Phase 2 and Lag

It seems nobody is talking about how unplayably laggy the game server becomes when you get a bit over 40v40 in a densely populated area. The majority of Phase 2 content is going to be unplayably lagged out due to slow server processing for Classic.

I could theorize about all the ways that the modern servers might be optimized for sharding and not single mass zones, but the fact is that regardless of how blizzard’s server architecture works for classic, they have not engineered the system well for Phase 2. Layering was a temporary fix to the problem, but you can’t layer the interaction of guilds fighting over world bosses. Even while being underfunded, private servers were able to host much larger gatherings of players without debilitating lag. Phase 2 is going to be a nightmare and I believe it will drive many players away from the game.

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From what I have read, its the same engine as Retail, just a revamp of vanilla playing in it.

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we could always go for the google stadia approach…
let an AI guess what you’re going to do and just stream video back to you regardless of the buttons you press.

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That doesn’t resolve the server processing issues. The world lag is not on the client side.

i dont ever lag even when ive logged on Herod. Ive had a couple of spikes in the barrens but nothing that made it unplayable by any means

I’m specifically talking about large scale world PvP. It is not performing as well as it should be or could be.

High player density is what causes world lag (especially when the factions begin fighting and using AoE abilities), not having players spread out across a zone.

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Keep in mind add ons cause massive lag in these scenarios, I remember back in vanilla there was an addon that would tell you if an enemy opposition was in a _______ yds range around you.

This addon would do a scan of the area listening I think for meta data , damage, spells, skills, chat etc.

One day I hoped into a huge AV and went to the middle to fight Ivan and Lokthar. My screen lagged out so hard because the addon was scanning everyone in the areas data and sending back to my UI telling me players were there.

Recount if set to sync with others will aslo cause this.

I honestly don’t know what you are talking about. I have seen more people in one place in Classic than I have ever seen in any point in WoW history and it ran smoothly in all but the most extreme cases.

I’m taking about server lag, not client side lag. Blizzard’s actual servers are lagging out when you get more than a 40v40 going. Private servers did it better. I literally asked Maitoz today on stream (the GM of APES) and he said, “yea pservers didn’t lag”

It has me worried. There have been some encounters at BRM already on my server which results in everyone in the zone lagging hard. I was eating/drinking waiting for the Alliance, game lags a little, I can’t do anything, 5seconds later my Mana is 0? About 5 seconds after that my character goes “Uggggghhh” then dies.

After my death, finally, about 5 mages w/ 40 other alliance start to show up on my screen.

Thought it might have been just me until I saw /1 and guild chat light up with “WTF just happened??!!?”

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Exactly what I’m talking about. It’s only going to be worse in Phase 2 and most of the important endgame content will hinge on the playability of such battles.

i remember huge battles bigger then 40v40 back in vanilla and i dont remember lag killing the fun. is there something making lag worse in this version?

Someone needs to do a server test. Get like 80 from each faction and meet up somewhere. Everyone disables any form of addons that require syncing with other players and see what happens. I bet the performance will be acceptable. The game has an extremely low bandwidth requirement, something like 5KBp/s at the very top end. At a cap of 3500 players that’s only about 20MBps. Unless the packets are extremely complex and require lots of processing power any modern server should have no issues with this.

It’s the fact that they are using a modern server system which is meant to interact with their modern “sharding” system which disables large numbers of players from gathering in one high density area very often.

Are you talking about ACTUAL lag (latency) where the server takes too long to recognize your actions?

Or are you talking about “lag” as in “low framerates” when there are lots of people and particle effects nearby?

The former seems fairly constant, with spell batching and what could be called a low tickrate.

The low framerate thing can be solved by turning down your settings.

I’m talking about server lag. I’ll edit my post to make that abundantly clear that I’m not referring to particle effects or client side framerate.

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https://streamable.com/i14fd

ItS fINe, I hArdLeY eVeR lAg!

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Honor ranking looks like it’s gonna be such compelling gameplay!

This is what it felt like in BRM, it was horrid.

As for them using the same client, behold the shortcomings of it in Retail. *Start it at 50seconds to see the lag.

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Yea it’s pretty sad. Private servers handled these situations without a hitch.

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