ESO World PvP (Cyrodiil) vs. WoW World PvP (Ashran)

blackweb · February 2015

I have been leading world pvp and world pvp guilds for over 10 years. Phoenix Battalion is a multi-gaming community with guilds in Guild Wars 2, ESO and a 2,300+ member PlanetSide 2 outfit, the largest on the Emerald server. I finally logged in and checked out WoW WoD's Ashran World PvP zone. I never thought that I would see the day that there was actually less 3D, input and network lag in WoW world pvp than ESO, significantly less lag, even on Ultra settings. Ashran is much more playable than Cyrodiil for large scale PvP. I like just about everything else about ESO better than WoW WoD including lore, questing, crafting, classes, combat system etc. but for playable world pvp, WoW currently has ESO beat hands-down especially for large battles involving tens or hundreds of players on each side. To be fair PlanetSide 2 has both ESO and WoW beat when it comes to large scale pvp but PS2 is a pvp-only game so that is comparing apples and oranges.

How can WoW's 10+ year old game engine possibly be superior to ESOs for large-scale pvp?

THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF LAG IN CYRODIIL IS THE LAGSPLOIT ZERGS AND MINI-ZERGS. Every time we go to Cyrodiil as a guild, we lose 20-30% or more of our group every time we encounter a (vampire bat-swarm, dk reflecting and standard spamming, templar healer, impulse-spamming etc.) lagsploit mob due to client game crashes. LAGSPLOIT MOBS HAVE MADE CYRODIIL PVP UNPLAYABLE.

A PvP guild leaders perspective on Lagsploit in Cyrodiil

As a PvP guild leader, I can testify that lagsploit is bad for the morale of my guild in Cyrodiil PvP. We take a lot of new members and players to Cyrodiil and introduce them to the zone and ESO pvp. What is their first experience in a large-scale pvp battle? Watching their abilities stop working, client freeze or crash as they are overrun by one lagsploit group after another and are helpless to defend themselves against lagsploit. Lagsploit is harming the gaming experience of your paying subscribers ZoS and no doubt costing you lost subscriptions and revenue. I dont blame the players who use lagsploit as a tactic, I blame the ZoS devs for allowing it.

After going to Ashran and having a lag-free, fun and profitable gaming experience, I have to ask myself, why am I queueing up myself and my guild members for more lagsploit in Cyrodiil?

Give Phoenix Battalion a reason to continue to support ESO PvP as an organization, end lagsploit in Update 6 ZoS.

RainfeatherUK · February 2015

Being a PS2 player, I know full well how often people resort to Zerging. On Cobalt thats the done thing if TR actually want to leave their spawn area. SoE/DBI are just lucky the engine can somewhat handle it and its premise is 'big battles'.

That aspect of player cowardice and death resentment however is the same everywhere. It would require systems in place to thoroughly discourage zerging. Which isnt likely to happen at all. As seen in GW2 WvW.

Theres always a frustration between commited, small scale group/solo players and those who arent; Those that huddle up to participate equally in content.

In GW2's case I use to roam solo, taking supply camps. They increased the time required to do so - meaning that I would always be zerged before I could get in and out.

I really dont think it'll be any different anywhere until real incentives are issued to play with skill, instead of brainless gathering of achievement points.

After all in your example of PS2 - I have a siseable amount of people in my outfit, so paranoid about their KDR that they only farm small bases with aircraft spam. The enemy has zero chance of fighting back in that scenario - and thats why they love it. That probably says enough about the pressures of the gamer culture and wanting to go risk free.

technohic · February 2015

I always wondered if upping soul shatters damage by a lot would deter it. To where if 6 guys are tightly piled up just aoeing away, at least they would have to pay attention to what they are doing rather than just walk and spam.

Aeeeek · February 2015

one reason I like EVE Online - its NEVER fair. Deal with it.

SanderBuraas · February 2015

Aeeeek wrote: »

one reason I like EVE Online - its NEVER fair. Deal with it.

What is this supposed to mean? Have you ever been in Cyrodiil? Not only do you get immensely decreased fps when close to a battle, but when there are zergs of players spamming abilities as stated by the original poster, there are huge lag spikes causing big numbers on the latency. Nothing is responsive for about ten minutes every time this happens.

Rohaus · February 2015

I played WoW with the recent expansion release... it was more nostalgic for me than anything as I was an original vanilla WoW player.

Anyways, your experiences with Ashran is NOT what I experienced. And, if you read the forums for WoW, you will see people talk about Ashran being the WORST thing ever put into WoW. All of my experiences with the world PvP zones in WoW have been the same. Massive zergs which leads to MASSIVE lag. Lake Wintergrasp was no different...

Are you playing on a low population server? If you are getting into Ashran instantly, that would explain your so called positive experience with Ashran as that would indicate low population.

I am sorry but comparing Ashran to Cyrodiil is completely ludicrous to the ninth degree! Some of the common references to Ashran are... Ashcan, Sh!tcan... and many others.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13124238191

Just read that post and you will see what the typical experiences are like in reference to Ashran.

WoW is kiddyland. If you like those fruit loop color schemes then ESO is not for you.

Aeeeek · February 2015

Smepic wrote: »

Aeeeek wrote: »

one reason I like EVE Online - its NEVER fair. Deal with it.

What is this supposed to mean? Have you ever been in Cyrodiil? Not only do you get immensely decreased fps when close to a battle, but when there are zergs of players spamming abilities as stated by the original poster, there are huge lag spikes causing big numbers on the latency. Nothing is responsive for about ten minutes every time this happens.

Been in Cyrodil as soon as I could. Being in Australia, I may miss the zerg spikes but latency is a fact of life.
Thornblade is my home campaign. NEVER encountered this 10 mins lag, because I'm asleep or US ISPs are crap I have no idea.

Roechacca · February 2015

We all would like lag to go away . We've dealt with it since launch and every update has made it worse instead of better . I don't know what is or isn't a solution . I know the lag is not as bad fighting some large groups as opposed to other . Others being probably the lag generating groups . It is something that has continuously left us with less people playing .

SanderBuraas · February 2015

Aeeeek wrote: »

Smepic wrote: »

Aeeeek wrote: »

one reason I like EVE Online - its NEVER fair. Deal with it.

What is this supposed to mean? Have you ever been in Cyrodiil? Not only do you get immensely decreased fps when close to a battle, but when there are zergs of players spamming abilities as stated by the original poster, there are huge lag spikes causing big numbers on the latency. Nothing is responsive for about ten minutes every time this happens.

Been in Cyrodil as soon as I could. Being in Australia, I may miss the zerg spikes but latency is a fact of life.
Thornblade is my home campaign. NEVER encountered this 10 mins lag, because I'm asleep or US ISPs are crap I have no idea.

The ten minute freezes occured in Thornblade on the european server. Don't know if there are any differences between the servers, but that is where me and many other have experienced it several times.

drzycki_ESO · February 2015

There is noting wrong with the zerg. I love the zerg. They just need to fix the lag.

Gix · February 2015

blackweb wrote: »

How can WoW's 10+ year old game engine possibly be superior to ESOs for large-scale pvp?

Probably because WoW's original conception was back when Dial-Up was still a thing and the combat mechanics reflect that. There's very little data that are being sent from server to clients.

That's not to say that WoW never lagged, but now broadband caught up to a point where the game can finally run smoothly.

Also, WoW's engine received many, many upgrades since. That's like saying that the Unreal 4 engine is as old as the original Unreal single-player game (anyone remembers that game? pre-UnrealTournament).

TehMagnus · February 2015

You where waiting for the LOL functionality to be removed before posting this one, right?

Audigy · February 2015

Gix wrote: »

blackweb wrote: »

How can WoW's 10+ year old game engine possibly be superior to ESOs for large-scale pvp?

Probably because WoW's original conception was back when Dial-Up was still a thing and the combat mechanics reflect that. There's very little data that are being sent from server to clients.

That's not to say that WoW never lagged, but now broadband caught up to a point where the game can finally run smoothly.

Also, WoW's engine received many, many upgrades since. That's like saying that the Unreal 4 engine is as old as the original Unreal single-player game (anyone remembers that game? pre-UnrealTournament).

If I may step in here.

The reason why we players had so horrible lag at IF, Southshore or TM in Vanilla wasn't the "connection", but our own PCs. If you moved from 4 GB Ram to 8 GB Ram, it was a massive difference. If you swapped the Athlon Dual Core for a Intel Quad as well.

What I am trying to say is that ESO is developed very close to the edge, just like WOW once was. Developed so that it runs ok in low settings, but sloppy in Ultra and this is typical for many games that came out in the past 10 years.

Game designers only use Ultra & co. for marketing purposes, the intention to play in that setting isn't really there. If we compare this to the games in the 90´s then performance was the first and content the second holy grail. Today its all about the "Look" of the game.

Developers want to impress, they want to get the media behind their product so they can get many potential customers. For this they need Screenshots, Videos etc. They however forget, that fans don't necessarily have the top hardware at home.

SWTOR is a funny but sad example for this. We in Alpha / Beta had HD textures, but the release didn't as EA noticed that their game cant run decent on most PC´s. They later lied and denied that, but we Testers know what we played

I am quite sure that in 2-3 years, ESO will run as smooth as AOC does today and it will look better than ever. Unfortunately did ZO make the mistake to not develop for the next gen API, like they hopefully did now in regards of PS3 (I cant judge this as I don't have the test version).

It would had been a big help to get Mantle support in ESO, to make the game less heavy on our Hardware. The server structure sure also plays its part, but the FPS lags we have are on our end unfortunately.

seancaputo_ESO · February 2015

Large amounts of people in one area is not what causes the lag. It's the ability to stack players on top of each other and then spread. The servers have to relay all of the information back to each connection.

1. If you took 200 on 200 spread out. There is no issue, because the server has floating points on you that will change by direction allowing a more accurate transfer of data to each client.

2. When you stack on top of each other and then you attack. The server is bursting to predict and accurate share the data to all clients. The buffer can't handle the movements effectively.

The solution, character collisions: This is used in most all FPS. This will allow the server to accurately transfer data back to all clients and have a predictive model of movement speed in any direction. Thus no lag, no video card lag, no CPU server spikes disconnecting people. It works and gaming companies use it.

Have 100 people stack and hiding on top of each other must be a new Spell Skill - because it's physically possible.

TheBull · February 2015

Neither are world pvp OP.

Second, If you are saying that WoW zone can be compared to Cyrodiil you are lying to the people. Possibly even shilling.

Don't believe me? Just watch a YouTube video of each side by side.

blackweb · February 2015

RainfeatherUK wrote: »

Being a PS2 player, I know full well how often people resort to Zerging. On Cobalt thats the done thing if TR actually want to leave their spawn area. SoE/DBI are just lucky the engine can somewhat handle it and its premise is 'big battles'.

That aspect of player cowardice and death resentment however is the same everywhere. It would require systems in place to thoroughly discourage zerging. Which isnt likely to happen at all. As seen in GW2 WvW.

Theres always a frustration between commited, small scale group/solo players and those who arent; Those that huddle up to participate equally in content.

In GW2's case I use to roam solo, taking supply camps. They increased the time required to do so - meaning that I would always be zerged before I could get in and out.

I really dont think it'll be any different anywhere until real incentives are issued to play with skill, instead of brainless gathering of achievement points.

After all in your example of PS2 - I have a siseable amount of people in my outfit, so paranoid about their KDR that they only farm small bases with aircraft spam. The enemy has zero chance of fighting back in that scenario - and thats why they love it. That probably says enough about the pressures of the gamer culture and wanting to go risk free.

PlanetSide 2 has friendly fire. Zerging while dumping AOE on friendlies and enemies problem solved. Its not possible, you will get weapons lock in minutes.

blackweb · February 2015

Rohaus wrote: »

I played WoW with the recent expansion release... it was more nostalgic for me than anything as I was an original vanilla WoW player.

Anyways, your experiences with Ashran is NOT what I experienced. And, if you read the forums for WoW, you will see people talk about Ashran being the WORST thing ever put into WoW. All of my experiences with the world PvP zones in WoW have been the same. Massive zergs which leads to MASSIVE lag. Lake Wintergrasp was no different...

Are you playing on a low population server? If you are getting into Ashran instantly, that would explain your so called positive experience with Ashran as that would indicate low population.

I am sorry but comparing Ashran to Cyrodiil is completely ludicrous to the ninth degree! Some of the common references to Ashran are... Ashcan, Sh!tcan... and many others.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13124238191

Just read that post and you will see what the typical experiences are like in reference to Ashran.

WoW is kiddyland. If you like those fruit loop color schemes then ESO is not for you.

I care about playable world pvp zones. Ashran is playable on my server group. Cyrodiil is only partially playable.

blackweb · February 2015

TheBull wrote: »

Neither are world pvp OP.

Second, If you are saying that WoW zone can be compared to Cyrodiil you are lying to the people. Possibly even shilling.

Don't believe me? Just watch a YouTube video of each side by side.

Youtube video comparison? Seriously?

Play both zones on the same hardware, then post your impressions. Experiences may vary. Mine is good so far.

Gix · February 2015

Audigy wrote: »

Gix wrote: »

blackweb wrote: »

How can WoW's 10+ year old game engine possibly be superior to ESOs for large-scale pvp?

Probably because WoW's original conception was back when Dial-Up was still a thing and the combat mechanics reflect that. There's very little data that are being sent from server to clients.

That's not to say that WoW never lagged, but now broadband caught up to a point where the game can finally run smoothly.

Also, WoW's engine received many, many upgrades since. That's like saying that the Unreal 4 engine is as old as the original Unreal single-player game (anyone remembers that game? pre-UnrealTournament).

If I may step in here.

The reason why we players had so horrible lag at IF, Southshore or TM in Vanilla wasn't the "connection", but our own PCs. If you moved from 4 GB Ram to 8 GB Ram, it was a massive difference. If you swapped the Athlon Dual Core for a Intel Quad as well.

What I am trying to say is that ESO is developed very close to the edge, just like WOW once was. Developed so that it runs ok in low settings, but sloppy in Ultra and this is typical for many games that came out in the past 10 years.

Oh yeah, I was merely talking about actual network latency; not computer performance.

LonePirate · February 2015

I am amused by the OP's accusation of the DK skills of Reflective Scales and Standard contribute to the lag. It's statements like that which make me wonder is the OP truly understands the lag problem.

blackweb · February 2015

roechacca wrote: »

We all would like lag to go away . We've dealt with it since launch and every update has made it worse instead of better . I don't know what is or isn't a solution . I know the lag is not as bad fighting some large groups as opposed to other . Others being probably the lag generating groups . It is something that has continuously left us with less people playing .

Great post. You are correct.

The fundamental issue is balance. Currently, there is no effective counter to the Vampire Batswarm/DK Reflect/Templar Healer etc. zergs. They are effectively invincible because even if there was a counter, you could not use it because abilities stop working or the game crashes. Solution:

1. Tone down the effects.
2. Nerf the abilities in question.
3. More effective counters.

Effective counters can be effective AE CC or lockdown abilities (Negate is effective but has a very slow recharge time). Basicially, charging into the middle of a large group of enemies should be suicidal most of the time. Problem solved.

blackweb · February 2015

Aeeeek wrote: »

one reason I like EVE Online - its NEVER fair. Deal with it.

Tactics designed to disable or lock up, crash or disable opposing clients game clients should not be possible. Let players fight, then let the best players or the best team win. Lagsploit is designed to prevent the other side from fighting back effectively.

blackweb · February 2015

LonePirate wrote: »

I am amused by the OP's accusation of the DK skills of Reflective Scales and Standard contribute to the lag. It's statements like that which make me wonder is the OP truly understands the lag problem.

The DK skills are just one part of the toxic lagsploit mix. I think everyone can agree that DKs are seriously overpowered which is why they are being nerfed hard in Update 6. There is a synergy of abilities from all classes that add up to lagsploit. Any nerf needs to look at them all including healing from my own class, templar which is also being nerfed in Update 6.

Want to end lagsploit overnight in Cyrodiil?

Turn on friendly fire. Problem solved.

blackweb · February 2015

Audigy wrote: »

Gix wrote: »

blackweb wrote: »

How can WoW's 10+ year old game engine possibly be superior to ESOs for large-scale pvp?

Probably because WoW's original conception was back when Dial-Up was still a thing and the combat mechanics reflect that. There's very little data that are being sent from server to clients.

That's not to say that WoW never lagged, but now broadband caught up to a point where the game can finally run smoothly.

Also, WoW's engine received many, many upgrades since. That's like saying that the Unreal 4 engine is as old as the original Unreal single-player game (anyone remembers that game? pre-UnrealTournament).

If I may step in here.

The reason why we players had so horrible lag at IF, Southshore or TM in Vanilla wasn't the "connection", but our own PCs. If you moved from 4 GB Ram to 8 GB Ram, it was a massive difference. If you swapped the Athlon Dual Core for a Intel Quad as well.

What I am trying to say is that ESO is developed very close to the edge, just like WOW once was. Developed so that it runs ok in low settings, but sloppy in Ultra and this is typical for many games that came out in the past 10 years.

Game designers only use Ultra & co. for marketing purposes, the intention to play in that setting isn't really there. If we compare this to the games in the 90´s then performance was the first and content the second holy grail. Today its all about the "Look" of the game.

Developers want to impress, they want to get the media behind their product so they can get many potential customers. For this they need Screenshots, Videos etc. They however forget, that fans don't necessarily have the top hardware at home.

SWTOR is a funny but sad example for this. We in Alpha / Beta had HD textures, but the release didn't as EA noticed that their game cant run decent on most PC´s. They later lied and denied that, but we Testers know what we played

I am quite sure that in 2-3 years, ESO will run as smooth as AOC does today and it will look better than ever. Unfortunately did ZO make the mistake to not develop for the next gen API, like they hopefully did now in regards of PS3 (I cant judge this as I don't have the test version).

It would had been a big help to get Mantle support in ESO, to make the game less heavy on our Hardware. The server structure sure also plays its part, but the FPS lags we have are on our end unfortunately.

Unfortunately, better hardware or more memory will not fix ESO. I have some of the best gaming hardware and it has almost no effect on lagsploit. The reason is that ESO has a 32-bit client. WoW has a 64 bit client, WoW-64.exe, ESO does not. Throwing more memory at it doesn't help. A 64-bit client would help ESO scale better in Cyrodiil.

LonePirate · February 2015

blackweb wrote: »

LonePirate wrote: »

I am amused by the OP's accusation of the DK skills of Reflective Scales and Standard contribute to the lag. It's statements like that which make me wonder is the OP truly understands the lag problem.

The DK skills are just one part of the toxic lagsploit mix. I think everyone can agree that DKs are seriously overpowered which is why they are being nerfed hard in Update 6. There is a synergy of abilities from all classes that add up to lagsploit. Any nerf needs to look at them all including healing from my own class, templar which is also being nerfed in Update 6.

Those DK skills are not part of the lagsploit mix. When the lag events occur in Cyrodiil, is it because people are spamming Reflective Scales or dropping Standards as frequently as possible? No. Are there isolated instances of lag occurring because a group of DKs were using these skills? No. I have no idea where you are getting the idea that these skills are causes of lag because that is simply not the case at all.

Also, why are you jumping to the conclusion that these two DK skills are causing lag because you think they are overpowered? That's akin to saying bad weather is caused by my dislike of stewed cabbage. It's completely nonsensical. You should try to separate your personal biases from any serious point you are trying to make. It's OK to think the skills are OP; but there is no evidence tying them to lag. As for your synergy comment, the Shackle synergy with Standards is not always used and Standards do not drop that often. I really wonder how much you actually know about ESO PVP lag given these statements.

If you want to blame a DK skill for lag, then you would be better off pointing your finger at Talons and the spamming of that skill. You might find some fertile ground there unlike with Scales and Standards which are near the bottom of the list of problematic skills when it comes to lag.

eliisra · February 2015

Apparently templar healers are lagsploit mobs now...

All I wanted to do was save my friends, instead I crashed the server with one BoL

As much as I agree about about bad performance being a game killer, how it sucks with zergs actively causing lag to take objectives, it's a bad idea to single out classes and skills not related to the issue. I mean come on, what does flappy wings have to do with lag bombers lol?

It's the fact that some factions on certain servers have a tradition to place 3 raids on top of each other spamming AoE, support and heals to make sure no one can fight back. You really cant because skills and siege stops working. We know it, they know it. ZoS knows it to, yet unable to resolve the issue. Been puzzling them for over 6 months now

TheBull · February 2015

Ashran

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhHMURxUlDU#t=143
Cyrodiil random vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2FHGLBEBXg

seriously OP?

Vahrokh · February 2015

blackweb wrote: »

Unfortunately, better hardware or more memory will not fix ESO. I have some of the best gaming hardware and it has almost no effect on lagsploit. The reason is that ESO has a 32-bit client. WoW has a 64 bit client, WoW-64.exe, ESO does not. Throwing more memory at it doesn't help. A 64-bit client would help ESO scale better in Cyrodiil.

It's not the 64 bit client.

Blizzard rose to fame because their games are simple to grasp and run on the worst garbage you can throw at them.

WoW is optimized to a degree ESO can't even dream to ever compare.

Also, I was playing Tarren Mill PvP at the dawn of time, on a potato computer and it ran fairly smooth. Sometimes it choked but it was the PC never the WoW network code.

I am playing PvP games since the 90s... WoW has always been on the higher side of smothness, despite some time in 2005 they remade their motion prediction code into a more complex thing (exactly to minimize the visual effects of lag).

I have found smoother gameplay with latest Warhammer (100-300 guys clumped in a keep) than ESO, and Warhammer had a TON of AoE mechanics and body block. The latter is an awesome feature any PvP tactician loves but eats abusive amounts of bandwidth. Yet I still experienced less PvP lag in such game than I do in ESO. And believe me, Warhammer was NOT made well. To the point they closed it down.

At least, ZoS has foreseen the fall and unlike EA *** they committed into implementing F2P before it was too late. EA didn't, so we lost one of the most fun RvR games of the past decade.

TheBull · February 2015

Idk I run ESO from 40-60 fps everywhere. Yeah the severs can't handle 200 people in the same spot casting though. Is there any mmorpg that can?

blackweb · February 2015

Vahrokh wrote: »

It's not the 64 bit client.

No, a 64 bit client would not solve all of ESOs problems in Cyrodiil but it would be a good start. Limiting the game to a 4GB address space of which it uses maybe 2.5 GB is clearly not sufficient in large scale battles in Cyrodiil.

Akiho · February 2015

I can't compare cyrodil to wow as I have never played it, but have spent many hours in gw2 wvw and it has eso beat easily. I'm a new player hit vr1 2 weeks ago and barely did any PvP due to the poor xp so couldn't wait to get involved once I hit vr1 .

Well what an absolute joke it is, any time I get any where near a keep that's under fire and it's unplayable ( nothing to do with my connection ) no skills work for the most part, fps drops like crazy it really is fkd. I'm playing this game for the AvA and that's it. I havn't even logged in for the past 3 days due to this as it's just not fun!

I will wait to see if there is any improvement with 1.6 but if not I will be uninstalling the game for sure. No point grinding over 200 hrs to be on a competitive lvl to not be able to cast a skill !

And to add to my disbelief even today you have idiots at mmorpg.com saying how "eso prides itself on large scale battles" http://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/features.cfm?read=9433&game=821&ismb=1