EZ Server

Ok, lately I have had my fair share of issues with running  clients on EZ Server.  I have done a complete system restore, just in case I had a virus or something else causing issues.  I have reinstalled the game....but I am still having issues with lag and high ping rates.  When I zone my crew of 12...I will loose 9 of the 12 on zoning.   Those that make it will ping around 100-700ms.  I am debating about running 12 different clients and having WinEQ just load each client individually...instead of running 2 clients (one for main and a bots folder running the other 11 toons)....maybe have a folder for main 1 bot 1, bot 2, bot 3, bot 4, bot 5, bot 6...etc etc to bot 12....think that would help?  Just trying to find a way to get EZ to be reliable like it use to be for YEARS....the past 2 months have been like fingernails on a chalk board.

No, that won't fix anything.

Ok, ok, it might. I don't know, sometimes really random shit happens with computers, but in general it doesn't matter if they're all loading from the same folder or not.

That won't really make a difference in my opinion, the server has been acting up. I get the same disconnect too. Only reason to use different folders is for different global files.

Saw this and had to stop and wonder if all this happened around the same time....tell queues...could that be the issue?

Without fail my Ranger, Shaman, and Cleric almost always crash while zoning.. And no one ever sends them tells for anything. Unless the tell queue just universally strikes down one toon out of 10 that zone. Since i usually have the same troubled toons (My main 6 + enc really never crash, part of the reason i don;t always log in everyone), i've often wondered if it s a funky valeue or something in the individual character's info files.

All my toons will eventually lag from 59ish ping to 130+ and then zoning becomes an issue. It's odd.

I notice the lag get bad either when I first zone in or ive been in the zone a while

if its when I first zone in, I rezone to somewhere else then come back

if it is as the zone ages I take that as a clue to just log off /shrug

either way this lagging thing has been going on 2-3 months now

the time it really pisses me off is when im looting and I loot the body, hit my loot key and it goes back to the same corpse I just looted......grrrrrr

what have I changed in the past 3 months? nothing, I have updates turned off, I use 2 folders for logging in

Stupid question, but have you tried
/hidec looted

Must admit I personally haven't had these problems, and I'm in the UK
Ping is generally around 100ms

Only issue I have noticed is the game freezes every now and again, sometimes for like 5-10 secs
And when a mini boss is spawned in T6 from trash, it hangs for a second

But not had issues with disconnects / zoning etc, I do get client crash now and again, but that's a UF issue, as it's always done that

Just wondering if Akka has looked into this or not, as it started slightly (for me) before Halloween.  I am getting to the point now that when my toons get booted while zoning, I just shut the computer down and go find something else to do.  :-\

I never had any problems before Halloween, but during the event I had bad lag and server desync so I went to 2 folders, 1 for main and the others with modified globals. Have had these problems ever since.

yes, I actually always have this on/done. I am talking you loot, the body disappears, but there is a lag in it disappearing so you end up looting the same corpse twice. when things are working right, it will loot as fast as I can hit the button and go to the next body np.

I mostly see this happening on my toons, not on Rent.

same here, and once again, i do dual folders as well..

It might have something to do with a stripped out global load file, or going (1 dke, dke) on the zone load files.

I don't think that's the issue as one folder is unchanged (my main toon and off tank) the other (bot folder) is modified and both have issues.  I am just hearing from the powers that be, that the issues cant be server side...but I am seeing more and more people coming out and saying that something is going on.  The closest I can come to putting a finger on anything is the tell que system....I am wondering if that hasn't created the whole issue.  My only other suggestion is something with daily missions...that was when I first started noticing a change.  I don't know if queue tells came at/around the same time or not as the dailies though.

just tried to log in again....started (pinging at 64ms) within 5 minutes was pinging at 1600ms and had incredibly hard time getting toons to even log in.  Would make it to character select and then just stick between that and entering world. I am getting the feeling you guys have put my isp address in the file to mess with lol.

Without fail - every time I zone 1-4 characters crash. I hover around 50ms ping and really latency is not the issue. The clients freeze on zoning. This is happening much more frequently lately... Would love to know if there is a fix for this. I do not think it is on my end, computer is running great and internet is stable. Let me know if there's something I can do. Thanks.
-Harthek

Lets try and keep this to one thread. Otherwise shit never will get done http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=4520.msg58531;topicseen#new

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3932417982.png

First time seeing this thread or hearing about it since I've been extremely busy with work with a flood of projects and some of them very massive.

If we're having an issue, I'm going to correct it. It looks like you guys have been trying to draw commonalities in what your issues could possibly be related to and that is helpful.

What I'd like to ask about some of these issues.

When characters drop during zone, are you currently in an Expedition? Is there a zone that strikes issues more often than others?

When characters drop, is it a client crash or is it a client hang?

If it's a client crash, I need people to send me an E-Mail at akkadius@live.com IMMEDIATELY after having a client crash. Upload me your logs/dbg.txt file describing what happened right before hand to the crash incident. This dbg.txt file clears as soon as you start the client again so it is very important to do as instructed otherwise it does not help me.

Are the issues with the server necessarily performance related or are they specific to a subset of issues such as client drops on zoning?

For a long time we've had the server screaming and stable, and if its not - we'll bring it back.

It's difficult to articulate, thanks for the questions to put a logic to it..

First of all, most agree it started near Halloween, but didnt become an epidemic really until after.

For me it's  certain toons mainly.. My Shaman, Ranger, Enchanter, and (omg everytime) Cleric. Some were postulating it was due to the /tell queue issue. I can guarantee non of these toons are ever sending or receiving /tells. Period. And my toon who does most often (Warrior, and Kanyon the pally as well) never drop while zoning. So i doubt strongly tell /queues are involved.

It doesnt seem to be expedition based. I finish my expeditions quickly, I'll notice crashes more often in t9 and t7. Maybe loading the wide open landscapes? /shrug. I think expeditions get bad raps because of the connection to House Garden Event for Halloween, when the server was crashing left and right at times (and then, of course, we actually were in an expedition).

Anytime i crash i get the MQ2 protect msg, and as soon as i hit ok on that the screen closes. It's also almost always one of the last couple toons i have loaded in (hence, shm/clr/rng/etc, instead of vital toons).

Some people are complaining about loot lag at times, but that seems situational to time of day (busy times) and certainly not a constant issue. From what i've observed with my own eyes and in ooc reactions is mainly that zoning toons is often an adventure.

As to my personal guess, I'm assuming its got something to do with either the latest spell file or just the halloween makeover of the nexus still being involved. It fits the timeline, we havent had any spellfile updates since then, and there just may be some weird bits of data slightly changed that make nexus a death trap cuz its trying to render some whacky bat decor in some odd corner or something. That would explain why it started happening haloween time, and persists.

Peeps, are we noticing this more often zoning into Nexus? or is it unilateral across the board to any zone?

For me it happens when zoning into t8/t9/when zoning into an expedition.  Some toons will make it in others don't.  Seems everything just hangs and I have to close the client down and reboot it.  When I zone with 12 toons I may zone over with 3 or 6 the others have hung up somewhere in the ethos. Makes logging in very tedious.  Often when toons do log over ping rates are incredibly high.  Some toons will be at 60ms...others at 500-700 (and the number sometimes will continue to climb rapidly to around 1k). Ping rates (for me anyway) have been unusually high as I use to always ping around 50ms or so with 12 toons to around 120ms now. That is why I posted the link from the internet post sight ookala (or whatever it is called) to show what my cable speed ping and upload/download speed is.  I mean if it is my end, that's cool, if its your end, its cool...I just don't understand what is going on.  Of course if it is your end, all the better, you guys are smart enough to fix it...if it's my end I'm just fudged...and I am NOT thinking fudged....just keeping it PG.  ;D

Not sure if this helps or not.....but I didnt get anything from Halloween, and I am having none of the issues described in any zone. Perhaps something related to one of the newer Halloween items?

The chars that drop seem to be random it is not first or last in it just happens to hang on a few here and there. Seems that if just idling in a zone i jump to outrageous ping times. This happened during the Halloween event and many including myself complained about it (read the post on Halloween there are tons of posts on there). Not really sure what the issue is. I do know that i was helping you the night before running those tests. you seen me with all 18 on doing multiple zones across multiple zones and toons with no issues. next day i can even log in :/

From what I can tell, a majority of issues seem to stem from the Halloween character files that were made for Nexus.

Delete nexus_chr.txt from your client directory. See how that fairs on your client if you are having crashing issues.

Issues related to lag and desync could happen from a lack of available bandwidth with the amount of characters you are running. EverQuest has always ran for the most part on UDP messaging which means that it doesn't really do any handshaking or verifying that certain messages have been received and if you are saturating your connection there is no reliable way to recover that at the protocol level so you are bound to see some mixed results.

Looking for that nexus_chr.txt....only file I can find close to that is nexus_chr.s3d........where would I find nexus_chr.txt?  in a folder inside the client because I don't see it.
 ???

This was downloaded from the Halloween event, if you don't have it in there then you should be in good shape.

If you're still having problems we need to troubleshoot your problems separately.

Yeah I did a full system restore after I kept having issues.  Was trying to see if it was anything on my end.  reinstalled the game and still having some issues...is why I haven't logged on much as of late.  Just not worth getting aggravated over.  :-\

All desync issues I've ever had, has been related to bandwidth, either on the server end or my end.

I don't understand the bandwidth issues?  I have the same internet that I had prior and box the same number of toons on cable that I did on dsl...only having issues during/after Halloween this year.  Posted my upload/download/ping rates...so don't see where that is the issue.

The fall back is always blame the "connection" issues even if it's not. It's the easy answer to give. Most of the time it does apply, however this amount of people having this same issue, the bandwidth response does not fit. 

Don't confuse what I have said for a specific diagnosis, I'm giving probable causes and effects for particular issues.

I'm still very confident in figuring out folks issues, but I need data.

Ideally I would like everyone to have trouble-free experience regardless of whether or not it is solely at the server end.

You're probably right, unless it's on the server end of things.

I'm not savvy to the server connection process or anything but I live in SoCal and my ping is around 115 avg, hitting 300 occasionally. I used trace route to the login server and my ping up to hop 13 was 2~3ms. Hop 14 was 115ms in Connecticut somewhere so it's not on my end. Something is going on for sure.
Oddly enough I was looking at dbg.txt and there was this line "getting_weathereport" or some such which I hear is normal but it was in there 4 times in a row. Maybe it was having a hard time handshaking?

Really?  Not savvy?  I don't know if what you said was factual or not...but it sounded like you are very savvy to the computer illiterate,like me  :D

I've been on travel and <fill in any other excuse for being crazily busy here>.

Anyways, is this an issue for folks? This is not something that I want to let sit if there are performance issues still lingering, to me there is not excuse to be having quality of life issues when there is something that can be done about it.

The problem is getting enough data to correlate and pinpoint what the issue is.

I'm not sure if this dove tails in with this thread or not, but I have noticed that when I do T9 with another player I get some pretty bad lag. They do as well.

When I do the zone by myself, no issues, do it all the time. But, I have recently been tag teaming with other people to pass the time easier and I've found you just get horrible lag  :-\

btw, the lag is not just on my end, but they report it as well.

its kind of like our zones don't mind 12,000 instances, but they don't like 2 different players in one zone if that makes sense lol. The server wants us solo!

anyway, thanks Akka for shedding light on this if you can

Recently (last couple months) I've also had zones completely freeze on me and crash with only two toons in there, or even solo. Mostly happens when I am looting. Like halfway thru an HoH pile or qvic trash, it's just pulled up loot window, wont let me loot the item, then stays there indefinitely (until I /q). As well as large lag in some of the more regularly used zones; Nexus, T6, etc.

-Anuli

Akka,
I know this is little to no help but the server was purring like a kitten before the Halloween event. There were multiple issues at that time, disconnects crashing and then we had the server attacks. The crashing etc... I think was due to the files as I have not had any issues since I reverted files and stopped using slim globals. With that said the server has been odd ever since Halloween and really since you patched the tell queues. It is experiencing a lag like symptom that effect characters randomly and usually after a zone. Perfect example is I /bcaa //say enter guild stonehive and all 18 toons will zone. A few out of the 18 will show in zone, their groups bars will display that they are not in the same zone. I can run the toon around manually but it wont response to /bca commands. About 30 seconds after that toon zones in, I will see the spam that it joined the raid in say with all others, the group bars will show in zone and the character will respond to /bca commands but it may experience loot lag or server lag. I have never noticed this before and have no idea if its related to anything. Honestly its random enough to not be a big dealer really, I can function as it is.

my 2 cents worth, I think it all revolves around expeditions and that last server file/source update

something just doesn't quite jive with what we had going on.

its like the gears line up and turn but not perfectly  ??? ::) :o

idk, just my thoughts

I can tell it won't be easy but I will figure out what's going on, may have to spend a weekend troubleshooting what's going on.

It makes it even more difficult when you cannot reproduce it and it is intermittent.

Load up 6 or 7 toons...then zone a few times....you will see the issues..

pulling 30 mobs in tov last night I had several toons suddenly at char select....(including my paladin and druid)

so on zoning from wipe i lost 2 more toons...


I can normally pull up to 40+ before I have any kind of desync..

I only run 8 toons

For me it is very intermittent,  and eventually results in near lock up for 5 seconds or so.  What it feels like is that snoop/jail code that was installed in T-6 to detect trains.  I get small lag pulses from time to time and the longer I am in zone the worse the lag gets.  

very true, in T9 if I pull more than say 40 mobs, insta DC on all toons. this has happened 3-4 times this week.

also true on the amount of time you stay in the zone, more time = more lag. This is most noticeable in looting, when you first zone in you can loot as fast as you can hit the buttons, over time tho the corpses do not disappear as fast after being looted. PITA!

also something ive noticed is the older the zone is the less it works properly. ie: spawning HG, when I first create an instance its smooth sailing, by the end of the day I am killing at least 2x the amount of mobs to get HG to spawn. after 12-14 hours of being logged into the zone, forget it, takes forever to spawn.

*wru zerka*

anyway, it just seems as if the zone deteriorates and doesn't work correctly the longer you stay.

I might be wrong here, but im not entirely sure it is our server. I think it might be the log in server getting flooded.

Here is my theory,

Basically i have noticed the log in server has been changing our server # even in the middle of the day lately. I.e yesterday i couldnt even log in watchyoudie for about 3 min first it wouldnt connect to the server then it wouldnt pull up the server select screen then it wouldnt load into the zone. All this happened on server number (x). next attempt log in pretty much ok. load the .bat file and noticed the server # had changed from the one i just entered from the 1st few attempts when my toon logged into the wrong server. fixed the server # logged in just fine. I have noticed on other occasions that the server # has changed in the middle of the day before where i have had to edit my autologin info. Now from what i have noticed and i may be wrong here ... but it seems like on zoning into a zone it reconnect to the login server to validate your info before zoning you in. if the login server is having issues (like it has been) then it may cause zoning to lag. Also when i sit afk in a zone as i said sometimes my ping jumps to ridiculously high ping times (sometimes well over 3k) even when im sitting in the zone alone by myself) it is possible that after x amount of time the client refreshes with the login server to validate. I remember these issues on live and a few exploits of this.


Ok now a full list of my problems that i am having.

Last week my ping times were great this week (starting sunday) 1 time i had a really high ping but other than that was all under 200ms (still pretty high on 100mb connection)

Most zones i did great zoning into however i had multiple client crashes zoning into stonehive. then multiple crashes zoning into the expiditions. (for some reason it didnt even port my whole group only 1 or 2 toons and i had to manually do the rest) and they still crashed. after completing the first level of the dungeon i had no issues with crashing clients, however the server # changed (why it raised a flag for me ... also noticed a few other times too). finished exp went to t5 dungeon only ported me had to manually do the rest (also had to manually hail all toons to get credit for quest)

now i havent played in weeks because of the damn issues, so if you go back and read this thre the other thread and the Halloween thread. People have been experience similar issues some dont report it some do.

Im not getting rolling lag like kwai unless I'm pulling MASS trains (i.e. all of hoh at onces)

I am experience the multi person lag like others though, this issue has been around longer than what this thread is for though. (this issue seems to be almost of if the instance is "hosted" and another person joins and with the multi data stream it desyncs with the server sometimes.

I've had that problem for a while now. Some toons zone, some get hung up and I have to reboot their client. I've noticed that if you sit in a zone for a period of time before porting, the toons will port fine. For instance. I pull too many, wipes the raid. Everyone zones to raid spot. If I immediately /bca say enter guild oldcommons, over half will crash on that zone. If I let the raid sit for 3-5 mins before porting them, 99% of them make it except for that 1 box that always has the high ping.

I think we're onto something with the zone dropping issue in the coders channel. I'll update when I know more.

So Rent and I spent a good amount of time tonight testing Akka's fix for the zoning issue...

The good news is, whatever he did seems to be working really, really well.

Result = exactly zero crashes on zoning and improved zoning speed.

When these changes are implemented I think everyone will be pleased as punch ;D

There is no bad news!

That's good news :)

Most of these are non-issues now. You can pretend there was never any problems.

Having this issue again Akka with RoF2 client. Client completely locks up, won't pop up, window non-responsive (can't click X or anything) and have to ctrl alt del to get rid of the client. says eqgame.exe caused the crash.

Keep RoF2 related stuff in a separate thread, and again I'll need detail

If this has been reported before I apologize.

A fair number of my chars had 3.5 weapons still, when I turned the weapon into the epic dude with the 4.0 book the weapon dude returned a 3.5 aug rather than a 4.0 aug!? (attempted the upgrade on two separate chars) I even tried to preemptively switch out the weapon for a 3.5 aug but that didn't do anything, he just gave it back. So the nuts and the bolts of it is, it looks like I'll have to do 2 4.0 fights per weapon and 4 per duel wielding chars... that's not a huge deal but still more of a time sink that I wanted to get into... My crew is getting pretty big these days.

Anyone know of a work around to this?

Deadend

Only need 1 epic per toon now unless you swap out for stuff. It sucks but not a huge issue here as most have switched since the change. If you need help with mcp if I'm on (watchyoudie) I'll give you a hand.

Awesome - thanks for the offer. I should be all set, Mcp has proven to be much easier than he use to be:)

Deadend

hey i started 5 times Bloodmoon Temple Expidition and always get portet in wrong one " Dranik blabla" .. hopefully anyone can fix it!