I'm from the Toronto area in Canada. I was pinging 70ms to VA it was sweet. Now im pining 140 which is not bad at all. No Complaints. No one should be pinging 300ms from North America if they're in a decent population centre. I can totally understand BlackEye from central Europe, the leap from east coast to west can totally be the deal breaker. Also maaaaan I rarely weigh on shit but god damn the fine art of diplomacy is grossly underutilized, phrasing totally matters. Also you're all swell! Here's to UOR being the awesomest shard evah!!!@$Q!!!
I actually havent noticed much of a difference compared to when i played here 2 years ago (and im connecting from northern europe/scandinavia). Only thing ive experienced is the occasional freeze/lag spike but not regularly enough to be an annoyance. Mind you, i dont pvp yet so im not ruling out that i will notice a disadvantage in a fight,but thus far i have no real complaint.
Those brief freezes effect the entire server, so all other players and monsters have them simultaneously. So I guess it wouldn't be in issue in PvP, its not for me in PvM.
Oh,yeah i know and they haven't caused me any issue. I meant that since i don't yet pvp i have no way of knowing wether i would notice a significant difference due to my geographical location. But even if i did,i can't think of any server location that wouldn't result in some people having a far better ping than others.
Ping isn't really the only issue here. The server's performance in general is not good, many people have noted that there are long world saves and periodic freezes. Like I've said my connection is fine - but the ping is a touch high and the server's performance in general is poor, many people have noted this. This isn't simply a ping issue - the server says I have 75 ping but plays like I have 300, I don't know about you but the constant lagging is not fun to play in.
The world saves will only increase over time as item count increases. This is common and expected on any freeshard. CUB may help with that, but not likely a great deal. The only other performance related issue is the shard freeze that impacts everyone simultaneously.
We're going to need more data... because this shit is obviously insufficient. I'm not just trying to be an ass either, what else can you provide, that can help get to the root of your (and other players') problem? Because "I ping 75 but it feels like 300..." isn't going to cut it. I hear the European playerbase loud and clear, but if you're in NA I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't have any reason to bitch about this move. You've been asked to provide information, that could potentially help people diagnose/resolve your problem, but you're so stubborn/jaded that you refuse... Not sure what to tell you in that case.
What annoys me isn't the length of each save, it's the frequency. I've never actually timed them but it feels like the server saves at least every 5 minutes if I'm out PvPing lol. On a serious note it feels like the world saves, in frequency, are excessive. I can understand the length, that's probably my fault, I don't throw away anything. These guys were using fireworks wands after the anniversary event and tossing the used wands on the ground, I ran around with scavenger collecting them all for CUB. I have problems, I know. Everyone is feeling those global lag spikes. They are annoying but if you treat them like world saves they really don't interfere much. Like I said previously, I'm not trying to suggest that the issue goes on ignored or that people shouldn't question it. The global lag spikes effect everyone and everything simultaneously. We PvP'd through it without a problem the other night. Every so often one of us would say "save or freeze?" it was always one or the other but we still continued to have fun. I'm hoping Telamon is looking in to it and from what Blaise said earlier it sounds like Telamon is troubleshooting the issues. Either way I'm not going to quit playing, the sky is not falling, and people aren't leaving in droves. This server survived DDOS attacks and people weren't leaving in droves. Hell, the server was literally unplayable during that time and everyone stuck around.
Server saves are every 30 minutes if I recall correctly. I think every hour would be more than sufficient but I'm sure there's some aversion to extending the intervals because of the rare instances where we've had reversions. I'd be fully in support of saves every hour or even two hours, but I'm also not that paranoid about lost time and doing things over.
Also worth noting, I notice a significant boost in client performance using the latest version of Razor. It could be in my head but it just seems to respond faster in general with everything I do. I'm talking about 1.0.14.9
I was actually very skeptical of this statement and went to test this claim - (http://www.uorazor.com/downloads/Razor_Latest.exe) Not even lying, my displayed ping in game using '-ping' went from almost a consistent 70-90 to ~45 (which is on par with that I get while running ping -t login.uorenaissance.com from Windows command prompt. This may only mean that ping is more accurately displayed, and may not have any actual impact on performance. I'll keep testing and see if I notice any other improvements, such as constant desync, as I've had previously etc.. Update - Frequent desync does still exists and seems to happen mostly while running around and casting near large housing.
I've just returned to this shard. I'm Polish and my ping is not great by all means, yet the game is utterly playable. On the other hand, if I wanted to express my grief somehow, I just can't find any guilds to get into. It's even more difficult to experience RP in its pure beauty. It's not hard to spot the player counter (approx 500-600 every time I log in), yet it's a little bit cumbersome to get hooked on conversations/community. It's not that the community sucks, because it doesn't.. It just seems harder to find anyone to get along (perhaps due to the fact, that there are scarcely any Europeans here)... Please don't treat it as a rant against the shard (which is great), these are just my personal remarks... Just wanted to share them with you, so perhaps it would be easier for me to find someone to get along with. Another explanation might conerrn the issue, that many people, who are logged, are just macroing/grinding game points, hence the high game player-count...
The guilds that One mentioned above my post seem fairly active. I'm from Scandinavia, but i see quite a few people online and actively playing (not macroing) during hours that would work for an EU player, weekdays it is for sure more active around/after dinner time rather than the early morning or lunch. I haven't joined any guild yet myself but im usually hanging out in the #Renassaince , #PS and #UOR-RP channels @IRC as Eldstorm. Hope you stick around! Winter is coming... and that usually means more people spending more time online.
@Kalanojl Welcome to UOR! I understand where you are coming from - it is not often you can just strike up conversations with folk out and about in the game world (just met someone yesterday in-game who was surprised to see some of us just chatting in town). The strange thing about Ocllo is that, yes, many people park their characters there giving it this sense of central community, but it is misleading. If you leave the Ocllo area (even just heading outside of town to the orc fort or mage tower) you start running into people who are more active. People just like to macro around Ocllo is all. I cannot speak for other guilds, but the Great Council has a fair number of European folk mixed with people in the US, so there is a decent span of the day when there are people around. As One mentioned, we are a more RP-leaning guild (it is not mandatory though) but we also love helping newer players. Project Sanctuary also is home to a fair number of folk who enjoy RPing and they help a lot of new players, too. If you wish to talk further, feel free to shoot me a private message here, or join us in IRC if you like in #UOR-RP (or #PS if you wish to talk to the good people at Project Sanctuary). Let me know if you have any questions, and once more, welcome!
It's amazing how different (see: fun) the game is if you have just one or two regular friends in UO that are on similar schedules as yours. Or so I hear...
I never had much of a problem connecting from S. Korea. I know there were less people were logged in back then (2013), but I can tell from my short jogs around the countryside that I would not pvp from Virginia currently. I can't wait to see how the Holiday events play out.
My eyes were bleeding as I read all of these posts, but I managed to finish. So, I don't have much to say about the ping, server freezing up, and excessive world saves and exports (they are all valid issues and it would make sense if staff was involved in this discussion) imo. These topics may have very well been answered in a more current post, but I do not read through the forums very often so I wouldn't know. I just wanted to bring up an interesting point of view when it comes to player retention. In the past, I always "blamed @Mes " (lol), but as I grew older and wiser here on UOR, I considered other reasons. Server performance would definitely be close to the top of my list. As well as active player base. The 500-600 count...lets be honest, is very hard to believe. The only way I see that being true is if everyone had 4 accounts running at the same time. Anyways, I think the fact that new players come here daily, grind for a week or two, then leave for some reason is easy to prove. Just ask the IDOC crew how business is. They have IDOCs on a daily basis. While I enjoy these as well, its sad knowing that someone either forgot, or more than likely quit. @bart simpson @Iago @Gideon Jura @Ron Jeremy @Cynic @Blaise @amfeKk @whoeverelseIforgot...Would you guys say the majority of your IDOCs are new player stashes of starter materials? Or more old timers stuff they forgot about?
I don't even IDOC here unless I happen to bump into folks doing one. Contrary to seemingly popular belief, I'm not part of the 'IDOC group'. Anyone who really knows me, knows I don't give a crap about the loot, despite having a fair amount of it myself. It has never been a motivation for my game play. Supplies to do what I want and certain things that make me smile are all I'm after but none of it matters because I can always get what I need to have fun, even with a 50/50 newb and no gold to my name. That said, I'd be willing to wager it's a fair mix of your typical new player junk homes (smalls and bricks) with a smattering of mid-high end loot from estranged players who put a lot of time in. The mega-rares IDOCs are likely the rarest because those types tend to sell shit off before letting it fall. This is just some assumptions made based on every IDOC I've experienced over the years, here and elseware.