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PlayStation Move input latency analyzed by Digital Foundry
The amount of latency between a user's input on a game controller and the in-game reflection of that input is an incredibly important factor when comparing motion controllers. Sony has been boasting that the input latency for the PlayStation Move would be "under a frame" -- though Digital Foundry concluded otherwise during its brief tech demo with the sphere-tipped peripheral. Digital Foundry conducted a fairly rudimentary experiment in which a person filmed himself sharply moving the controller, then counted how many milliseconds it takes for the screen to reflect his movement. Though there were a few variables to the experiment (such as the unknown, natural latency of the television display used in the demo), Digital Foundry estimates the device's latency to be in the ballpark of 133ms (around eight frames), which they claim is "fine for most of the applications you would want from such a controller." You can check out a video of Digital Foundry's simple latency experiment on Eurogamer.
EVE Online blogger provides insight on alliance warfare in Dominion
Alliance warfare has always been a huge part of EVE Online's endgame PvP, with alliances fighting over resources, expanding their borders or just settling age-old political grudges. The Dominion expansion made sweeping changes to alliance warfare and the transition hasn't been easy on all the alliances. Since Dominion went live, it's been difficult to judge just how effective the expansion has been at revitalising territorial warfare or how alliances are using the new system. EVE Blogger Wensley has been involved in the recent war against CVA in Providence region and he's been posting some of the valuable insights he's gleaned on territorial warfare over at his blog Rifter Drifter. In part 1 of his series "Catch 22" on the most recent parts of the war, he details the reasoning behind CVA's territorial expansion from Providence into the Catch region. In part 2, Wensley describes the details of the actual war so far and provides some useful insights into the mechanics of territorial warfare. He suggests that since alliances now get to choose the rough time their systems are fought over by way of the new reinforcement timers, they should have picked a time zone that would be inconvenient for their enemies. Instead, they had set their reinforcement timer to their enemy's peak play time, allowing them to easily amass huge fleets for the attack. He goes on to blame CVA's poor performance on a lack of preparedness, suggesting that if they had gotten their fleet together and into the threatened system first, any lag occuring when enemy players jump in would have been in their favour. If you're following the war in Providence region or just interested in how territorial warfare is fought now in EVE, Rifter Drifter's on-going Catch 22 series is definitely worth a read.
Mass Testing in EVE, Wednesday, to determine source of lag in fleet battles
EVE Online's latest expansion, Dominion, brought sweeping changes to how alliances claim and hold space, and more recently revamped capital ship warfare. However, there has been a downside of late in terms of server stability and lag. Twitter is pretty much aflame with players lamenting the server issues, not to mention the forums, and it's something CCP Games needs to address right away. To that end, CCP is looking to the playerbase for help with "Mass Testing" on Wednesday, to determine the source of lag in large fleet battles. The devs will be looking into the problems widely reported with medium and large scale fleet combat and will need at least 50 pilots, though if 200 or more showed up this would be even better, says CCP Tanis. Players interested in helping out should hop on the Singularity test server on Wednesday, January 27, at 17:00 UTC. Mass Testing participants should join the "MassTesting" channel in-game on the test server as well. All EVE pilots who want to get involved should see CCP Navigator's announcement for more info about tomorrow's fleet combat tests and the discussion in a related forum thread.
Why so empty, Crystalsong?
Some actual new information from tonight's developer Twitter chat with Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and J. Allen Brack? I'm as surprised as you are. When asked why the resplendent (and glowy) Crystalsong Forest is oddly barren of anything to do beyond sightsee (and, of course, the rare quest), we received some interesting info about game performance: Part of the problem is that it sits beneath Dalaran, which ended up being more of a resource hog than we had anticipated. We didn't want to draw too many more players to that zone. Initially the Crusaders' Coliseum was going to be there, which is why some of the quests send you there. We just worried too much about the performance hit. So what does this mean to the average WoW-player? That you can enjoy the peace and quiet of Crystalsong Forest for a long time to come, because additions to the zone just aren't on Blizzard's agenda. And it's probably for our own good -- we all know what a lagfest Dalaran can be, don't we? Now close your eyes and just imagine combining that with all of the players that come and go from the Crusader's Coliseum. If your thoughts on this imaginary scenario are anything other than "do not want," well, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Valve addresses Left 4 Dead 2 server lag on Xbox 360
What's the only thing worse than having two dead team members, an approaching wave of special infected, and a fresh sheen of Boomer puke on your person? Having to suffer all those things while also -- fighting -- server la -- tency issues. Fortunately, that experience has become less common, as Valve recently did a bit dusting around their network infrastructure, reducing lag during bouts of Left 4 Dead 2 on Xbox 360. Of course, even without the lag, you're still going to die. But at least now you'll be able to see where it's coming from. (Hint: It's probably from those three oncoming tanks.)
OnLive claims to run gaming service on iPhone
OnLive is a company that has been claiming to do the seemingly impossible -- they plan to set up a sort of "cloud gaming" console, where instead of hardware in individual houses (like we have now; you buy a console for your home), they'll have hardware over the Internet, and stream your game to you like watching television. All of the processing and coding will be done on a remote server, but with signals flowing from your controller, it'll seem like you're just playing Xbox at home. It all works in theory, but in practice, Internet connections aren't solid or stable enough to send commands and full HD video back and forth without enough lag to make things unplayable. Still, without actually releasing a product so far, OnLive claims they can do it, and now they're claiming to do it on the iPhone as well. AppleInsider reports that at a recent event in New York, OnLive showed off the same game service running on "2 iPhones, a tv, and a computer" simultaneously, with gamers on all the devices able to communicate and watch each others' gameplay. CEO Steve Perlman admits it's a "tech demo," but doesn't go into detail on what that means (it could simply be a demo running separately on the devices, to show what it would be like, or I've heard of OnLive events where the server is sitting in the room next door). And of course, there's no date or information on an actual release yet. OnLive's service definitely sounds possible someday -- as Internet connections get faster and hardware gets even cheaper, it's not a stretch to think we'll eventually move the heavy processor lifting to another location, leaving much tinier consoles and PCs taking up space on our desks and TV stands at home. But so far all it seems they've got is an idea (and the money that excited financiers have put into the project). We'll have to believe it works when we see it.
Fixing raiding lag
There is quite a thread going around with some ideas about how to fix raiding lag. Lag, like many cross-computer issues, is a pretty complicated thing -- there's all kinds of reasons it could be happening, from errors on your computer to errors on Blizzard's end, and all the little connections and switches in between. A certain amount of lag is unavoidable. But there are certainly some things you can do to make sure the link between your client and Blizzard's server is working at its best. This thread, which started on the EJ forums and then moved on to Livejournal, has some good tips in it, including turning off most combat logs like Recount and even Blizzard's official "Everything" log -- having to write down everything happening in game does cost some computer time as you play. Blocking addon "spam" is another way to keep things simple and clear -- while lots of useful addons help you share information between raid members, sending that info back and forth can cause problems when you're down to milliseconds of lag. The final suggestion is to run a third-party program that's supposed to keep your latency high, but I would be leery of doing that -- a better solution if you continue to have high latency constantly, even after making the changes above, would be to go to Blizzard (and/or your Internet Service Provider, or ISP) with your issues. They have a good guide to smoothing out your connection, and many times the problem can be with your router or firewall, which is usually a quick fix.
PTR Patch 3.3: Report Lag option added to the default UI
Are you frustrated with your friends running in place? Finding it difficult to get a good spot for the Dalaran costume contest? Are you tired of having to set your hearth in the dark and dank sewers of Dalaran? Have you ever thought, "Man! I wish I could report how bad the lag is right now!"? Well, if you're like millions of other players that have experienced lag, then maybe you'll be interested in what Blizzard has announced hitting the PTR! You can now use the "Report Lag" feature announced in the latest patch notes for Patch 3.3 as part of the latest PTR Build (Build 10676). No longer are you forced to submit endless GM Support Requests or post hundreds of lag reports on the forums. In three easy steps you can now have peace of mind, knowing your lag will be successfully reported. Looking at it, it seems pretty easy to use. Click the Knowledge Base/Help button. Then click Report Lag. Then you just select the type of lag you are experiencing. Which will most likely to be either "Movement" or "Spells and Abilities." When you're all done you get a "Your lag report has been successfully reported" message. Now, Blizzard will know exactly when you experienced your lag so they can track down the cause and resolve it. My only fear is they will have so many reports from Dalaran we'll get a "No Lag Reporting Servers Available" for the first few days it's used. %Gallery-76428% Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King . With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Stability issues, rolling restarts for tomorrow
We've been getting a steady stream of tips and tweets in about the stability issues plaguing nearly every server tonight, and Blizzard has finally confirmed that something isn't working right.Most people are experiencing extreme lag both in instances and out in regular zones. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it all, just constant server-side lag that impairs things like looting, completing quests, using items, buy items, or trading things to other players. Pretty much every wonderful thing that could have lag to it does; including the lovely 30 second mount cast.Hopefully the rolling restarts that will be taking place tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT will fix this. Although I'm hopeful that there would be some quick resets tonight to apply a hotfix or whatever else Blizzard needs to do in-order to make the game more playable. We'll update this post with any additional information if we get it
Aion open beta hits some hiccups, but patches are on the way
First Champions, and now Aion. It seems that no game can find that smooth stride regarding their beta testing these days, but thankfully that's what beta testing is for -- squashing bugs. (No matter how much marketing we seem to lump atop these tests these days.)The Aion development team has heard the community's call regarding the lag, authentication server, gameguard anti-cheating program, forum authentication script, and beta key release schedule. They understand that the problems with the lag experienced by North American users, as well as the login server not working, is frustrating. However, they are devoting resources to finding out the cause and will be patching the game ASAP.
The Queue: Nobody expects the Druid Inquisition!
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert will be your hostess today.Adam and Alex are busy packing for BlizzCon, so I've sneaked into the Queue offices to answer some questions this evening. There's no consistent theme here, folks; we're all over the map today with BlizzCon, lore, and player textures. If you don't see your question here, I still have a few in mind from the last post to answer tomorrow.Smapdor asks...There are 3 historical scenarios that can be found in Yogg-Saron's "brain room"...What is the Shadow Vault event? I would guess that it is something as important lore-wise as the (other) two, but I have no idea.It's widely believed that the Shadow Vault "memory" depicts a very recent and very unfortunate occurrence that took place (without player knowledge) after the Wrath Gate event. The NPCs in question are thought to be the souls/spirits/incorporeal whatsamajiggies of Saurfang the Younger and Bolvar Fordragon, who perished in the fight, victim to the Lich King and the Royal Apothecary Society respectively. The Wrath Gate cinematic implies that the Arthas has at least Saurfang's soul to toy with (which would explain the Orcish Turned Champion), but the identity of the Immolated Champion is less clear. Bolvar is by far the most likely possibility -- after all, the Immolated Champion is wearing the same armor Bolvar wore going to his death -- but nothing's been confirmed. Bottom line? Expect to see both Saurfang and Bolvar show up in the Icecrown Citadel raid in some capacity.
Fat Princess's patch of ample proportions
As Fat Princess fans have already realized, Titan's portly PSN exclusive is plagued with connection and balance issues; but a fix is on the way. While Titan Studios has yet to put a date on the upcoming patch, it has revealed a list of some of the issues that will be addressed. According to a recent post on the dev's blog, the patch will tackle connection issues, lag, hosting problems, scoreboard errors, dead hat machines and scoring exploits -- to name a few. The plump princess's dev team has also compiled a growing list of balance changes and feature requests based on player feedback for future updates, including the addition of new modes, maps and classes to an already rotund release. Titan promises an online FAQ will be made available soon to address upcoming changes in greater detail -- a full listing of issues and future changes can be found after the break.%Gallery-28044%[Via PS3Center]
MacBook Pro owners report hard drive lag
There's a thread at Apple's Discussion Boards about an issue that's bothering a number of users. Specifically, the current model 17" MacBook Pros seem to be experiencing hard drive lag. Several users report hearing the hard drive park itself, but at inappropriate times, causing the Marble of Doom to appear and bringing all tasks to a halt. This comes a short time after other users have reported a strange beep. One user reported no red flags while running Activity Monitor while another went so far as to swap the hard drive to no avail. If you're having this issue, or if you've solved it, please let these folks know. Update: A user calling himself theycallmefreddy reportedly fixed the problem late this morning by creating a 2nd user account. You can read his post here.
Wintergrasp bug plaguing servers after 3.1.2
We're getting tons of reports in of Wintergrasp behaving a bit oddly today, and I can confirm them to be true on my home server of Cenarion Circle. Wintergrasp battles are lasting, at most, 5-10 minutes with no more than 10 minutes between battles. Good for farming Marks of Honor, not so good for trying to kill Archavon and/or Emalon.If this is how you try to lower the lag Wintergrasp causes on servers, I think the quote "ur doin it wrong" applies. In all seriousness, I'm kidding about that and this is obviously not working as intended. Considering the Mark and Honor gains people are getting from this, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some emergency maintenance and rollbacks soon. I wouldn't get too attached to your gains this afternoon.
EVE Evolved: Has faction warfare been abandoned?
EVE Online's Faction Warfare system was released almost one year ago with the Empyrean Age expansion and was initially a complete success. It provided a stage on which thousands of players waged war. From fleets of over a hundred players to gangs as small as two or three pilots, everyone found their own place in the conflict. After the initial wave of success, questions began to arise on the lack of rewards to offset the cost of losing ships in PvP. In addition, while the point of faction warfare initially revolved around capturing systems, holding an enemy system provided no benefits beyond bragging rights. Almost a year on from its initial release, faction warfare has barely changed, prompting very real concerns from players that EVE's developers CCP have entirely abandoned it. These issues have even made it as far as the Council of Stellar Management.In this article, I take a retrospective look at how faction warfare has (or hasn't) progressed in this past year and ask the question "Has Faction Warfare been abandoned?".
How to fight HDTV image lag
HDTV processing lag isn't really the sexiest gaming thing to talk about, but fans of Rock Band and Guitar Hero may have felt and dealt with its cold, uncaring cruelty. Hypercombofinish has a really great, basic piece on the issue and provides some tips on how to avoid the lag. Engineers can keep on walking past the piece, but for those of us who've wondered why we have to calibrate for music titles on new televisions, it's an interesting little read.Some basic tips the article suggests to combat lag: Make sure games are playing at the native resolution, turn on the "game mode" if the TV has one and turn off any additional video processing options on the TV if possible. Of course, if you want to avoid all this drama, you can always use an SDTV -- we hear those are coming back like vinyl records.
Wintergrasp lag a big issue after patch 3.1
Zarhym has got some answers to the widespread problem of lag in Wintergrasp after patch 3.1 the other week. He says Blizzard figures the problem is simply population based -- there are many more people playing in the battleground than there were before the patch. For that reason, they're having trouble coming up with good solutions: the battleground is designed to be non-instanced, and that's why a lot of people like it, so putting a limit on the amount of people in there is not the way to go. Hardware isn't a solution either -- Blizzard's hardware is already top-of-the-line, and not only would upgrading it take a while anyway, but my guess is that most of the lag issues come not from Blizzard's side, but from the connections between players and them, which they may not have any control over anyway.So yes, we're more or less out of luck -- as long as Wintergrasp is extremely popular (and even Zarhym remembers the naysayers before the release with a smirk), there will always be a certain amount of lag in there. There are a few good suggestions floating around the comments thread -- one is that Wintergrasp should always be conquerable, which seems like it would keep down on the flood of people, though of course there'd be other issues if that were implemented.At this point, Wintergrasp lag may just be something we have to live with. Eventually, you have to think the population will drop back down, and then those of us still in there will enjoy lag-free battles again. But Blizzard has taken on quite a goal trying to do non-instanced PvP full of vehicles and towers without any lag at all.
Connection problems strike WoW
There appears to be connection problems going around as multiple people are unable to log in tonight, including multiple tipsters and yours truly. It's definitely a widespread problem, as the Blizzard Tech Support team is currently asking for ISP and tracert information over on the official forums while they try to track it down. While some people are positing that this is a merged battle.net account problem, it's worth noting that we also know of many people, including a couple of our bloggers, are still able to log in fine with a battle.net account. At the same time, some posters in the aforementioned thread are saying that they can log on fine when they use an unmerged pre-battle.net account from a family member or roommate.Once we get a clearer idea of what the problem is or when it's been fixed, we'll let you know.UPDATE, 10:30 PM EST: Okay, This is Daniel again, and I can log on with a battle.net account. This is the same one that wasn't working not 10 minutes ago, for the record.UPDATE, 11 PM EST: It looks everything is working fine again. Play on!
Blood, sweat, and valor in Darkfall
Paragus has continued his stories about adventuring through the Darkfall world on MMOCrunch, this time centering on the concepts of alliances and city sieges. While many aspects seem similar to EVE Online's corporation wars, Paragus's retelling of what it's like to be on the front lines of a siege battle makes Darkfall sound more like 300.His overall report is in Darkfall's favor, commenting on how well the game seems to be holding up when there are huge amounts of players fighting in the same area. Certainly there are still client crashes and disconnects, but the performance is overall very stable for mass combat.The only downfall to the whole system lies in the rules of the siege challenge. One of the rules states that if the attacking guild's leader drops offline at any time during the battle, the challenge is immediately lost. During Paragus's siege, the guild leader suffered a timeout, and the guild found themselves losing the challenge all due to connection problems.While Aventurine patches up all of the problems, the overall report of sieges is good, in Paragus's opinion. For the full details, head on over and check out his writeup of the event.
Wintergrasp retuning incoming
Back before Wintergrasp was first introduced, Blizzard told us that they'd finally figured out world PvP. They said to us that they'd figured out how to have hundreds of players fighting in an open zone at a time, without any major slowdown or lag issues. At the time, we were skeptical (and this was even before the instance lag after the WotLK release), and we continue to be: anyone who ducks inside Wintergrasp while things are nuts can tell you that they're far from perfect.But maybe not for the reason you think. Beatus on Kul Tiras posted a pretty well-written complaint about the layout of Wintergrasp on the EU forums, and new blue poster Ancilorn speaks up with a little insight into just how Blizzard was planning to keep down the lag in WG. They were planning to spread players around to the towers in the southern side of the zone, thus allowing hundreds of players to play, but in a few separate groups conquering different objectives.The only problem, says Ancilorn, is that there's not enough incentive to split players up -- people who go south miss out on honor and daily quests, and there's not enough reward to make them go that far. He says a retuning of the map will eventually be done to try and spread out the battle a little more.
