Guild Wars 2

Dear ANet,

Since nearly a week or so I have been experiencing constant lag spikes. Some of them last around 20-30 seconds and cause me to disconnect, but most of the time, I cannot interact with NPCs or objects, loot bodies, my skills have the lag of a kitten and basically, the game is unplayable.

Before we get the response this has to be client based, I can guarantee it is not. On two different systems, both specced well above the requirements for GW2 (I7-2600k + ATI HD6850 and I7-740QM + ATI HD5870M) on different locations with different ISP’s (a 20Mb and 8Mb connection respectively) I get lag that really sucks all the fun out of the game.

It does not matter where I am in the game, in busy zones, or personal storylines, the lag happens everywhere, all the time. Could you be so kind to fix this? I soon will see myself forced to play something else instead cause I find the joy to be diminishing at a very quick rate.

Thank you very much!

Edit: Server = Desolation; Disconnects occurred on Gendarran Fields during personal storyline, Cursed Shore normal zone and Lornar’s Pass normal zone.

Since the recent patch, I’ve been experiencing massive lag spikes and frequent loss of connection in Sparkfly Fen. This does not happen to me anywhere else on the world map. It is perhaps worst when Tequatl is up, but also happens when questing normally in Sparkfly Fen. I’ve asked around and many people report the same issue in Sparkfly Fen only. I thought it would be fixed with the server crash patch, but it has not improved. Occasionally, the map itself seems to crash and kick handfuls of people at once, rolling back their status sometimes, but this is rare.

I’m not sure if you guys changed some texture or major feature of the map, but it makes the map almost unplayable.

I dunno this is a bug or not.. But really wanna know about it. 2 days ago I was just Strolling at “Straits Of Devastation” with my friend in the Green Circle Part (the attached picture) and Suddenly I got a really big Lag that made me get disconnected 3 times… Finally, my client crashed, and when I was trying to “Play” that one toon in Straits Of Devastation, it only shows the loading screen for 10 minutes+ and crashed, I tried this for over 14 times and keeps on doing the same thing. So I submitted a ticket where I was told to Update my Drivers etc. I thought my Laptop was the problem. After I Updated it, It was still only showing the Loading Screen and crash.. So now my one of my Toon is stuck in Straits of Devastation.. I decided to try it Again with my other toon and went to Straits Of Devastation, I went all around the Red Squared Area (The attached picture) and Finally went to the Green Circled part and then it happened, The Big Lag came and made me Disconnected only making me lost my 2 Main Characters, Stuck in the same place and because of the same problem.. What I am asking is.. “Do You Get Any Lag Around The Red Squared/Green Circled Part?” I do not think this is my Laptop’s fault and maybe because of that certain area has a bug that triggers major lag and makes my character Unable to Access Straits Of Devastation.. If You know anything about this, please Reply and I would Greatly Appreciate any help. I just love this game so much and I seem desperate to get help.. Thank You

I filed a bug report for this happening last night. I didn’t include the map I was on at the time in my message. Can they tell where I was at the time I reported it? or should I make a new bug report with that info in the message?

Sincerely,

A Noob

Also on Maguuma, and also having issues with Sparkfly Fen. Don’t have the problem in other areas of the game, or in other large events. I’ve been lagged out for seconds (or to the point of being disconnected) both during the dragon event, and when nearly nobody else is around the map. It does seem worse during the dragon event (the disconnects mostly happen during it), but the problem persists even without a crowd.

Out of paranoia, I tried heading there with another character, in case it was tied somehow to a specific one, but I have the same issues no matter who I bring into the area.

Sea of Sorrows
Experiencing:

• Skill lag
• Lag spikes
• Disconnects

So far this has happened on every map I’ve played on

• Orr – Cursed Shore and Malchor’s leap
• Lions Arch
• WvW – borderlands and Eternal BGs
• Snowden Drifts
• Diessa Plateau
• Fireheart Rise
• Citadel of Flame
• Fractals of the mist (allowing re-entry after DC has been a lifesaver here)
• Metrica Province
• Crucible of Eternity
• Mount Maelstrom
• Southsun Cove

Good luck!

For the second time, I got dc’ed during the tequatl fight, right as he goes down. I lost credit for doing the event and the chest. The last time, I got dc’ed 3 times during the fight. Please fix this, because now im afraid to even go in the zone during the event. Magumma server, btw.

Server: Yak’s Bend
Location: WvWvW area – Stormbluff Isle map
Date/time: Feb 7 approximately 9-10pm EST
What happened: I was in a big fight at one of the supply camps between us and defenders when all of a sudden my map just froze. A box popped up in the middle of the screen that said something about reporting some sort of error thing to Anet.

When I clicked on the submit button, a secondary screen popped up but the game closed down and I found myself looking at my desktop before I could even read what the box said.

Because the game client completely closed down so fast and I had no time to really see what was being asked, just adds to the mystery. Fortunately or not, I at least clicked a submit button so something may have been forwarded to Anet technical group.

Whatever happened? I have no idea. I’ve never seen that before and hope not to see it again. But whatever caused it is still a mystery. I was able to log back into the game and continue playing without further issues.

Is there some way I can provide any data that might shed some light on this?

Maguuma, Sparkfly Fen
Thank you for merging this. I hope you get it fixed soon.

I have it happening to me in WWW on FABL map, in Tarnished Coast, every day for the last week.

I almost never disconnected before last week.

And it is not my internet connection, everything still works fine, just GW2.

Also, when I try to login immediatly, it says login server not available. I got to wait a minute or two. Which is just enough time to go to the bathroom, but still, still!

I’ve always had FPS issues in random parts of the game. Taking my Charr to the Black Citadel has historically meant enduring sub-10 FPS for a time. Of course, I also witnessed culling in open world PvE occasionally. It was annoying, but not game-breaking.

Since the 1/28 patch culling is a persistent, universal problem in the game. In any moderately populated DE enemy presence must be inferred by friendlies near you beating the air. I play through it but it truly borders on being absolutely game-breaking.

Knowing the nature of culling (server-side) I didn’t think the problem was on my end. I’ve chatted other players and they’ve agreed that the problem is much worse after the patch. I’m on TC which is most likely heavily guested post patch and don’t know whether this is significant to the problem. The odd thing is that the patch was to address culling (largely or exclusively in WvW—I don’t know) to some degree. In a patch that targeted culling, why are players now dealing with much, much worse culling? It would be helpful to have an Anet comment on this just to assure the playerbase that the game will become playable at some point in the near future. Just having the problem acknowledged would be helpful.

Jason King.2647:

Thank you for the reports, everyone.

We’ve been hearing about sporadic reports of lag leading to disconnects, but they’re all on different maps and different servers. If you can let us know which server you’re seeing this on, in addition to the map name (which most of you have included) it may help us track down the root cause.

Thanks again; we hope to get this nailed down soon!

Jason, are there any data files that players can submit to help you with this? I found several files in my GW2 program folder that were dated and about the same time of this issue. ArenaNet (text document); Crash.dmp (dmp file). If any of these can assist in helping you, who would I send them to please.

Hi, just to say I also experiment lag spikes followed most of the time by a disconnect.
So far, I only got those lag in Sparkfly Fen when fighting Tequatl. It is frustrating since so far I missed about 5-6 chests due to this bug. As others have said, it started about 1-2weeks ago, before that I was almost never getting lag and/or disconnection.
Thank you.
Server : Maguuma.
Map : Sparkly Fen.
Bug : Lag and disconnect during Tequatl Event.

Getting really bad lag, very long loading screens and disconnects. Usually when traveling to (or point to point) in lions arch or heart of the mists. I’m on Desolation server. Getting sick of this. Is really spoiling the game now

Tarnished Coast server.

I get both disconnects and crashing to desktop. It happens constantly when I have to travel to an area that has load screens, especially into cities like Lion’s Arch and Divinity’s Reach, but it also almost always happens trying to get into Fractals. I crash during large dragon events, as well. There’s been about four times now within the past week that I’ve been fighting a dragon and, right before it dies, I crash and when I come back on there’s no chest. Big waste of time since I’m trying to save up money for an item, I wish I could actually somehow predict when it’s going to happen.
As for lag, it’s really bad during combat for me. Especially during Fractals. Not constant lag that just slows things down, but just these really horrible lag spikes where I can’t move or attack and I’ll very often come out of it dead. I hate letting down my party but there’s nothing I can do about it, it’s embarrassing because it makes it look like I’m just standing there staring off into space while I get destroyed.
And in WvW, well.. A lag spike like that is a complete disaster. WvW is laggy enough as it is and has culling issues, without several second long spikes on top of it.

Tarnished Coast server / Harathi Hinterlands map

Had 3 disconnects in the last two hours.

There is currently a huge snowstorm passing through New England, but since I can reconnect immediately, and no other connectivity has been lost outside of GW2, it does not seem to be a local or ISP issue attributable to the storm.

Maguuma server / Sparkfly Fen map, just now.

Tequatl event absolutely unplayable, everyone on the map reported lag. I disconnected twice during the fight, didn’t get credit/the chest at the end. Got a whisper from another user who also disconnected twice.

Lag seemed to go away entirely after the dragon was dead.

Blackgate – WvW TC Borderland

This bug is also now yet another bug that happens some of the time during the Claw of Jormag… along with the crashing sound bug that so many have.

Sea of Sorrows
I too have always had FPS issues, but lately it seems to have been spiking to leading to a massive server disconnect that takes me right down to the start screen. When I go to relog in, it takes almost five minutes to just get to the character screen.
I have had to avoid doing any of the massive group events and the dungeons because of it. Lion’s Arch is a pain and I avoid going in until I really have to.

Jade Quarry….

1st time I’ve ever had connection issues with this game. My 80 thief is now stuck inside the Fractals of the Mist after repeated lag spikes and disconnects followed by the game being unable to connect to the server. I can log onto my 80 elementalist and there is currently no problem. Even when this was occurring on the thief my FPS was around 48-52, then bam….lag out disconnect. I have a sneaky suspicion that the new wooden chests placed on the ground for above average loot may be triggering a disconnect. Call me crazy, but it happened about 6 times right after looting one of these chests while in the fractals zone. It was the harpies map if that helps at all. The times I was able to get back in I was dead outside of the FoTm entrance, and upon zoning back in after being resurrected i was dead inside the zone. Awesome way to rack up a repair bill. Please get this fixed, I can’t imagine its not a top priority.

All sorts of lags and disconnects, on kaineng server inall maps ive been on doing anything. thanks.

Sanctum of Rall / Frostgorge Sound
Finally found this thread again! general running around is frustratingly unplayble, let alone trying to do Jormag’s Claw. I was d/c’ed at least eight times during the event for him tonight.

This is happening in Lions Arch also, every time I logged on tonight I got disconnected with a minute or two. (Sanctum of Rall).

Let me guess, you can’t replicate it.

Does anyone know how to find the IP address of a server to ping it? The game is nigh unplayable and I can’t tell if the servers are broken, or my connexion to them is terrible suddenly, or what.

On second thought, I take back the ‘nigh’ part. This is even worse than yesterday, the game is just utter trash right now.

Fighting oakhearts for a skill challenge in gendarran fields, I was getting bounced around all over the place by knockback attacks that weren’t even originating at the creature which used them.

Prior to that, I fought a single one nearby, and for the first half of the fight I literally could not dodge its attacks. Around the middle it changed so that I couldn’t be hit by them, and then for the rest it was back to being impossible to dodge.

I’ve been getting the daily today by just dodging randomly in fights, and hoping something happened to attack around the correct time. This is pathetic.

Tarnished Coast
Queensdale & Ascalonian Catacombs

I don’t think the map is the issue, because I experience the same symptoms regardless of what map I’m on. Skills and context-sensitive actions refuse to work, and then I’m disconnected shortly thereafter,

My wife and I have both seen the lag issue and the lag and getting kicked is independent of the common network here.

What I have noticed while venturing throughout the map is that there are a lot of places where the map developer/s left brushes and/or meshes that are overlapping duplicates. I would suggest running a check on the raw maps coordinates for brushes and meshes and find all of the duplicates first. These stray brushes and and collision boundaries can generate a huge problem at the server and client end inducing lag as well as detracting from the whole of the map by creating areas where two textures occur in the same location, and one is not correctly aligned to the axis of the surface creating black holes and hashing.

There are also several areas where the visual effects such as darkened cave entries and simulation for sun rays are incorrectly executed. One should always ensure that by climbing items such as sun rays do not terminate below the point of view of the player. Changes in lighting conditions at cave entrances for example should be performed by use of lighting environment variables.

On the whole I would have to venture that whomever worked on this particular map was hurried. On the whole this area is cluttered with annoyances that detract from what otherwise would have been an awesome area.

Good luck scrubbing this huge area of problems as an ex mapper for HL & HL2 DM maps I think someones got their wok cut out for them as the copy and paste monster left to a lot of duplicate items that went missing from the eyes of the mapper but not the rendering process.

About dragon event lag..
I realized, it’s not the large groups causing the lag, at least on Tarnished Coast. I’ve been to dragon events with just a tiny handful of people and it lagged just the same, and I’ve played wvw with larger groups than you ever see at dragon events, usually without even a quarter as much lag.. and wvw is laggy to begin with. At Claw of Jormag, using a skill causes a delay of well over a dozen seconds., and everything grinds down nearly to a halt. Similar with Tequatl and Shatterer, but Claw is the worst. Even Zhaitan induces lag in Arah. And thinking back, in the Sylvari opening with the big nature dragon, the game lags there, too.

I suspect there might be an issue with the dragons themselves. The game only drops down into crushing levels of lag when the dragons land.

Ive played the game till January 6th and stop playing for a while. All that time i never had any lag issue of any kind.

Now i say to myself, Hey why not get back to GW2 might be fun with new content.
I log in to find that i have minimum 500ms on my Skills. On any map, i get that Horrible and unplayable lag on my skills, doesnt seem to affect the movement, such as walking and jumping but thats the least of my concern of i have to wait nearly an entire second to shoot a fireball.

I might keep logging from time to time to see if this is fix but until then i wont play.

Best of luck to you to fix that.

Server: Sea of Sorrows

Since the maintenance when the servers shut down I have frequently experience lag spikes and disconnections in Caledon Forest, on Stormbluff Isle.

i am having same issue thort it was me so ran scan and upgrades Graphics card and problem ongoing, but i have notice i created a new charter and no bugg . only my other 2 bugged

Cursed Shore
Isle of Janthir
It feels like it’s an interruption of the data stream, like the server simply stops talking to me.
When it kicks in people who are moving appear to keep moving in that direction, their avatar following the last instruction received (and continue to run against whatever eventually stops them).
Mobs stop and stand still, but it’s not like a hard lock, they still do their standing still animations (as do players who were not moving when it happens).
I can still move around (I heard character movement was client side, if that’s true that might explain why I can still move around), but cannot interact with anyone/anything, nor can I use skills or deposit collectables.
I can’t find anything that seems to act as a trigger, though I seem to see it more when in combat, but that could simply be I’m just noticing it more in combat.
If it starts while I have a Cluster Bomb (thief shortbow #2) in the air when it happens the arcing animation finishes playing, but the explosion doesn’t occur until it resumes the connection, but since mobs seem to be server side (for good reason) they frequently aren’t where they would have been if it had exploded on time.

It’s also getting progressively worse. When it started happening it would resume gameplay maybe 80% of the time after 3-20 seconds, by the time I gave up last night it was ending in a full disconnect every time. It would give me the client has lost connection message and then sit at a black screen instead of going to the character select screen.

One thing I noticed, if I log out to character select when it starts and immediately back in it seems to force a reconnection to the data stream and things progress normally, at least until it happens again.

The worst part is the loot I keep losing when it fully disconnects me, probably just more porous bones, but still.

Edit:
Figured I should mention
I use Verizon (small chance but it is possible it’s the ISP dropping/throttling the traffic)
I have not installed any software/updates/patches/drivers recently (it’s been months)

Just in case it’s still useful.

Server: Jade Quarry
Map: Twilight Arbor Explorable

The rest of the game will run fine, but there has been a repeating issue (starting some time in Jan) where entering TA results in frequent lag spikes and between 1-5 disconnects during the dungeon. Doesn’t happen every dungeon run, but if it happens for one it’ll happen for others runs done afterwards.

The game will have been running fine before entering the dungeon. After finishing the dungeon, the game returns to normal with no further disconnects, no further lag spikes. Restarting the client and returning to the dungeon the lag/disconnects return – it’s linked to that dungeon instance.

When TA does that, there’s usually a minumum of 2 people in the group affected, and there’s been at least one run where NO-ONE got through the run without disconnecting at least once (2 group members in Aus, other 3 in the US, all on different ISPs), and two disconnected more than 3 times (that was the worst one we’ve seen). It was frustrating to disconnect at the start of a boss, run back in (no waypoints!) to reach the boss before it dies (Malrona), try to hit it and immediately disconnect again.

I’ve been effected by these disconnection and error messages virtually nonstop for over a week now, since last client update. I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what’s wrong with my machine/internet etc. Glad I found this thread, but I really need a fix so that I can play the game. Well it be fixed for the upcoming content update?

Jason King.2647:

Thank you for the reports, everyone.

We’ve been hearing about sporadic reports of lag leading to disconnects, but they’re all on different maps and different servers. If you can let us know which server you’re seeing this on, in addition to the map name (which most of you have included) it may help us track down the root cause.

Thanks again; we hope to get this nailed down soon!

Yak’s Bend
-Lions Arch
-Orr
-Fractals and any other dungeons
-Queensdale or any other starting areas for that matter

Loading screen takes forever to finish, when its done I move for a few seconds and can’t do anything because of the delay. After a few minutes I end up dead.

Server: Aurora Glade
Area: all (spvp/wvw/pve/dungeons)

At random times severe lag causing spell-delay and characters warping over my screen while I can’t move. Chat is fine, talking on teamspeak with guildies is without lag/delay. This happens at random times, usually in timeframes of 10-15mins where there is severe lag, after which it seems all is fine for an hour or so, sometimes a few hours.

This causes dungeons to be annoying, WvW and sPvP being unplayable as I can’t move and get my kitten kicked in just a few seconds.

This has been happening for me since the major december update and is so kitten annoying I’m considering just quitting, cause the playing is not done.

Personally, I have no problems with long loading times (not even during a laggy period). However, I did notice recently that my mouse seems very sluggish in general while inside the game, but I have not yet found the cause for this.

Jason King.2647:

Thank you for the details, everyone!

We believe we’ve identified the root cause behind this, and the good news is that it’s not related to your hardware, ISP, or account. Unfortunately, we’ve also determined that this is going to be an ongoing project on our end, so we don’t have an estimate on when it will be completely fixed.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

Sever: Eredon Terrace
Map: WV3 ET Borderlands

This issue began for me the night before you released the most recent patch. Now everytime I get into a good fight the client will freeze or pause. Sometimes I will disconnect or other times I will resume play to see my character laying dead on the map, a fight I never got to play concluded. And then I have to pay repair bills… Its frustrating. I’ve not played enough content outside WV3 to know if it is affecting me there as well.

I’ve noticed really terribly FPS problems in Lion’s Arch over the past couple weeks or so.

I thought it was my new video card, as I had just put it in and things started behaving oddly, but it’s only in Lion’s Arch. Outside LA I can get 80-90 fps, but in LA, I only get 25-30. It’s odd, and I’m not sure what’s going on, but moving around LA is a pain with all of the lag.

I also just about got dc’ed in Fireheart Rise a couple days ago as well. Lagged out to a standstill for about 20-30 seconds before finally coming back.

My server is Borlis Pass.

Thanks!

Haven’t had this problem since a week or so ago the (last time I posted here). So maybe they’ve fixed it for some players/servers? Or maybe its just random.

I play on Jade Quarry btw.

i’m not haveing any lag problems or none that i’ve noticed but i do have a huge amount of game crashes ever since the jan update.
never had them before the update but i now have atleast 2 an hour and have had upto 5 in an hours worth of play.
the main problem i have with this is that i WvW so not only am i haveing a game crash i’m also getting charged twice for it (armour repair and waypoint cost) and i’m rewarding our opposing server aswell (if i was in combat at the time which isn’t always the case)
as you can imagine this has cost me quite a bit by now and i’m sure the same can be said for others.
server: fissure of woe
location: anywhere in WvW
other info: in or out of battle, waypointing or any other action other than simply running around seems to be what triggers it.

i am getting serious lag n delay n on top of that, tech support say i am experiencing packet loss, which is impossible since i am using a 100mbps optic fibre and have no prob playing other games with servers located in NA

Jason King.2647:

Thank you for the reports, everyone.

We’ve been hearing about sporadic reports of lag leading to disconnects, but they’re all on different maps and different servers. If you can let us know which server you’re seeing this on, in addition to the map name (which most of you have included) it may help us track down the root cause.

Thanks again; we hope to get this nailed down soon!

Please fix this already… ive had this problem for 15 days now. really enjoy the game over 1500 hours spent into it only to be ruined by this problem. Fix it

Right now in game I can getting a continuous 3-5 second lag, on spells/walking/chat everything. Getting kittening kitten off now, I can’t even play normally …

edit; even the market has a delay.
rebooted pc/router/everything but didn’t help, it’s on your end.

Constant disconnects in Orr
in dungeons
now standing in town as well
Not to be hyperbolic but the game is nearly unplayable like this

I too have been experiencing near constant lag and frequent DCs for the past several weeks. I play on the Blackgate server. It does not seem to matter where in-game I am, or what I’m doing. I get lag in story instances, walking through quiet areas solo, storming the gates of Arah with 50 other players, or simply trying to use the trading house in a hub city.

I have gone through everything I can think of; router & firewall settings, drivers, speed tests, anti-virus, heck I even opened my rig and did a complete Dust-Off cleaning; but still I lag, l..a..g, L…A…G, and then get dropped. I’ve been dropped more than half a dozen times this morning alone. It only happens to GW2 too. I can have video streaming in the background, AV scans running, etc…and the only thing that dies is GW2. I resent having to spend any free time double checking my system and connections. GW2 is something I do to relax and unwind.

Whatever is wrong seems to be server side. And frankly, it has made the game an unplayable mess.

I look forward to a swift resolution to this poor coding/implementation issue. If not, there are any number of other games I can play.

My Sys (all fully patched, current drivers, etc.)
i5-2400 @3.1Ghz
12 GB RAM
GTX 560 /1GB VRAM
Window 7 64-bit
ISP = ComCast , speed test & network monitor show 12-15 Mbps.

Jason King.2647:

Thank you for the details, everyone!

We believe we’ve identified the root cause behind this, and the good news is that it’s not related to your hardware, ISP, or account. Unfortunately, we’ve also determined that this is going to be an ongoing project on our end, so we don’t have an estimate on when it will be completely fixed.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

Any update on this? I haven’t been able to play for 2-3 weeks now; it would be a lot easier to have patience if I had any understanding of the issue at all. :P

The game has been a complete disgrace from day one,due to this terrible connectivity! The problems have been clearly logged all over the internet since the release and STILL NO CHANGE!!! If I were not impressed by the games actual features I would have taken the game back months ago instead of ‘giving it a go’ every week.