Is ZOS downgrading PvP servers after MYM?

Pelican

Every time a MYM event ends and PvP populations return to usual levels, the servers get even laggier than during the event. As I am typing this, its 9am Eastern and Gray Host on PC NA is almost unplayable even with less than 3 bar pop. I've had less lag during MYM when every alliance is pop locked with queues going into the hundreds. Everyone I've spoken to experienced the same issue.

Only reason I can think of is ZOS downgraded pvp servers after MYM since there's less people now, which is logical but if that's the case, can you guys at least make the lag bearable enough for meaningful gameplay? Every ability is taking a whole second longer to go off.

Rake

yes

SolidusPrime

I haven't PvP'd in over a year now. It sucks and I miss it.

Danikat

Does PvP even have separate servers? I thought everything in the game was run off the same server clusters, and the only separation is by region and platform.

Kadoin

You know performance tanks hard after the event every time...

caperb

Danikat wrote: »

Does PvP even have separate servers? I thought everything in the game was run off the same server clusters, and the only separation is by region and platform.

It is the same server but that server is divided in compartiments/instances. For the midyear mayhem they allocated extra server space to the PvP part. In January we had the same thing happening, worse lag after the event ended.

technohic

I don't know. It felt like even after MYM it hasn't been too terrible when ball groups are not farming and you can visibly see your ping go up as soon as they are active anywhere on the map. Last night, there were 3 EP ball groups alone just that I saw and not sure if there was VE or anything on AD side as the map was pretty much pushed and unplayable.

So I have been more and more inclined to blame ball groups more than population; but I would be surprised they would be running already this morning. Some major try harding maybe with day capping?

Elsonso

Pelican wrote: »

Every time a MYM event ends and PvP populations return to usual levels, the servers get even laggier than during the event. As I am typing this, its 9am Eastern and Gray Host on PC NA is almost unplayable even with less than 3 bar pop. I've had less lag during MYM when every alliance is pop locked with queues going into the hundreds. Everyone I've spoken to experienced the same issue.

Only reason I can think of is ZOS downgraded pvp servers after MYM since there's less people now, which is logical but if that's the case, can you guys at least make the lag bearable enough for meaningful gameplay? Every ability is taking a whole second longer to go off.

Probably not, at least in the way that you are thinking about "server".

technohic

Danikat wrote: »

Does PvP even have separate servers? I thought everything in the game was run off the same server clusters, and the only separation is by region and platform.

Im assuming there are clusters of blades for different instances and zones. Craglorn has loading screen flashes and hitches similar to Cyrodiil as an example. Not so much in other zones.

Donny_Vito

One server, various partitions. Most likely they created room for new campaigns and then re-allocated the space back after event ended. Just a guess, nobody actually knows what is going on there that can speak on the forums (professional guesstimates is all we got).

TineaCruris

The evidence we have to work with suggests that yes, they do allocate more server space for events then take it away after the event. This explains the maintenance just before and just after the MYM event, and the performance improvement that lasted only the duration of the event.

This shows us that performance IS improved notably by simply purchasing enough server capacity to support PvP.

Elsonso

Donny_Vito wrote: »

One server, various partitions. Most likely they created room for new campaigns and then re-allocated the space back after event ended. Just a guess, nobody actually knows what is going on there that can speak on the forums (professional guesstimates is all we got).

Right. They do make statements and comments, from time to time, that add to, or confirm, the "professional guesstimates" that are possible.

I think we can infer and assume enough about the megaserver from these statements to rule out "downgrading" the campaign server hardware. It is more likely that they used a lower player cap, or other special settings, for MWM, which had the resulting long queues to get in, but better performance. After MWM, they probably restored all the settings, meaning worse performance.

I think you are fundamentally correct about how they handled additional campaigns. They can add "server hardware" to the megaserver by simply plugging a blade (server computer) into one of several enclosures that can hold a number of these blade cards. They can also realloate a blade from the pool used by the "instance launcher" and dedicate it to a new campaign. In both cases, there should be no change to any of the other campaigns, as they can all be running independently on other blades.

AMeanOne

It really seems that way yes. Performance during the event was pretty good, now it's abysmal again with 1/3 the population.

Alendrin

I don't think you upgrade or downgrade virtual machines, thats not really how that works.

I think you need to look at it in a different way - during the event the large organized groups were spread out between many servers. I played on various servers and hardly saw any of them. Now you are back to there being only one active server except for maybe a few hours a day. So all the organized play groups are jammed into one server, each player in each group spamming aoe heals, purges, buffs, damage, and aoe sets each gcd.

Shanan

indeed. worst lag in the history of eso today.

TineaCruris

Alendrin wrote: »

I don't think you upgrade or downgrade virtual machines, thats not really how that works.

I think you need to look at it in a different way - during the event the large organized groups were spread out between many servers. I played on various servers and hardly saw any of them. Now you are back to there being only one active server except for maybe a few hours a day. So all the organized play groups are jammed into one server, each player in each group spamming aoe heals, purges, buffs, damage, and aoe sets each gcd.

So they need a dedicated PvP server...at least that is the argument made in your post. The lag/performance is very clearly server and population related.

itscompton

It's most likely all run on the same hardware all the time with the ability to prioritize certain tasks in the server CPU's. PVP threads are likely given high or highest priority for the duration of MYM then set back to low or medium after.

dem0n1k

So weird that during MYM it was relatively smooth with all factions pop-locked & huge fights everywhere... now with 2-3bars per faction, small fights are kicking me back to the login screen.