Lag Issues

[Despain]

If there's another thread, I apologized. I avoid using the search function most of the time because it never gives me the results I want.

That said, I decided to give WoW a second shot after re-formatting my computer. When I played it the first time, I lagged so horribly in highly populated areas (Stormwind) that I couldn't even move my character (took my 2 minutes for my character to even move a single step).

Now after re-formatting, I still get that lag, not as intense, but still bad enough for me not wanting to play the game again.

I doubt its my connection, doubt its my computer (or maybe it is). Thing is FFXI runs just fine, absolutely no problems, but for some reason WoW refuses to work in the same way.

[Siniroth]

Do you have your antivirus set to ignore it? I recall doing that helped my lag a LOT

[Eaglestrike]

Just because FFXI has a prettier art style doesn't mean it's actually more demanding on your computer or anything.

What are your shadow settings at? If those are turned up you quite likely could see a large improvement by turning them lower.

[Despain]

Whatever it comes as when you start a new account/character/whatever.

[Krye]

Turn all the settings to minimum and if that doesn't work buy a better computer

[Despain]

Probably gonna have to do the latter... its time for an upgrade anyway.

[Tonko]

There's basically 3 types of lag in WoW

Player induced - Shitty hardware, bad router/modem, too much other stuff open on your PC can, badly configured anti-virus. Any of these can cause slowness or disconnection.

Switch/enroute lag - One of the switches enroute from you to our servers is having issues. This can cause packet loss, increased ping times, and all sorts of other issues.

Our bad - Shit hits the fan at the 'ol server farm, and everyone either on the server, or a specific world (Kalimdor, Outlands, Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend, instances, BGs) experiences ability, looting, action lag. Or, at worst, right out disconnects.

How can you tell which it is? Is it just happening to you? Is it happening to some, but not all? Is it happening to everyone? Should be pretty obvious.

Also, a Game Master ticket about "waah waah I'm lagging" is useless. Call or e-mail tech support. Game Masters are not authorized nor trained to help with your lag issues. If you think it's Our Bad lag, use the Report Lag function from the /gm menu to let us know.

[D44kpunk]

YOU NEED MORE RAM BRAH

[Shenrien]

When I first started playing WoW I lagged like fuck, but I think its because what a game message came up on loading screen; when first starting or playing please give it a moment to load all models and what the players around you are loading in large cities as you'll be basically downloading packets and unpacking them to display them on your screen, I had this happen to me when I first started and my friend and I at level 1, playing on trial at the time cause I was unsure to play this or Aion, took me out from where ever the fuck the Night Elves starting point is, to Orgrimmar to wave at the dualing Lv.80 horde, need less to say we both died before we even saw anyone, and both had a high spike in lag.

Once you download the packets I don't think you'll be redownloading them ever again, that or its just a fucked up display then when you only have original WoW installed and everyone is running around in T10 and various other pieces of gear you get from WoTLK

edit - btw the mini map in this game is by far the shittiest thing I've experienced in the game lol D: I hate this stupid mini map.

[Gulkeeva]

Theirs mods to fix that minimap!

Also about ingame lag...

1. Wow uses about 650-900K memory in dalaran.
If your system has only like 2GB memory you'll want to upgrade to 4GB at least (6-8gb if using x64, especially win7) because its probably raping your hardrive to reread everything constantly in a place like dalaran.

2.If you use shadows, you'll want to have a video card that has at least 1GB memory. Shadows actually use the video card alot, wow goes from like 15-20% video card usage to like 60-70% on ultra (ati overdrive control panel "activity" on a radeon 5870)

3. Also if you use shadows you'll want a fast cpu (although wow runs mainly off 1 cpu, a lot of its tasks are offloaded to separate threads like the sound, video, other things).


on a side note, if you actually get alot of ram, you can always set in your WTF
SET textureCacheSize "536870912"
so once junk is loaded, your machine won't be reloading stuff again later

[Shenrien]

Theirs mods to fix that minimap!

So... is there an add on that will put a little arrow on quest to indicate weather the finish NPC is above you or below you? or same for all icons related to quest or even death (had to walk to a few instances after dieing and being new to the game got completely lost a few times)

[Gulkeeva]

oh unsure about that... theirs only indicator for when the npc is inside a building/cave ;/

[Aesctaa]

Vista SP1 eliminated my WoW graphical lag, other than the shitty OS the PC is extremely maxed, there was some issue with a certain OS process being checked every 15 seconds that overloaded the cpu and spiked the fps to basically 0 for a few seconds. the Vista SPs don't always automatically download either, so if you run Vista you might want to double check you actually have it updated.

I also noticed the WoW window can sometimes get very laggy on ATI cards, seemingly at random, but i found minimising the WoW window and bringing it up again and I'm instantly back to capped fps(possibly a card throttling issue but not really sure).

If neither of those apply and your PC is a few years old it could well be time for an upgrade.

[Gulkeeva]

add
SET maxFPSBk "200"
to your config.wtf

wow drops the fps to 30 when in the background, this can cause problems (and or some strange lagging issue when tabbing back) making the run at max at all times will fix the issue.

[Despain]

Bumping this to say I fixed the lag just in case anyone in the future has the same issue.

Went to bestbuy and bought 1 gig of ram. Problem fixed. I get absolutely no lag computer/game wise, only lag similar to r0'ing in FFXI, so its only from my connection every once and a while.

I have to say I enjoy this game 100% now, especially in battlegrounds. No one touches my Priest.

[Mife]

had same issue replaced ram and fixed it as well