State of Cyro is laughable. Worse than ever before regarding lag. And now we even got crashes. Yay!

Darkstorne wrote: »

Blizzard sent me 3 days free game time, so I thought it would be a great time to compare server performance

With heavy add-on use, ping in top left of screen:


I'm not going to stop playing ESO and switch to WoW. I still firmly believe ESO is the better game. But when I'm getting 150+ ping, with frequent spikes (meaning at least once every 5 minutes) into 300+, and WoW's ping is consistently this damn low. there's no way I'm going to continue subscribing to ESO. ZOS don't deserve the money for server performance this poor. I can live without the craft bag (it's full to bursting anyway lol).

I will happily re-sub when server performance is acceptable again (meaning well below a triple digit figure), but until then I'm going to remain F2P.

Installed SWTOR last night in preparation for their new story DLC, and got bizarrely excited to see how its ping would hold up in comparison to ESO It was fluctuating between 35-40 depending on how busy an area was. So...

WoW: 25 ping
SWTOR: 40 ping
ESO: 100-300 ping

Now getting tempted to install FFXIV and GW2 for similar tests!

Delparis wrote: »

On my machine

• WOW: 23-25
• FF14: 35-37 ping
• GW2: 40-42 ping
• ESO: 100-200 ping

So both of us have WoW at around 25. And that's the three other main MMOs hovering around 35-40 (GW2, FFXIV, SWTOR).

I can understand Blizz paying extra to make WoW the best for latency. Their game has that pedigree. But if GW2 and SWTOR can afford to hit 35-40 ping then ESO has no excuse.

JamilaRaj wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

rumple9 wrote: »

Wow has crap gfx less data to transmit

I guess Overwatch has "crap gfx" too, cause it works flawlessly. And despite fact that ESO has "old" engine, in low traffic hours ESO works great. It's all about load and insufficient server capacity. ZOS chiefs simply don't think that big investment in servers will ever pay off, so they do only minor HW upgrades and try to fix performance by tweaking game code....

Programmers are more expensive than hardware. The only reason not to buy hardware I can imagine is that load is nonlinear (read "ESO is buggy mess"), which would make attempts at hardware solution very costly.
In other words, facing choice between expensive programmers and costly hardware, ZOS's corporate overlords probably chose to hire another addictologist, ha ha ha. Hm.

I am pretty sure that they are at the bounds of what the hardware can do. Short of splitting the megaservers, which I don't want them to do, the solution lies in optimizing the software. That means programmers. Alternately, time.

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Why not? They can split them and allow one-time account transfer. People who are satisfied with current performance or can't transfer as entire guild can remain on current server. People and guilds for whom "game is unplayable" move to new server. Everyone is happy, problem solved. There will be some mess and drama with separation of guilds, but better start a new with good performance then struggle with lag and crashes.

There are a myriad of different ways to do MMO servers, and honestly, which one is used is more personal preference regarding features. A major advantage of a megaserver over multiple discrete servers in a geography is that I don't have to care what server I am on. I find that annoying in other MMO games. I should not have to care what server I am on relative to my friends, and I should never have to realize I picked wrong. ESO would be better if they had one megaserver for both EU and NA, but that is a technology challenge well above what we have today.

The problem we have is not the megaserver idea, or the fact that there are only two per platform. (Unless you in Asia or down under... but that is a different story) The problem is that they really only made their server capable of handling a certain number of players before it could no longer scale, and we are above that number of players. Short sighted? Too focused on what is currently needed vs what will be needed? Dunno. Anyway, this is a combination of the success of the game, and probably also due to gradual decline in the number of players that the game can actually support.

When software performance is the limitation, throwing hardware at the problem only makes for a lot of hardware sitting around. If the software can only handle X player transactions per second, it does not matter that they are running on hardware that can handle twice that much. In this case, doubling the hardware performance does not double software performance. The diminishing returns means that, eventually, a hardware performance cap is hit It is no longer feasible to double the hardware performance in order to squeeze out a fractional improvement in the software performance.

Properly implemented, the megaserver should perform very well for the type of game that ZOS is running.

DonRavello wrote: »

There are almost no boundaries regarding hardware. There are scale-out models, which allow for "mega servers" with in-memory-computing of terabytes, even petabytes of RAM and thousands of vCPUs. The problem is: The server software must be able to utilize such resources in an intelligent way.

There are bounds to the hardware. What you describe uses software to overcome that limitation. The whole idea is based upon the simple premise that we can no longer build better hardware fast enough to keep up with the computing demands that we have, and do it at a cost that is reasonable for general use.

Anyway... I am pretty sure that they are "stuck" with their hardware platform.

Thanks!

Sarannah wrote: »

Since the server issues are now even causing patches to work incorrectly(like trader-swap), will the timetable for the EU server upgrades be moved up to prevent future patch-lag issues?

Since ZOS has mentioned add-ons as one of the causes of the server issues, is ZOS considering making their own lightweight add-ons like for DPS meter, trader-history and maybe some other highly used add-ons? ... or have plans to incorporate some of these things in to the basic game? ... to reduce server load.

Zo$ make add-ons? Are you crazy?

Look what they did with the guild trader "improvements"! Massive input lag and way worse functionality than several other addons already available for years. Sorry, but I wouldn't trust this team to make a cup of tea at this point.

Also this thread being unstickied again is another sign of the slimy practices of this company... no words.

Edit: It is now suddenly stickied again? Wtf is going on with this thread?

Cyrodiil lag on EU server... Its unplayable.
Please ZOS. Skip the content for once and start to fix the game. Optimize it first and then expand. You should have enough money to hire experts.

1. Prioritise the quality of your game.
2. Plan and implement working processes
3. Think!
4. Future scenario planning. (how to counter massively Inc new players on servers.)
5. Say thank you to all the lojal players that do everything to stop other lojal players dropping from the game.

...

And stop nerf stuff. Stop it. Balance to the other direction please.

100% unplayable at the moment. Breaking free takes 5 tries, health desyncs (dead in an instant) happen regularly, skills not working, potions not being consumed. A fine mess you have here, ZOS.