-34-ar01.denver.co.denver.comcast.net [68.86.1
03.93]
  6    13 ms    12 ms    12 ms  be-33652-cr02.1601milehigh.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.92.121]
  7    11 ms    10 ms    17 ms  be-12176-pe02.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.83.94]
  8    13 ms    10 ms    10 ms  173.167.58.162
  9    36 ms    44 ms    39 ms  if-ae-52-2.tcore2.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [209.5
8.57.17]
 10    37 ms    37 ms    35 ms  if-ae-1-2.tcore1.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [63.243
.205.1]
 11    41 ms    39 ms    40 ms  63.243.205.62
 12    43 ms    45 ms    49 ms  po111.bs-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.
184.194]
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14    48 ms    40 ms    46 ms  ae120.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.
200.184.197]
 15   163 ms     *      166 ms  a72-52-29-88.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.co
m [72.52.29.88]
 16   166 ms   155 ms   159 ms  198.20.192.4
 17     *      169 ms   154 ms  198.20.198.110

Trace complete.

Tracing route to 198.20.198.110 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.2.1
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  10.0.0.1
  3     8 ms     9 ms     8 ms  cm-1-acr03.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net [96.120
.12.105]
  4    15 ms    10 ms     9 ms  ae-253-1215-rur101.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net
 [96.110.194.141]
  5    11 ms    23 ms    10 ms  ae-34-ar01.denver.co.denver.comcast.net [68.86.1
03.93]
  6    12 ms    14 ms    12 ms  be-33652-cr02.1601milehigh.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.92.121]
  7    18 ms    11 ms    11 ms  be-12176-pe02.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.83.94]
  8    11 ms    10 ms    14 ms  173.167.58.162
  9    37 ms    36 ms    37 ms  if-ae-52-2.tcore2.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [209.5
8.57.17]
 10    36 ms    37 ms    37 ms  if-ae-1-2.tcore1.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [63.243
.205.1]
 11    38 ms    39 ms    39 ms  63.243.205.62
 12    41 ms    45 ms    46 ms  po111.bs-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.
184.194]
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14    39 ms    37 ms    39 ms  ae120.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.
200.184.197]
 15   152 ms   160 ms     *     a72-52-29-88.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.co
m [72.52.29.88]
 16   157 ms     *      162 ms  198.20.192.4
 17   158 ms   164 ms   163 ms  198.20.198.110

Trace complete.

Tracing route to 198.20.198.110 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.2.1
  2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.0.0.1
  3     9 ms     9 ms     8 ms  cm-1-acr03.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net [96.120
.12.105]
  4    15 ms     8 ms     8 ms  ae-253-1215-rur101.greeley.co.denver.comcast.net
 [96.110.194.141]
  5    24 ms    15 ms    14 ms  ae-34-ar01.denver.co.denver.comcast.net [68.86.1
03.93]
  6    11 ms    10 ms    10 ms  be-33652-cr02.1601milehigh.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.92.121]
  7    11 ms    10 ms    11 ms  be-12176-pe02.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.83.94]
  8    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  173.167.58.162
  9    35 ms    35 ms    36 ms  if-ae-52-2.tcore2.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [209.5
8.57.17]
 10    35 ms    35 ms    37 ms  if-ae-1-2.tcore1.sqn-san-jose.as6453.net [63.243
.205.1]
 11    47 ms    45 ms    56 ms  63.243.205.62
 12    39 ms    37 ms    36 ms  po111.bs-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.
184.194]
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14    54 ms    38 ms    35 ms  ae120.access-a.sech-sjc.netarch.akamai.com [209.
200.184.197]
 15     *      134 ms   157 ms  a72-52-29-88.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.co
m [72.52.29.88]
 16   165 ms   161 ms   159 ms  198.20.192.4
 17   161 ms   164 ms   161 ms  198.20.198.110

Trace complete.

Prrasha

...and 10 minutes after I post this, things are back to normal. (Although traceroute hop #13 is still * * *)

Hopefully they stay that way.

Ranavinor

I have the same problem. It all started with the last patch. Before the patch, ping was always in 90-140.But now its jump on 200-300-500-999. Its just unplayable. Аfter two weeks of talking with tech support, they are just silent. But the problem still remains unresolved.

HerrPulaRau

So... all the people above tested connectivity, did traceroutes, explained the situation perfectly. I did all of those also, and is clear is not an isolated issue on my end.

What I would like to add to what others posted, that maybe will help a bit:

- The problem seems to be time related. The game works perfectly EXCEPT from 20:00 to 01:00 (almost like clockwork, regardless of day, it made me think of a cron that kills the server resources for a while). I play from Romania, and it seems that is a general situation here (my romanian guild mates confirmed it happens to them also during same interval), our ISP is mainly RDS/Digi. I initially thought that it may be prime time related or a cron that runs then. What is interesting though is that none of the non-romanian guild members complain during that interval (works perfectly to them) and that is not consistent with my original theory of prime time.

- During the interval mentioned above the game is totally UNPLAYABLE. Massive lag spikes, constant disconnects.

- Another interesting fact is: We are 3 ppl playing in the same room (my wife, my son and myself). Yet we are not all hit by spikes or disconnects in the same time. This hints towards a package loss issue (and is consistent with some posts above that also mention package loss).

I tried everything I could think of. I switched 2 routers, I tried pings, traceroutes, did the port forwarding test (although I see no use for it but hey... desperate), I even got in a friendly fight with my ISP. I can mention that ESO is the only game we are having issues with (and we play a lot of games including other mmos like gw2, bdo, etc.). Everything I seen suggests that actually both ESO servers and client connections are fine (if ESO servers were down not only romanians would've been affected during the 20:00-01:00 interval unless you have something specific for central-east Europe - if that is the case I'm sure there is a solution for that - and if it was on client side I'm sure some of us would've noticed it). Instead I think a gateway from our region to ESO servers gets overflown by traffic during that interval (and if that's the case and the problem is identified I'm sure we can define some alternate routes... well... not we, this may be a complicated issue but still solvable).

The lag spikes and package loss may have been amplified during this period by the fact that most Europe (well... the whole world actually) ppl are forced to stay at home (with good reason but that's besides the point) and there may have been a huge traffic increase because... no beer .

What I ask of you guys, PLEASE work with us to identify and solve the problem. I have some tech experience and I'm sure I'm not the only one here. Lets make our stay at home a little better (my 5 year old has 3 weeks since he went outside last time, don't kill his pc playtime also, he loves ESO; all of us do). If there is a founding issue I'm sure there are ppl here that would help given the chance (myself included).

NickAmber

I support the previous speaker.
Similar problems with ping in 99% of players from Russia. Moreover, other projects work without compromising stability and connection speed.
I hope that the administration will take worthy measures.

HerrPulaRau

I see nothing on the dev tracker regarding this... can you pls. just set up a proxy somewhere for the affected players (yes, I know it will have to support huge traffic and is not that trivial but again... is doable)? I'm like 90% sure that would solve the issue. Or if I can have an official answer that is ok and won't get banned for it (no idea why I would but... seen my share of bad decisions) I can even setup one myself (for a limited number of players, don't have the resources to support a really high number).

I mean... I'm sure zos staff is also affected by current world situation and I'm not expecting miracles but at least some sort of acknowledgement of the issue. I want to help, just tell me how.

HerrPulaRau

I'm pretty sure that they are not ill-intended. They have a lot of things to do and not enough time to do it. That is a general situation in the industry. They need to prioritize some tasks over the others, and more times than not, the devs are not the persons that do that (and that is again normal, is not their expertise). Also is really counter productive for a dev to be stopped from a task and moved to another (I know, I am one). So... I do not agree that they do not care. Most devs I know love their projects (the projects are like our babies, we created them from nothing, we raised them to maturity). I do think the project managers are either not aware of the issue, they don't think is bad enough, or they think that fixing will hurt profit somehow more than leaving it there (work man-hours, infrastructure, even maybe a timebomb somewhere in code).

So... what we should do is bump this issue higher in the priority list. We can only do this by showing how many of us are affected and how bad. I'm sure there are thousands of people affected, yet I only see a couple of posts per day. 10 posts are "our" problem, 10000 posts are "their" problem. So... post, whoever is affected by this problem leave a replay; is the only way to show our pain . Well... that and auto-metrics but auto-metrics can lie in this case.

esterwind

HerrPulaRau wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that they are not ill-intended. They have a lot of things to do and not enough time to do it. That is a general situation in the industry. They need to prioritize some tasks over the others, and more times than not, the devs are not the persons that do that (and that is again normal, is not their expertise). Also is really counter productive for a dev to be stopped from a task and moved to another (I know, I am one). So... I do not agree that they do not care. Most devs I know love their projects (the projects are like our babies, we created them from nothing, we raised them to maturity). I do think the project managers are either not aware of the issue, they don't think is bad enough, or they think that fixing will hurt profit somehow more than leaving it there (work man-hours, infrastructure, even maybe a timebomb somewhere in code).

So... what we should do is bump this issue higher in the priority list. We can only do this by showing how many of us are affected and how bad. I'm sure there are thousands of people affected, yet I only see a couple of posts per day. 10 posts are "our" problem, 10000 posts are "their" problem. So... post, whoever is affected by this problem leave a replay; is the only way to show our pain . Well... that and auto-metrics but auto-metrics can lie in this case.

I totally agree with you and our voices should be heard. We need to unite our efforts and complaints here in order to raise awareness.

Maybe something will be done, or at least stated with an official comprehensive response for us to know what is the real situation we are facing with right now, and maybe even some things that we can do in order to help ourselves and maybe even others.

Pallio

Everyone in trails last night suffered from the ESO connection problem, bar swap or using skills takes extra time. At this point there should be an achievement for it, like completing vCR+1 with group avg. Ms of 200+..

Pallio

Luckily you can still RP with bad performance so the target market for ZOS is all good.

DarkIntention

Same . Massive ping spikes making it almost impossible to play and when i can play its not enjoyable ... They should have extra server capacity ready to enable . My small company, which isnt owned by one of the wealthiest companies in North America like ZoS is, has extra capacity for our servers we can quite literally bring on line in minutes to handle spikes in requests and users.

ive given up even trying to play..I'm also not renewing my subscription which i have had since launch until i see ZoS showing they even care about this issue. Giving canned copy/paste responses with canned questions that literally solve nothing to players concerns isnt caring to fix the issue..

its just lazy .

This isnt a small issue. this is literally affecting many in your playerbase's ability to play the game at all.

Aughard

Hi all,

Been having difficulties logging in since last night. Been trying different things as suggested, but I tried playing via a VPN. Guess what, working flawlessly. Tried it on two VPN's. Both let me log in and play for an hour. As soon as I killed the VPN and logged in again I'm back to pings of 999 or not even logging in. Looks like some of the UK Internet providers are maybe throttling.