Guild Wars 2

Over the past ~3 or so days I’ve had incredibly bad ping spikes. I live in central NSW Australia where my ping is usually around ~300 at average. This I can deal with.

For some reason I have been getting up to 10,000 ping. This is not a network or router issue, as I’ve heard people complaining about it in my guild as well as map chat, as well as resetting the router and making sure that my internet isn’t capped. This is something that is only affecting gw2.

I was on my main elementalist when the game dced on me. I know I parked her in LA near the bank, but apparently she’s in Cursed Shore with 0% WC, when I’ve recently finished 100% WC with her. Not to mention that the game automatically dcs when I try to log in on her.

I would like to know if the devs are aware of this issue and if there is a fix coming. This is game-breaking for me. It takes 4 seconds between pressing a skill and it activating – and that’s only if there isn’t any enemies or players nearby. Then it gets up to 10+ seconds.

I can confirm that there is something wrong with SEA and oceanic connections, I asked in map chat and players from these areas all experience unusual lag spikes, I normally got 250 avg, now its 600 avg. Other players’ experiences are even worse like 800-1000 avg.

I rarely complain about lag, “but when I do…”

The March-wide lag-fest was irritating enough. I held through it and it passed by, eventually.

But right now for the past few days I’ve experienced unbearably annoying game lag. By game lag I mean Guild Wars 2 in it’s sole stand-alone entirety. Nothing else. My internet is fine. The web works great. YT videos work instantly. It is NOT my connection, NOT my internet problem – it is solely GW2 and even to the EXTENT of the GW2 website. That’s right folks – the GW2 website doesn’t even load when this happens. Of all the websites… this one at the same time as experiencing game lag, fails to load.

• I frequently get the grey error message that minimizes the game requesting you to send an error report. My game crashes.
• Extreme 1.5k+ ping lag (on average)
• Disgustingly slow UI load times (including but not limited to hero panel, gem store, map instances etc)
• ~5 second skill delay or more
• WvW un-playable (including ANY content related to a competitive environment e.g; PvP)

Right now the lag feels like this game is being run on a potato.

I live in Australia. My ping on average is around 250-280. The game runs just fine at that pace and I am content, however, I am beginning to think is it because I live here that the game lags like a dinosaur frequently?

I literally cannot press skill #1 in WvW because guess what – 10 second skill delay. Yepp. All characters on screen freeze or simultaniously run in the direction they were heading and then it snaps in superspeed to where everyone is and you’re left thinking what just happened?

It is the most inconvenient, frustrating thing and I really want to simply say “please fix this” but it’s not something easy to fix, I can understand that.

I hope I’m not the only one experiencing frequent game lag like this… I’ll be surprised if this thread even manages to post successfully.

Not sure where the servers you would be playing on are. All I can say is I haven’t noticed anything different.

Try this: http://www.battleping.com there is a free to use service which disconnects every 20 minutes. I’ve not experienced any lag or ping problems myself, I’m in the UK and play on the NA servers. The trading post has always been a little slow to load though, that may help, would be worth trying anyway.

Collect tracert information (or something similar) and send it to ANet via a support ticket. They’ll need data like that to help, whether it’s on their end (not very likely), their ISP (or their ISP’s ISP), or to help you pressure your own ISP. The internet is a big sea of interconnectivity and your signal could be getting stalled at any of the hops along the way.

BlusterWolf.2103:

I can confirm that there is something wrong with SEA and oceanic connections, I asked in map chat and players from these areas all experience unusual lag spikes, I normally got 250 avg, now its 600 avg. Other players’ experiences are even worse like 800-1000 avg.

Yeah I’ve only hit 10k ping twice, but the average for me now is pushing 2k. I CANNOT play the game as it is, and I wish I could because I enjoy it so much.

Happy birthday to Oceanic players, eh? -deep sigh-

Please feel free to continue to post here;

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Absolutely-Insane-Lag-Spikes/first#post5472640

I’m glad I’m not the only one complaining about this on the forums.

Just made this post on a similar thread but thought I would post it here too:

Try this: http://www.battleping.com there is a free to use service which disconnects every 20 minutes. I’ve not experienced any lag or ping problems myself, I’m in the UK and play on the NA servers. The trading post has always been a little slow to load though, that may help, would be worth trying anyway.

I’m in SEA zone and experience 1 mintue skill delay at teq 2 days ago . . .

I’m even getting the lag issues on my battleping account I use to play from country Victoria in Australia. Normally my battleping sits around 185-190 and it’s pinging around 600 now.

Are you trying a VPN?

The problem is likely because of the way you’re being routed to the ncsoft servers, not your actual internet connection from your ISP. It’s definitely not anet’s servers themselves that are the issue because then the rest of us would have extreme problems too.

Try a few VPNs and see if it changes anything. You also need to determine the source of the lag, so for right now do this:

a) get pingplotter (free edition)
b) ingame, type /ip
c) copy and paste that IP address into pingplotter then click on the button to run the test
d) take screenshot of results and paste here (blur out the first few hop names if you want to hide your public IP address)

Everybody is getting lag spikes, because their servers are bottle-necking.

For weeks now, we’ve had to put up with insane lag at world events, as soon as there’s a group of players fighting something, all using abilities, my ping jumps up from 40-50ms right up to 300-900ms!!! And literally as SOON as the boss is dead, the lag ends.

Now that is a very clear sign that it is NOT a network issue and more likely the server bottle-necking with all the ‘burst’ input from everyone using their skills at once.

I’m not inclined to invest in a brand new expansion when the game is going down the “Rift” route of doom. Firstly F2P (more players straining the servers) and then just everything being nerfed (global cooldowns, inputs delays etc) so the servers can cope. :\

Exactly what he said. ^
And it’s been going like this since forever, no improvements whatsoever.
Using fire #4 on staff ele is funny, you get teleported back and forward until the server makes up its mind where you should actually be.

There was another Australian complaining about this in DR map chat a few hours ago. Sadly he chose to blame it on all the new free players rather than come here for any insight.

My trading post lag is insane. Every click i do takes 1-5 sec to execute.

When the new TP UI came out, i tested how long i need to list 100 different items (7 min), now i need 35 minutes.

Wanze.8410:

My trading post lag is insane. Every click i do takes 1-5 sec to execute.

When the new TP UI came out, i tested how long i need to list 100 different items (7 min), now i need 35 minutes.

At least you can access the trading post. I can’t use skills, use the trading post (at all) or chat. Rarely I can chat in map, but if I want to try in /guild I have absolutely no hope at all.

Doesn’t seem to matter where you live. I’m in the UK and I’m getting all of the same symptoms. NA servers have problems too. I dunno if anyone has found a common denominator…apart from GW2 ofc.

Not sure if it’s the servers or the internet. I was playing yesterday helping with someone’s PS and I was freezing up with blinking skills and waiting for the usual DC in the middle of a story event. Both of us were in US just a few hundred miles apart and she had no issues while I could barely play.

I am also getting huge lag spikes over the last couple of weeks to the point that the game is unplayable. Anet seem to be doing their best to ensure existing players experience gets worse. Stood in Lions Arch this very second, average ping is 672ms, and just spiked to 1858ms. If I’m in wvw where ping really does matter, then I spike at up to 3200ms. This really needs sorting out as it is destroying the game. And allowing f2p players onto the already struggling servers as Rentapest said is only going to make matters worse. I work as an IT systems engineer, specialising in networks so I know when its my connection screwing up. Stop working on HoT and get these things sorted out so the game is actually playable for the expansion.

VaLee.5102:

Using fire #4 on staff ele is funny, you get teleported back and forward until the server makes up its mind where you should actually be.

This is a direct consequence of packet loss and high latency.

Even if your ping is low, you’ll still rubberband tremendously if you’re getting high packet loss on any hop, so you should still run a pingplotter test to determine where the connection fails.

On Sunday or Monday, I had (no kidding) a 56000 ping,

Typically the problems I experience are one-way. I get to watch everyone else doing whatever it is they are doing, and I can move, but I can’t interact or attack. It’s like the game is caching my packets. This weekend was the first time in ages that I had rubberbanding and obvious local issues.

Running another few tests, it’s only the game client ping that spikes. Running colasoft capsa, cmd ping /t & tracert commands all give consistently low ping times in the region of 40-50ms & showing no issues with connectivity to the map ip and login server ip. Game client however still gives huge spikes up to 4000ms. Repeated this on several different maps with the same result.

ShadowSpirit.6934:

Running another few tests, it’s only the game client ping that spikes. Running colasoft capsa, cmd ping /t & tracert commands all give consistently low ping times in the region of 40-50ms & showing no issues with connectivity to the map ip and login server ip. Game client however still gives huge spikes up to 4000ms. Repeated this on several different maps with the same result.

This is useful data for the QA team. Have you reported directly to ANet either via a support ticket or using the in-game /bug tool? (Posting here doesn’t guarantee the tech who is troubleshooting will see your results.)

Me and a friend (Drake.4708) suffered from serious lag yesterday halfway through the Mordrem invasion event. We were dced and when we were able to log into the game, we couldn’t move, use skills despite having a ping of ~300.

We were not sure what happened, and were frustrated because we lose out on the rewards and our opportunity to play the game on a Saturday night.

What we do know however is that it is not our computer or internet’s fault. Drake was able to play DoTA and I have no problems using the internet for anything else. * cough not porn *

Please tell us what happened yesterday and do fix it for us. I couldn’t afford losing my precious weekend like this!!

Good day anet,

Over the past 2-3 weeks alot of people in my guild especially singaporeans / asians that i know are having connectivity issues/login issues / unplayable lag.

It comes in the form of lag spikes/consistent lag and high ping.

The lag spikes happens throughout the day, sometimes spiking from 250 ping -> 3k/4k ping. It can happen on any map, from LA to WvW.

The high ping / consistent lag would see our ping go from a usual 250 to 400/500 consistent for an hour or two.

Please help it’s really hard/close to unplayable and really annoying when the lag spike happens mid fight in WvW and you just die because your skills wont register due to the lag.

I’ve had connection issues with GW2 exclusively starting about a year ago. The past few days it’s only been getting worse, and everyone in my small ~10 man guild also suffers from it, and we’re located all over Europe.

Back when I got properly annoyed with it during the Silverwastes releases, I went through the whole email ticket process, send them the ping plotting info and everything. All support told me was that it’s a routing issue and they can’t do anything about it... Fast forward to today and that still appears to be the same response.

Clearly, something is wrong with the GW2 game servers, be they NA or EU servers... Surely we’d have issues with other applications if it was a routing issue on this large a scale.

Pick up your game ArenaNet, this has been going on long enough. I heard throwing money at problems fixes them, try it.

Gaile, thanks for the response.

My issue now is that the open world events (read: zerging events) are over, there is no more ping spiking. The times this has happened has been when there’s a massive open-world event. This leads me to believe that it’s not on my end, though I’d be happy to send any info necessary to help prevent this from happening again.

300 ping average has been fine to deal with across any MMO (yes, it prevents me from being competitive in PvP but that’s a minor thing I can deal with), but when it spikes to 8 thousand ping there’s absolutely nothing I can do. If these events are reflective of what is coming in HoT I will not be pleased :/

This may help someone;

For months (6+) I had been getting unplayable lag spikes which caused me to give up the game. Tried lots of things and all of the suggestions on the forums here didn’t help.

Just recently I managed to pin point to interfering software.. Blizzard’s Battle.net desktop app… as soon as I closed it and ended the related processes – lag GONE! I wish I had known about this 6 months ago, hope this helps someone else

I’m getting insane ping spikes aswell in pvp matches.
I only have this in gw2 and there is nothing wrong with my internet.
My ping would jump from my normal 30-40ping to like 600+ ping and makes me dc out of the match or unable to use anny ability or type in chat.
I’m from Belgium my self wich is in Europe so not Australia or whatever.
It definatly has to do with gw2 it self.

I am getting to the point of not bothering with GW2 anymore.
Ping / lag issues I can deal with, it happens and as you have stated a lot of the time its things beyond ours or ANETS control… but this sudden fatal game crashing is beginning to wear mighty thin on me and my patience is about to run out…
Running a TEQ or THW or anything now is almost always met with this error.. its only been prevalent since the last patch and mysteriously increasing in occurrences in coincidence with the “experiments” taking place.

Just go to the final turret phase of another TEQ.. bam instant crash .. get back in and yep another wasted effort, no loot, nada, nowt, nothing!

If this was a normal dc due to loss of connection I could understand it, but this crash is more of a memory leak scenario or something maybe in the new graphics options because it never happened before and its getting worse.

And yes the error report has been sent countless times!

Im in brazil and experiencing same stuff. In Fractals and other private instance is the worst scenario.

Still happening to me and really wondering why it’s only limited to guild wars. As an Australian with 250 – 300 ping as the normal, which is playable, to be having 800 ping is not what you want from a game. I’m glad I didn’t pre purchase the expansion.

To reiterate, this is ONLY happening with guild wars, no other online games.

Yes, for some reasom GW2 is routed through those slow Level3 servers. I ask why? And why do you think our ISP can help us with it? It is out of their reach too. What are we supposed to do? – Contact level3 that they are ruining our game and should go to hell?

This is issue is TOO LARGE for individuals to solve. My girlfriend is in Croatia, me in Slovakia, we both experience this issue! What are we, players, supposed to do? Should EVERYONE who is playing GW2 call their ISPs and bombard them with something that is clearly NOT their fault?

I say, it is your game, so put some people, lawyers, technicians to solve it. YOU have to contact those slow packet lossing servers, not us. It is your business, we are just customers.

Sincerely,
Libor M.

Mortifer.2946:

Yes, for some reasom GW2 is routed through those slow Level3 servers. I ask why? And why do you think our ISP can help us with it? It is out of their reach too. What are we supposed to do? – Contact level3 that they are ruining our game and should go to hell?

This is issue is TOO LARGE for individuals to solve. My girlfriend is in Croatia, me in Slovakia, we both experience this issue! What are we, players, supposed to do? Should EVERYONE who is playing GW2 call their ISPs and bombard them with something that is clearly NOT their fault?

I say, it is your game, so put some people, lawyers, technicians to solve it. YOU have to contact those slow packet lossing servers, not us. It is your business, we are just customers.

Sincerely,
Libor M.

A-net has absolutely NO control over the path data takes from your computer to their servers. None.

So I did pingplotter in hopes of finding out where my lag spikes are coming from.. but I’m afraid I don’t understand pingplotter.

http://i.imgur.com/N9RW2ua.png

Is anyone able to interpret for me? (I’m looking over their manual for it right now but ending up confused, apologies.)

Niomi.5170:

So I did pingplotter in hopes of finding out where my lag spikes are coming from.. but I’m afraid I don’t understand pingplotter.

http://i.imgur.com/N9RW2ua.png

Is anyone able to interpret for me? (I’m looking over their manual for it right now but ending up confused, apologies.)

Okay so basically all the numbers 1-13 on the left side are hops. The first hop is from your modem, and the very last hop is the final destination that you’re pinging to.

The red numbers you’re seeing to the right of those hops are percentages of packet loss, which are very bad to have as shown in your picture. You’re having serious problems if you have packet loss at every single hop, that indicates you’re having really terrible connectivity issues on your end.

Hops 1-5 in your picture are a combination of both your own connection and the services offered by your ISP which is evidently comcast.

Hops 10-13 are all ncsoft servers, which would be the end Anet is responsible for.

Everything in between that is from the backbone ISP that you’re being routed through to reach Anet’s servers. If you’re having severe lag there (which you are), that is something that is out of your ISP’s control and out of Anet’s control. In this circumstance, you’ll need to find a way to be routed differently. This is where VPNs can come in handy, you’ll need to google for more information on those.

Based off of the IP address shown at hop 6, it looks like you’re being routed through Level3 as the backbone ISP. They’re notorious for kittening everything up, so it’s no wonder you’re having problems.

However, based off of the picture you’ve linked it looks like your own connection is at fault here too. You’re going to need to check out your hardware and make sure you don’t need to have anything replaced. I suggest calling comcast and requesting for a technician to come check your setup and make sure everything’s in tact before trying anything else.

Thanks so much Purple Miku! I really appreciate the response!

You’re welcome, hope I’ve helped!

I do know that a Link between Perth and Singapore is down, forcing a lot of traffic to be routed through other paths. This could be the problem as you live on the East Coast it could be general lag in the path to USA shores. No idea when the Link will be repaired. Check your ISP and ask them if they know when it will be fixed ,also inform of the lag you are getting.

codeman.3425:

I do know that a Link between Perth and Singapore is down, forcing a lot of traffic to be routed through other paths. This could be the problem as you live on the East Coast it could be general lag in the path to USA shores. No idea when the Link will be repaired. Check your ISP and ask them if they know when it will be fixed ,also inform of the lag you are getting.

Maybe this is what’s happening to me as well… I am east coast. Started getting lag spikes in high traffic areas (EotM, world bosses, full SW) a couple days ago. Thought it was my ISP cause their connection gives me problems every so often, but tonight, I tried to do Jormag and got major hangups. Could barely stay logged in and I minimized, checked my net, and everything but GW2 was working fine.

@Gaile: I don’t know what the info thingy is that we’re supposed to send in.

I’m from East Coast, US, and i have been having high ping the last 2-3 days i usually have around 80 avg ping and now i would get from 300-3000 ping in seconds, which makes any combat in gw2 terrible, that means i lose pvp, i die in dungeons, no point in logging in… i hope this gets resolved, too hyped for expansion and not being able to play is hard.

My internet is good, i have been able to play other online games without trouble, its just gw2.

I’m from South America, Brazil.

My normal latency used to be around 200ms to 300ms.

Since a few weeks ago, my average latency sits above 400ms constantly, some days reaching even 750ms (basically unplayable).

Doing a tracert, I had pretty standard latency time in the 11 connecting hops (~40ms in the first few ones, increasing to up to 200ms on the last few ones), and then 300ms+ on NCSoft ip.

This is my ping plot. Playing from Dubai.
I’m getting packet loss on Anet’s servers. Not that i’m having huge lag spike, just getting these irritating disconnections during fractals and boss runs.

i’m playing from Indonesia and normally my ping is only 250-275 but right now my ping can increase as high as 1200 but only for a small period of time which greatly affect the game because i get a huge skill delay. all of my other online game works perfectly fine it is only happen in gw2

rcjrulz.8592:

This is my ping plot. Playing from Dubai.
I’m getting packet loss on Anet’s servers. Not that i’m having huge lag spike, just getting these irritating disconnections during fractals and boss runs.

You have really high jitter throughout most of your hops— that usually indicates something is wrong with bandwidth saturation/congestion. Whenever you have a lot of high numbers for that, it means that there’s a lot of variation with latency.

See, when pingplotter is measuring the response time at each hop in milliseconds it will calculate the variation each successive time and compare the difference between all samples. The fact that you’re hitting up to over 20% jitter at some points shows that you’re doing something or multiple things to use up more bandwidth than you have available.

What could be the problem is that you’re not getting the intended internet speeds offered by your ISP or that you’re using DSL and get screwed over when a lot of other people are online in your nearby area at the same time or something like that. You’ll need to look into things more. Try posting with more information and maybe we can help figure out what’s wrong!

By the way, arenanet. My ISP fixed their routing, but I am getting 50 an 100% packet loss at your servers. Is it normal? The game works, so I think it is normal, but it still looks odd.