So much lag

Ok, so this game is 100 times as laggy as it was a year ago. I very frequently have spikes of lag where I am turning stone on/off for about 5 minutes straight. And no, I am not talking about the server backups, those are entirely different. The backups completely freeze my game for 30 seconds - 1 minute, these lag spikes just make the game extremely choppy for extended periods of time. Usually I will lag for like 3 minutes straight, be good for 10 minutes, then another dose of lag, on and off like that. Seems to happen several times every day.

Oddly enough, some people playing don't experience lag. For example, today me and Mercenary were both complaining about it being laggy, and Necromage said he wasn't experiencing any lag at all.

What gives? It's been like this since I started playing like 2-3 weeks ago.

I haven't experienced any of this besides the issues that happened the other day, if one of the God's wants to give out the server IP I'm sure you could run a tracert and probably come to the conclusion that this is a common hardware failure or routing failure on either your ISP's side of things or Aranocks (Unlikely due to me personally not experiencing any of what you just described)

EDIT
Although today it does seem to be lagging slightly.

Well to update it's not just me and Mercenary. Kratos and Ultraman are both experiencing the same thing as well. And I know Darius has been experiencing the same issues as well.

You're all probably isolated into a similar area aka Routing issue, but the lag for me has died out completely, game is fine for me.

I have noticed that virus scans/software and messengers seem to cause the game to lag and run choppy.

yes antivirus/chat/torrents can cause a lil lag but not this new kind of lag. I may not get the 3-5 min stonings that cyrus is getting but I agree that game is 100 times laggier than a year ago. Seems it happened when prospect peak opened, the backups are much, much worse and plenty of smaller spikes between backups.

As with any game as items and areas are added the game will indeed change, I'll use Guild Wars as an example, when I first started playing the game and there was only one campaign and about one hundred thousand people playing it I'd have 29ms ping to there servers. As the game expanded and millions of players started enjoying the game my ping slowly increased each month to it's 129ms - 139ms it's at now.

Now ArenaNet also runs a Test Server for it's Live Crewe Members (Actual Spelling), if you use that with the EXACT same Build # (sometimes multiple versions ahead) you'll experience roughly the same ping as when the game started.

Now this relates to Aranock simply because as Aranock has added areas the game world has nearly doubled in size, this with the original Version 2 is what stopped development, as the game got larger and many items were added the game was nearly unplayable due to lag. This is why Version 3 was created with an extremely updated Netcode that supports about 100x the necessary space for Items, Characters, Game Areas, etc.

TL:DR version: As v2 Expands unless the Code is updated to fix some of the issues with the Netcode the game will continue to experience lag on lower-end hardware / in remote areas of the world. I however have never experienced the lag you are explaining which leads me to believe there is a routing issue with all of the people that are, again I use an example from V3 a few years ago Version 3's server started to lag horribly for all people from Canada, eventually the issue was traced back to a faulty Fiber-Optic cable which connected into Version 3's server. When it was replaced the issue went away and we all enjoyed the game again.

So basically,

• It's Version 2 getting to Large
  
• It's a routing issue
  
• It's a server issue (Impossible everyone would experience it)
  
• It's isolated to specific Hardware / Software (Likely)
  

Feb 12th (same day as latest update) backups got about 10x worse & I first started getting spikes between backups. My hardware/software config is unchanged, & none of the prior updates created any lag (for me at least). Pretty big update for sure, but it's not like the game is now 10x bigger, or has 10x the players, I imagine biggest increase would be in items, but that can't be 10x either.

Ok seriously, right now the game is so laggy it's not even playable. There are 2 others in the server, one says it's running fine for him, the other says the same as me. What's going on with Aranock these days? Some sort of routing issue? Do you guys even care that half the players experience unbearable lag frequently or are you just unaware of what the problem might be? It's particularly bad right now, so bad that I can't even play, but I experience lag like this every day. It's been going on for over 2 weeks, I'm not the only one who's noticed, what gives?

Ok I had talked about knowiing of a large outage, evidently it was due to ome vandlas cutting some fiber optic lines in San Fransisco. This was localized to only the Bay Area so I don't think it was the cause.

I was running fine today when others had the lag issue. I even had logged in from various locations today and everything was running up to speed while others were lagging.

I the recent past I have had some bad lag (along with others) while a few did not experience any lag.

This tells me 2 things.

It is not the server (at least not entirely) since it would need affect everyone not selectively some and not others. I say not entirely because there have been times when all online were affected.

It is a routing issue.
The routing could be based upon location, ISP, or even whether it is routed via satellite or Fiber to the server.
It might even have something to do with the hosting router(s).

Based upon my success in game today while others suffered lag, I feel confident that it isn't the server that is at fault.

We are looking into the lag issue but there is no immediate cause jumping out so I am looking for information.

All staff have been asked to look for certain signs.

Players can also help by :
1) Shouting and asking if all players online are affected or only a few. As Flipper said this will indicate if it is a game/server issue or outside.
2) If it appears to be a game/server issue then say some Unique string of letters that I can use to trace in the logs (helps me to find the spot faster).

Ok thanks LL. I usually shout and ask others if they are lagging and I typically get a few people saying that they are, and a few saying that they aren't. I'll type out the alphabet next time it happens

In addition can you also do a ping test to the server for 1 minute and post the results. Also can you include your ISP, location, and ping results to google for the same time.

LL, Ody, and Jasmine, I am assuming a few things. 1) it is ok to ping the server. (meaning a firewall won't see this as a Denial of Service attack) and you will 2) be able to access the router to see statistics.

I won't give out the ip address of the game "just in case" you don't want this done. ( although, honestly it is pretty easy to do) I have done some packet captures and have found a lot of lost packets (10%) when I experienced the lag (With out the lag I was under .1% over a minute period).

Also performing a tracert to the server could help determine if it is geographical. When I lagged really bad, the DNs would resolve but could not get a 2nd hop in the tracert