On the 8.8 lags

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Hello everyone,

as you probably know, the 8.8 have already been recognized as an issue in patch 8.8. The problem is, even with low ping and stable connection with no packet loss, there still is significant lag (the green light next to the ping meter blinks red all the time) for no apparent reason. I myself have this a LOT on EU1 (less on EU2, but for EU2 I have significantly higher ping, for EU1 it’s 50-60, for EU2 80-90).

This problem exists on both the Russian and European servers. Numerous Russian posts have sprung up, but none offer a real solution to this issue. One of the most interesting is this post.

Basically, a Russian player made a test of what might influence the lag and what doesn’t. He identifies three things as common lag causes:

- problems with ISP
- hardware and operation system issues (the computer being too weak)
- software issues (client, mods, drivers, resident software)

The testing player got 5 freshly installed computers with up to date drivers for testing with identical peripherals. The computer configuration was such:

Computer 1: i5/4gb/GTX460/HDD
Computer 2: i7/8gb/HD7870/SSD
Computer 3: i7/8gb/GT650M/HDD/ notebook Samsung 550P5C
Computer 4: i3/4gb/GTX480/HDD
Computer 5: AMD FX-8350/8gb/GTX660/SSD

First tested thing were ISP’s. The tester took all of those computers and tested them with like 5 different providers each. The result was that no matter what, computer 1 and 5 lagged, while 2,3 and 4 had no issues, so it’s not an ISP thing.

Second, the hardware: those computers didn’t have problems in 0.8.7 so it’s not the hardware. The guy adds that on lowest details the lags might have been reduced, but only a little. I had no such experience, reducing details did not improve the lagging situation for me.

Last it was the software: there was nothing running in the background and no mods were installed, yet computers 1 and 5 still lagged. After installing some modpack, nothing changed (1,5 lags, 2,3,4 no lags), so it’s not any resident software or mods.

Well, that’s the conclusion of the test. I haven’t seen any official reason for the lags quoted anywhere (if anyone has, please send me a link), but I suspect it has something to do with some network coding, since they did change that in 8.8 (issues with settings sometimes saving improperly are due to the fact that in 8.8, WoT client settings have been transferred to the server, they are no longer stored locally). If it indeed is so, I guess that those who have the lags like me will have to wait for a solution coming in 8.9

107 thoughts on “On the 8.8 lags”

  1. With other words they broke it themselves like we all expected and now we have to hope they fix it again eventually. nothing new i guess

  2. I think they tried to do some data caching to optimize loading times but this came in conflict with the network code.
    Anyone else experiencing much faster garage loading times but worse network lags?

    • you are taking the words out of my mouth.

      even the battles are loading much faster in my case!
      Lags are present but not particular influencing my gameplay,
      in some rare cases it lags and i loose control of my Batchat, wichh is quite pissing me off.

      all in all the problem should be fixed in the next pathc i hope!
      If it is an ISP thing, it should be not too hard to fix it, But we all know WarGaming!

    • yup, the garage loads much faster. but the lags ingame are terrible sometimes. never had a problem with connection before 8.8.

    • If they really did so, it is totaly stupid. I can take longer laod tmies for better ping, not the other way around!
      do you really care about 1 s in garage loading or about 1 s delay in shooting?

  4. yes, I have the same issue, this is getting worst while I am near the woods or near group of allied/enemy tanks. As SS said tho – connection is pretty much stable.

  6. We can only hope that they will fix this in 8.9.
    Remember how they promised fix for bag when tanks goes over railroad and jumps like mad? Or when you hit the concrete wall with 50t tank and stop in a spot? Or reticle jumping on redshire? Bugs have low priority, so we might wait a bit for solution of lag problem.

    I think we will see japanese mech tanks introduced long before they fix this.

    • i’d love to see mechs in WoT ^^ i would take my Jenner (MWO ;D ) and roflstomp some goddamn T62A’s or 268′s :D

    • The Lagproblem is not a little bug
      Its a really gameplay destructing anomaly.

      They MUST fix this in 8.9 if not earlyer!

  7. Thats called spike lag. And it’s the worst lag experience ever. Lag means a slow reaction, but spike lag will have you teleported all over the fucking level. Had it yesterday and it was soooo fucking annoying!!! WG fix your shit goddammit!!!

  8. I’ve not got to the point of running ping traces or such but there is certainly packet loss with EU2.

    Been platooned with some friends in Holland (close to EU2) and we’ve been suffering from tanks spinning 180 degrees in 1/100′s of a second, tanks skipping positions, left right, forwards and back.

    Now this could also be caused by asynchronous routing within the cluster but that wouldn’t occur from a software upgrade to the client.

    • The problem is with the ISP. If your ISP has a public peering at the AMS-IX your connection to EU2 will probably be very good – if not, it’s probably routed to Frankfurt, or something, and then through Level 3.

      • But it has nothing to do with packet loss and lag spikes, only with the general latency to a given server. For me (western Poland), EU2 has ~25ms while EU1 has ~40ms pings, neither of those is high enough to cause any problems and WOT is the only network service that I experience problems with. Tanks driving themselves etc. are common in 8.8, almost never seen before 8.8.

  9. I have smaller ping to EU 2 and less lag there also, I have quite a bit of spikes on EU1.I am from Finland

  11. Yep, noticed this too. Also noticed it happened frequently when there was some in-game sound (vanilla) triggered, like getting hit. Tough to play, since it meant getting hit, getting lag, getting hit 2-3 more times. Luckily it happened only few times over yesterday to me, but still…

  12. alot players have this problems in our wot forum it sux. iam wondering wg says nothing about it. yesterday afternoon it works perfect for 3 hours.today is the same problem. i played on server 2 from germany

  14. For me its like EU1 is perfectly fine, like always but EU2=ping 150-200ms constantly. No Clan Wars for me, grinding alt acc in the meantime ;)

  15. Had no such issues before or even in the 0.8.8 tests. Getting huge lags from time to time for no good reason…

  16. Ive had a couple of brief freezes but only on the Swamp and Komarin maps so I assumed it was the amount of new foliage/water effects.

  17. Eu1 is unplayable in the evening when trying to run CW or Companies
    Most of us from Denmark have a better ping and less lag on EU2, but Im not a big fan of the low server population and most companies run from EU1…

  18. Great. Can’t wait to see what it’s like on the NA servers. NA east is already horrible. We already have well documented packet loss issues with Telia that WGNA has yet to recognize or fix. Having the the green light next to the ping meter blink red all the time is normal for me already. My ping is 85 -110 on a good day. Spikes to 350 – 500 are not uncommon.

  19. why is it when they fk up we always have to wait for a fix till the next big update????? !!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • Because fixing the lag issues won’t make them money. But on the other hand when we had a chance to make some credits with that 83mm HE shells fiasco they made a hotfix in one day so we couldn’t exploit it. And btw Kim ^^ you are retarded fyi. And you totally misused the “how terrible” reference here. When the whole server is laggin that is not something to troll about fucktard.

    • “It was meant to work this way. Will have the statistics in a month.” – SerB
      “We will nerf the LAG if needed.” – WG

  22. Incidentally my home comp has i5 and it lags too.

    Without plugging a debugger/profiler in the client (which is forbidden by EULA) it’s really hard to even speculate on what might be the cause.

  23. So much effort for no reason.
    Lets tell is simple, how its work:
    1. u press key
    2. game get it, and send to serwer
    3. ISP stuff
    4. server recive, processing and resend info about what happen
    5. ISP stuff
    6 game get info, process it an send to graphic card
    7. graphic card process and send to monitor.

    So 1,2 are no effort.
    3,5 is most ping.
    6,7 depend on hardware.
    And at last 4, processing stuff on server, i thing in this point we get lag, serwer have same problem. So we can do nothing to do with lags…

    Litte explain:
    ping lag = press key and wait for action, but if u press short time, it do it short time (press D 0,1s is dont turn by 3s)
    comp lag = u see frame of game, not smooth. (mostly)
    server lag (real lag) = u press key for 0,1s tank do stuff liku u press 5s, teleport tank, etc.

  24. The reason for EU lags is that, internet traffic always goes through the cheapest way (not the most efficient/closest), so in this case for most EU players throught the host telia.net who has funny habit to lose up to 50% of packets.

    Another funny thing I found out, after getting the WoT EU1(!!!) ip adress (213.252.131.42) hidden under the system procces it lead me to target named woteu2-slave-42.worldoftanks.eu

    • Never go full retard. Or at least read the article before leaving a dump of shit out of your mouth.

      • He did read the leading article, despite most others here.

        They already worked out that internet providers and WG servers are not causing this problem.

        Some PCs work just fine while others do not, same ISP and same server …

        So he is right but not polite :-)

  26. Players care more about testing the game and tracking down bugs than WG does.

    Somehow it doesn’t surprise me.

  27. my only solution/workaround so far is to play after 11PM when there is relatively few players on the servers. The spiking seems to be highly load dependent.

  28. Try chaning affinity of WoT in the task manager to the last 2 cores, and put priority to high. It helps a lot, on NA we don’t have 8.8 yet, however 8.7 gives me weird lags, and this fixes it completely.

    • Then wait and see what 8.8 will give you :D

      It has nothing to do with your PC, as in even if your PC is capable of running the game perfectly fine, the red lag light goes crazy in 8.8.

  29. Servers are running well, if you have a “good” PC you will not have any lags.
    Does not matter how much players are using this server at this moment.

    Best proof that this is not a server issue …
    I am playing without any problems while a platoon mate tells via Teamspeak that game would be “unplayable because of lag”.

    If server sucks, it sucks for all players … nothing that came with 8.8

    • Wrong on so many aspects, some PCs lag even with great configs while some just breeze without anything. It indicates internal WoT error either in game code or netcode. I myself can play the game without any errors while changing place to few places at different friends I can find some whom the game become almost impossible.

      Bringing up comments like this shows the ignorance that even PCs from the 2008 low end plays the game no problem and you don’t need 2k rig every 2 years. But this might not be you I just see it here among younger ones who think that money brings happiness to gaming instantly they know nothing but spending on new rigs while their old has no faults, it is just ‘old’ in aspect to now new stuff.

      I have a friend with issues and friend with no issues both running high end stuff ( better than me while I run meagre 4×2.66 and GTX560 … The problem is routing and there is many who has sought that the issue is on few bottlenecks TO the server… Cheapest rout as some said is reason for this.

      The biggest issues and which indicates bottleneck problem is when I played at parents and there was sudden moments the tank ignored all my commands then after 10-30s it regained it, with memorized commands send before and until the sequence was send it did not respond to new ones, but after it had completed the ‘saved’ moves I regained control. Typical example of middle points having heavy load and things get lined up for sending in priorities.

      • How do you explain then that I lag EVERY time when leaving artillery mode? More and more it seems to me like bug, not lag, no matter it seems like spike lags, it is probably not.

        • I had similar problem, that is WoT related and been since ages. When you go in and out of artillery mode your comp has to reload EVERYTHING on your current position or your reticles position, that is just how bad it can get, if there would be less compressed and not send information this would not happen. All because of ‘saving’ … It is like you can’t see how a tank drives behind building because server is saving ‘uninimportant data’ being sent to client.

          Bad coding is bad.

  30. incidentally (or not), for the past 2 weeks or so I have had massive ping spikes and “red” lag where usually I have a very stable game. IE: usual ping 40-70 and now bursts of 200s-999, extremely rare red to now multiple reds during a game with tanks freezing then hopping all over.

    The events occur virtually every night between 7pm-10pm EDT. The only exception is the past 2 nights no problems. No other traffic on my home net, pingtest.net and speedtest.net still normal ping/speed/jitter/etc during WoT spikes, no backround tasks running. I do run AIO mod “lite”.

    I dont have the test server installed. i would posit that my lag/ping issues (and many others i have spoken with expressing similar experiences) may be related somehow to the test servers’ problems?

  31. There is so much not working in this release. I wrote a fix for the chat sensor on my blog but I can’t help thinking the Dynamic change of effects option (which cannot be switched off) maybe be contributing to this apparent lag issue some are getting.

  32. I’m going to chime in with a theory that it has to do with the new scripting system they put in place – the one that broke a LOT of the current mods we use in 8.7 that no longer work in the res_mods folder but the different one posted here in FTR recently.

    I run an i7 overclocked to a modest 3.2 ghz, with 24 gig of DDR-3, and a GTX-570 on a Ga-G1-Sniper mobo and my machine struggles to get 60fps sometimes, and normally averages ridiculous frames from 15-30 most of the time =/

    Quite frustrating indeed when just about anything else I run (even newer and more demanding games) can push well over 100 consistantly.

    • WG game engine sucks.
      I have i7-3770K, 3.5GHz, DDR3 16GB 1600MHz CL8, SSD drive, Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB DDR5.
      I work on full HD monitor and I too have sometimes problem to get 60 fps…

      • And wtf do you need more than 60 fps ? I’m playing with 25-30 and its perfectly fine for me.

      • How many frames per second are your human eyes able to see?

        Did you know that television in most western countries is 29.97 frames per second?

        Why are you complaining about being unable to reach 60FPS? Are you an eagle, a greyhound, or a house fly?

        • Problem is not eye, see only 24, and notices 30 (not fully see it).
          I need 60 because my monitor have this refresh rate, so to both be synch i need 60fps.

          And problem is game, I have pretty good graphic card and cant get this 60fps… this sucks.

          • I can tell the difference of 59fps and 60fps as well as 59hz and 60hz very easily. My father can as well, not everyone has motion insensitive eyes as you, or the average.

      • ok lads…the point of referencing the fps drop is to illustrate the insidious drain WoT has on a normally robust system.

        so, even though 30fps is the threshold for human sight, the stated lower fps may indeed be indicative of coding problems.

  33. Huh. Conversely *my* lag issues were almost entirely solved – there’s a random “hiccup” few and far between – by lowering the graphics settings a bit…

    Theory: the deciding factor is if the Star Are Right relative to where you live (summoning hideous and cranky Outer Gods optional).

  35. My guess is, that it’s related to ram management. The less processes in backround, the less chance of lags – and it doesn’t matter that you have much more free memory than game allocates, lower adresses are accessible faster, there’s probaby a shitload of load/store operations, most of which are unnecessary.

  36. I did a rute trace (i do them all the time now as i have the lag problems to) and today something strange poped up

    1 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms
    2 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms ve-3.ruby.ip.triera.net [213.161.2.81]
    3 6 ms 6 ms 7 ms cartman-ve-1.ip.triera.net [213.161.2.3]
    4 8 ms 10 ms 9 ms 10ge-e5-1.vie.ip.triera.net [213.161.2.222]
    5 9 ms 11 ms 10 ms peer-AS31042.sbb.rs [82.117.193.217]
    6 140 ms 226 ms 228 ms decix-gw.f.de.bcc-ip.net [80.81.192.90]
    7 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms te-2-1-cr2-ffm.de.bcc-ip.net [212.68.66.209]
    8 31 ms 32 ms 31 ms te-5-5-cr2-muc.de.bcc-ip.net [212.68.66.234]
    9 32 ms 31 ms 34 ms 213.252.176.28
    10 31 ms 31 ms 32 ms woteu2-slave-42.worldoftanks.eu [213.252.131.42]

    this is the 1st time any node was ower 40ms

    • Maybe AMD this time, because I’m running a Radeon and having those problems, so yeah, blame AMD!

  41. This was happening a lot yesterday to me as well, but I’m playing on NA West, so it’s not just exclusive to the EU server cluster or RU server cluster.

    • EDIT: Though in my case it’s not quite the same as you describe. First, it takes a while to even load into the battle, by which time I’m in the battle’s often 20-30 seconds in already. Then, the ping spikes occasionally, especially when multiple tanks in close proximity fire their guns all at once.

    • Asia serve as well. Sliding tanks, hopping tanks, tanks digging into the ground only since 8.8. Time to stop this WoT nonsense, too many low life power-trippers in this game anyway.

  42. If it’s not the ISP then why does pingplotter consistently hit on 80.91.248.61 ash-b1-link.telia.net 20-30% packet loss constantly. Numerous games. Masseffect, Diablo and other have had major packet loss issue from this ISP server address.

    % Information related to ’80.91.248.0 – 80.91.255.255′
    inetnum: 80.91.248.0 – 80.91.255.255
    netname: TELIA-TIC-NET-1
    descr: Telia International Carrier
    descr: AS1299 Backbone
    country: EU
    admin-c: TR889-RIPE
    tech-c: TR889-RIPE
    status: ASSIGNED PA
    mnt-by: TELIANET-LIR
    mnt-lower: TELIANET-LIR
    mnt-routes: TELIANET-RR
    source: RIPE # Filtered
    role: TeliaNet Registry
    address: TeliaSonera AB
    address: Marbackagatan 11
    address: SE-123 86 Farsta
    address: Sweden
    address: Abuse and intrusion reports should
    address: be sent to: abuse@telia.com
    fax-no: +46 8 6047006
    admin-c: EVAO
    tech-c: YL39-RIPE
    tech-c: IC106-RIPE
    tech-c: ACA-RIPE
    tech-c: JS7984-RIPE
    tech-c: EVAO
    tech-c: PJ2540-RIPE
    tech-c: LS483-RIPE
    tech-c: PB8229-RIPE
    tech-c: SV2344-RIPE
    nic-hdl: TR889-RIPE
    mnt-by: TELIANET-LIR
    source: RIPE # Filtered
    % Information related to ’80.91.248.0/21AS1299′
    route: 80.91.248.0/21
    descr: TELIANET-BLK
    remarks: Abuse issues should be reported
    remarks: to abuse@telia.com
    origin: AS1299
    mnt-by: TELIANET-RR
    source: RIPE # Filtered

  44. The problems are nothing to do with network latency, it is the graphics chip set. In every patch WG make changes behind the scenes to improve frame rate, some of these involve pushing more processing onto the graphics card and using different HW features to improve performance, some of the instructions sent to the graphics card are not handled well by various chip sets and require the graphics card to work too hard and overheat. The graphics card stops processing for a few seconds to let the processor cool down and WOT appears to freeze/desync because you are still playing the game, just your graphics card isnt drawing anything on your screen. WG hinted about this a week or 2 ago (before 8.8) when they said if you are experiencing freezes to check your graphics card vents, but the real problem is with the instructions they are sending to the graphics card. For me this has been a major problem since 8.7 where after a few games my poor POS laptop with integrated graphics overheats and shuts down (vents etc are all clear), I have only survived on the hope that WG would fix it in 8.8 but I’m now expecting it to get worse… prior to 8.7 I never had a problem with overheating

    • The above is correct Graphics are to blame I kept getting screen crashes (not restricted to WoT) after the last driver update.Resolved my issue. Rolled back Nvidia drivers to Jan 2013 version all sorted

      • never said they are, random disconnects are either a connection problem or some other unrelated bug. I was respondong to the OP regarding the possible reason behind the 2 systems where he experienced lag.

    • Yeah, I press “d” for 0.1s, and tank turn around 90%, is realy graphic card problem.
      You tell bullshit.

  46. How do you explain then that I lag EVERY time when leaving artillery mode? More and more it seems to me like bug, not lag, no matter it seems like spike lags, it is probably not.

  47. When exiting a battle, I have had a few “disconnected from server : Reason : profanity/abuse filter”.. and I have to log back in again…

    .and no.. I didnt fcking swear!! (he he)

  48. Bashar Atreides Today at 13:02

    Dear Tank Commander,

    Thank you for your report. It seems that many players are affected by this issue, so we have initiated an investigation of this internally.

    If we find any problems on our side, rest assured we will endeavor to fix them immediately and if appropriate we will announce any relevant information.

    Meanwhile check your firewall settings and that your ISP has no localized issues, as your own particular issue may be unrelated.

    As we currently are investigating this and with the reports handed in we have enough information to carry on I will be closing this ticket.

    Should you feel you need to contact us further you may open a new ticket.

    Best regards,

    Bashar Atreides

    “possunt quia posse videntur” Virgi

    • Reminds me of their ‘automatic friendly fire detector’ a while back… They ate their words quite fast as well as the ‘no need for more bot complaints we have good system’ … ;)

  49. Yes, have the same problem. In all previous versions I had a decent no. of FPS nw I have about 9, 10pfs. I can also perceive huge lags in the game interface itself (garage, shop, statistics, etc.) – not only in battles themselves.

  50. Same with NA server i live on west coast that isnt used for anything but pubs and my spike lag is so bad i spend at least 2 minutes a match not able to move or “skipping” across the map but the east server is perfectly fine but my ping is around 500ms rather than 30ms on west

  51. I’m getting the low fps intermittently since the 8.8 update. Running an Asus G72GX with Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53ghz, 6g RAM DDR2, NVIDIA GTX260M. In 8.7 I usually had 70-105 FPS and ping under 100ms. Now with game set on low or minimum graphics, I can still hit those speeds, but get periods where FPS drops to 5-12 but ping still shows under 100ms. No changes in my system since the update, no problems with my carrier. They done broke somethin’, or swapped some routing to a crappy carrier. Gotten this on both the NA East and NA West servers, it can be for short periods in the middle of a game, or can last an hour. Laptop’s a few years old, but it’s more than enough system to handle the game, I was previously running on High/Maximum when I didn’t have an external monitor hooked up.

  52. In my case the problems persisted untill this week, when i disabled overclocking on my CPU (I7 975 extreme edition)

    Suddenly everything worked as before.

  53. Spending time on any of the possible suggested causes other than the game servers is a huge waste of time, of you know your machine and connection is up to scratch. I have tried the game after the update on 3 different connections, and 3 different pcs. the lag was there on all of them. It’s the poorly serviced WG servers. End of.