Project Lore

Magtheridon, my home server, has been off ever since the Lich King was released upon the masses.  Pings of 100-200ms (56k speeds) have become the norm.  Unplayable pings of 500ms and beyond plague prime time on Tuesday and Wednesday.  As the week moves on the server becomes more playable.  To little to late, as the damage is done to most guilds.  Including mine, which raids on Tuesdays and Wednesdays only. 

After a successful 25-man with my two 10-man guilds last Tuesday, this Tuesday's was an absolute disaster.  While forming the raid we realized that the pings were going all over the place, from tolerable to two seconds of lag.  We zoned in hoping that the instance cluster would be more stable.  It wasn't.  We cleared trash, but could not get past Marrowgar due to the sporadic latency.  After the raid dissolved a 10-man was formed to tackle Ignis, the new weekly quest.  Our assumption was that being outgeared would make up for any lag.  The quick demise of Flame Leviathan gave us hope.  False hope, we wiped.  Repeatedly.  Our failing was chalked up to lag and everyone logged in disgust.  Who knows if my rogue will get his weekly done now...

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Earlier this month two new MMORPGs released, Global Agenda and Star Trek Online.  Both of them saw some hiccups early, and STO still has long queues, but things have settled down and stabilized for the most part.  Over five years ago World of Warcraft launched to a larger mess than either GA or STO.  It wasn't devastating by any means.  In fact, the problems were mostly due to the game's incredible popularity, which caused Blizzard to scramble to put dozens of additional servers online ASAP.  The subscription base has bloated over the 11 million mark forcing Blizzard to continue to add additional servers to the mix to compensate.  Fine and dandy, but what's been going on with the old servers.  The originals, the systems that were put together before the game was even released?  They've been upgraded, but has it been enough?

The past few weeks have been awful for the two servers I predominately play on.  Coincidentally, both server happen to be original.  Things have been so bad on Magtheridon this week that Tuesday and Wednesday were total loses for raiding.  Tuesday was marred by the extended maintenance, which is fine and understandable, but Magtheridon became Lagtheridon immediately after going online.  The entire world, instances and all, was totally unplayable.  A server restart didn't help, and I eventually gave up around 10:30 PM.  Wednesday followed with more of the same, but cleared up much earlier.  The damage had already been done, all the raiders gave up and logged before Magtheridon became stable, so nothing died.

I know my server is far from the only server to connect people to Azeroth, but from what I've heard around the blogosphere and official forums is that something is amidst.  Many people blame it on the new holiday and its mechanics.  Others point out that server instability is not a recent occurrence.

Whatever the reason, it seems that WoW players are giving Blizzard a pass on the issue.  That's partly because we've become somewhat accustom to the day-long hiccups.  I believe it's also because we play so much WoW that we can shrug off missing a day.  We just use the unexpected free time for other forms of entertainment or games.  It's old and busted to us now, not new hotness. 

Imagine if your brand new MMORPG was largely unplayable for two days just after its launch.  If WoW had released alongside STO and GA, that's exactly what would have occurred.  Can you imagine the nerd rage that would have hit the Internet? 

I know WoW's server farm is far more complex than STO or GA, but that doesn't give Blizzard a free pass.  After all, WoW is pulling in a billion dollars a year for Blizzard.  Yet, few players seem the least bit outraged.  I guess that's one of the advantages to having five years behind you?

Of the Christmas presents (a few WoW-related) that I was happy to receive over the holidays, the one that I most appreciate is a present from myself: a new desktop. You see, for the past few years I've been playing WoW and doing all of my other computer tasks (such as blogging) via laptop.

First, it was a Sony VAIO running Windows Vista with pretty measly specs and a 15.4-inch screen. I could do most of my day-to-day productive tasks on it fine, but WoW -- not so much. My graphics were turned way down, addons were kept to a minimum and tabbing out of game was really the equivalent of committing in-game suicide -- an automatic crash. Not too fun at all.

Then, a pretty major upgrade came when I started swiping my husband's "gaming laptop" (an oxymoron? yes.), a Gateway FX series, when it wasn't in use. A larger, 19-inch screen, more graphics capabilities, less worry about tabbing out. But to keep things running smoothly, it was best to close all other programs while playing. Then there was the addon confusion. Our two sets of addons aren't entirely compatible, and it took me a few times to realize that I could customize the addons per character. Not a huge deal, but it still wasn't my computer.

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ZOMG, No Deadly Boss MOBS!? Gkick! Major combat operations in /World of Warcraft have ended.  By dedicating a healthy bit of time before bed, and using my own advice, I was able overcome the horrible lag I was experiencing in all of my World of Warcraft endeavors.  No more 30% drops in framerates, lost DPS or accidental dives off cliffs to large for a gnome to survive.  WoW has returned to normal. Onyxia will rue the day she returned to these lands! There are a few things that I learned during my hour-plus battle.  Most important is that I am absolutely terrible at keeping my add-ons up to date.  The majority of them haven't been updated since the Wrath launch patch (v3.0), or at best v3.1.  I refuse to use the various auto-updating services because of my fear of hackers, unsavory add-on authors and the notion that such a program will clutter my computer.  These ridiculous reasons mean that the blame falls squarely on my shoulders for being lazy.  At least suggestions four and five, after already narrowing things down from 1-3 earlier this week, fixed the problem. In addition to my disorganized /AddOns folder - it in no way reflects the cleanliness of my slop pit house - I came to the realization that I have far too many add-ons.  During my campaign to capture the latest versions of my tools, I cut my add-on list from 49 memory suckers to a slim 26 user interface enhancements.  It wasn't even difficult, no hard decisions made.  Simply, do I use this or not? Here's my list:

• Auctioneer: This add-on is the key to my financial success in World of Warcraft, arguably responsible for the Mo' Money, Mo' Problems column, among many other one-shot posts.  It scans and records data from the Auction House, and automates putting items up for sale at competitive prices.  I roll with the suite, which includes numerous supporting add-ons like BeanCounter, Enchantrix, Informant, and Stubby.  Norganna's add-ons have proven to be so helpful to me that I have even made donations.  Yes, plural.
• AutoBar: An easily customizable and maintainable bar that is populated with all your hot items and abilities, like hearthstones, mounts, potions, food, food with buffs, etc, by default.  I set it up to be a third default action bar, just one with collapsible buttons.  It's proven to be a clutch addition.  Contains class specific bars as well.
• BankItems:  Enables player to look at their bank, their alts' banks, and even the guild banks from anywhere.  Good enough?
• CT_Basic: The CT_Mod team was the first team to create an ubiquitous collection of add-ons.  Some of their tools were so common that they've been enshrined in the Add-On Hall of Fame (Blizzard implementing an add-on's capabilities in the default UI).  CT_Basic is still an incredibly useful package thanks to the CT_MailMod, allowing players to loot their mailbox via a 'Select All' button.  There is a perfect synergy between it and Auctioneer.  I nuke CT_PartyBuffs though.  I used to use CT_RaidAssist when I was a raid leader, but no more.
• CT_ExpenseHistory: A good expansion to the basic CTMod package for the gold nuts like myself.  Tracks your expenses - repairs, reagents, even mail postage - to see where all that gold went.  It's pointless, but I love numbers and finances.
• Fishing Buddy: I used to be huge on fishing, and that's when I fell in love with this mod.  It previously automated almost everything about fishing, but Blizzard disabled some of that functionality.  I continue to use it mainly out of nostalgia, but also for the tracking (numbers!), and easy casting.
• Gatherer: This bad boy records where you've looted gatherable items (mining, herb and even treasure nodes) and displays them on your minimap.  The best part is the ability to share the data with friends, party members and even your guild!  I always kill Gatherer_HUD.  It's a resource hog that offers nothing but fancy visual effects over the normal add-on.
• QuestHelper: What can I say? I like saving time, and it's even more useful after you've already run through the zones on your first toon.  QuestHelper is another mod that has entered the Add-On Hall of Fame due to its ease of use and immense quest database.  There are many imitators, but I've found QH to be the best.
• Recount: Allows me to see my mad deeps, overall damage or how many times I die.  Recount tracks healing and useless stuff like that too.  It doesn't matter how much healing they do, it's never enough and always their fault when someone dies. :p
• RoguePowerBars: You may have noticed that I don't use Deadly Boss Mods (eh GM?). I may have died a few times because of that decision, but I find it to be too informative for my taste.  I mention DBM in this RPB snippet because they effectively do the same thing, scream information at you.  My justification for RPB is that the standard UI is laid out poorly for rogues (and many other classes).  We have so many buffs and debuffs on short timers that need to be kept active for maximum DPS that they really should be in your face.  RPB accomplishes that goal superbly.  I rarely ever lose my spell rotations since I began using it.  That obviously increases my DPS.

Once Solidsagart becomes a raid healer - sometime in November I assume - I'll have to add a few more add-ons to the mix for healing.  I still haven't decided between Grid or Clique, but other then new raid frames I can't really see Solidsagart needing anything special.  Raid frame changes are her version of RoguePowerBars.  I'll likely grab Omen though, something Vanish makes rather pointless.  Anyone have additional selections for either toon? I just realized that only two of my add-ons have anything to do with combat.  Everything else is time saving or money making.  Maybe I need to get my priorities straight so I can nail 15k DPS on a regular basis. The whole downside to nuking all of my add-ons was that I lost all of my macros.  I don't know exactly how that happened, they are supposed to be server side, but it did.  My next task is recreating all of them.  Oh, how I don't look forward to finding the correct icons for everything or remember which abilities had which other abilities bound to them...

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Via a WordPress tech blog. Ever since Onyxia realized she could regrow her head I've had issues with World of Warcraft.  I have no idea if it's patch 3.2.2 specifically, but that is when the problem became obvious.  Patch 3.2.2a, which was supposed to fix bugs created with 3.2.2, did nothing for me.  My more-than-capable computer continues to hit awful spikes that cause the framerate to drop from 60FPS to something below 40 FPS, seemingly at random.  It's not awful, but the switch in smoothness is jarring and not pleasing.  Especially when you are used to the game running perfectly. I haven't been able to fully resolve my issue yet, due to lack of effort more than anything else.  But that'll change tonight.  After spending the better part of this morning looking up similar issues, collecting data on solutions and using plain old common sense, I've come up with a run down of things to do if your WoW installation begins acting up. There are a few details to keep in mind.  First off, they are in order from least to most time consuming, which generally means least to most difficult.  There's a good deal of information compiled here, and likely more to show up in the comments, but we offer no guarantee and take no responsibility for any of the tactics you employ.  As a last resort, you can always do a full reinstall of the game - the most time consuming process by far.  If that doesn't work, then you are likely looking at a hardware problem, not good. Before we even get into the list, a couple general IT rules of thumb.  Have you restarted yet?  No, go do it, it may save you a ton of time.  Have you added anything new to the system - software, hardware, add-ons?  Yes, then that's where you should begin.

1. Grab new drivers/updates - It doesn't matter if you are a Nvidia, ATi or Intel user, if any game starts acting funny, new drivers may help.  If you play something other than WoW then you likely have semi-new drivers.  Be on the lookout for other system updates, Windows Update, as well.
2. Play with the graphics sliders - I know you want the game to play as it did before, but give this a whirl anyways.  It's not a fix, so much as a way to gain a list of symptoms to diagnose the main problem.  If changing the sliders does nothing, then the hardware in the machine is probably okay.  Big sigh of relief.  If it does help, then there could be cooling issues, the graphics card or CPU could be hurting, perhaps your anti-virus scanner decided to kick in or you've got some spyware eating up your precious clock cycles.
3. Try a different game - Same thought process as above.  If comparable or more taxing game X still plays fine, then the problem is definitely software.
4. Add-ons - Add-ons are great, until they bring your game to a frame-dropping halt.  The LUA-based strings of code are one of the main software bugs to crop up in WoW.  Since the buggers aren't allowed to auto update, you could be using ancient code that's causing problems (a likely scenario after a patch), add-ons can be poorly coded or you may have so many add-ons that they are fighting for resources, or causing massive conflict battles.  The simple diagnosis is to disable all add-ons in the loading screen.  If you see an improvement you'll have to systemically enable and disable one add-on at a time to see which is the culprit.  Seek it out, destroy it, and update it with the newest version.  And it could be more than one.
5. Delete WTF/Cache folders - Patching and the general User Interface are another software bug that leeches off of WoW.  The WTF folder is where all your add-on and patching information resides.  Like the topic above, it can cause numerous issues.  Rename the folder (to backup the data) and allow WoW to create a virgin copy for you.  The Cache folder is the new WDB folder, and performs the same important function as cache for your web browser.  It needs to be cleaned out now and then as well.
6. Do a repair - Blizzard now includes its own repair utility in the World of Warcraft directory for Windows users.  The tool will scan through all the game files for corruption and selectively download any and all files that have been touched by Fel energies.  It's quite time consuming, but far faster than the alternative.
7. Reinstall - Grab the disks or begin a download.  This last ditch effort should be attempted only if everything else has failed you, and you have tons of evidence pointing towards a software problem.  I'd be safe and completely uninstall and delete the WoW folder before beginning a new install.

Due to the infinite combination of PC parts, and the complex software we are dealing with, a solution for me may not be the solution for you.  Don't get discouraged after trying a few things and failing to see a return to your previous FPS level.  Feel free to drop a comment with your symptoms, or better yet, suggestions to add to the list and helpful tips to those having problems. I'll just head these comments off before they come; getting a Mac is not a solution. There's also many other things you can check on your computer, but that is outside the scope of this article.  I hope that your machine runs World of Warcraft like new after all of these tasks, but if it doesn't you should begin to worry about your PC's overall health.  Defragging and disk space, RAM tests, CPU test, GPU test, heating issues, these are all things that can be performed to ferret out the faulty piece in your complex computer system.  Unfortunately, they are technical, complex, often time consuming and possibly expensive.  The exacts reason why you hope the numbered list can solve your issue.

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Patch 3.2 Executing.... Whenever Blizzard decides to lay a patch on us I hold my breath.  Sure, I want the bounty of content, but sometimes that isn't all we receive.  Oftentimes we'll be stuck at login screens, the World Server will be down, our add-ons will cease to work, or worse, fail to do their jobs appropriately.  And that's just some of the "features" that we hope to see on a Tuesday evening.  More painful are the Slowsky approved download speeds, constant reboots, authentication problems, massive lag, or lag spikes, and the realization that nothing is going to be accomplished till Wednesday.  Think I am being a bit dramatic?  Then allow me to refresh your memory of Patch 3.0.8. I was as excited as anyone for Call of the Crusade (the game can never have too many 5-mans), but I had my reservations about the patch actually going live.  Boy have I never been so glad to eat my words before. Blizzard delivered the patch with only slightly extended downtime.  While I didn't login till a few hours after my server returned from dead, I was greeted with a stable, normal latency experience the entire night.  It didn't matter if I was running around the generally packed Dalaran or the newly flooded Argent Tournament grounds.  It was all entirely playable on Magtheridon (NA).  The post-patch trauma has been so negligible that I've been able to run through the dailies, grab a level and change on Solidsagart and tackle the new dungeon (repeatedly), along with some heroics.  And that was just on Tuesday! To round out the objectiveness of the post I should point out that it hasn't been all roses.  Roughly half of my add-ons were broke (and some remain unfixed by authors too busy with content) by Patch 3.2.  I've encountered the Trial of the Crusade opening encounter bug (is there an accepted name for it?) roughly half of my attempts.  Last, but not least, is the ninja change to Malygos, I doubt it's a bug, that gave our raid a bit of pause.  The big blue dragon's Vortex drops players off far farther from their original location than ever before.  And no, I still haven't kill the crazed warmonger. I heard there was something up with Kel'Thuzad, but haven't come across the lich recently.  Has anyone experienced anything wonky with that encounter?  How stable has your server been since patch day?  Have you been able to chain those heroics? All things considered I believe Call of the Crusade was the most expertly executed patch in recent memory.  Certainly since Wrath of the Lich King's launch back in November.  Dare we assume Blizzard is finally getting the hang of the patch spiel?!

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