Can you please provide exact information on what shard is having the issue, what time lag occurred, duration of lag period, traceroute to the server during the time period, and any other useful information. Please use the server IPs list here for the traceroute:
http://uo2.stratics.com/technical-information/server-ip-addresses
Bleak, is there an e-mail address where we can send this information directly to Broadsword instead of posting it here? I play on many shards, including a lot of the west coast North American shards where I theoretically should have a decent connection since I'm in the Rocky Mountain region. However, any more it seems my connection for any shard is not at all of the quality it used to be. Trying to run with any character or fly with a gargoyle is a series of one-two-three-steps-STOP-one-two-steps-STOP-one-two-three steps-STOP. I'm constantly clicking on my mouse just to restart the running/flying. And when out with a pet, it seems like half the commands to the pet don't even show up on the screen, as if the macro is just being ignored. And it's not like I'm issuing them to the pet at a rapid-fire pace. It's just the normal telling the pet to follow my character after killing something and it's time to move on and go look for another one. I have to use the macro at least twice just to see the command appear on the screen.
And when doing something like imbuing, when I want to "reimbue last," the imbuing gump just totally disappears and I get the "you must wait" comment and have to completely start over with using the imbuing skill.
Or when trying to move stuff around, the cursor is there when I want to move something, but then it just vanishes and I have to start the process all over again. Sometimes trying to do something as simple as remove a few single seeds from a seed box ends up taking far longer than it should because the cursor keeps blinking off.
Edited to add this paragraph: Or when cross-pollinating plants, the cursor is acting so bizarrely that I end up self-pollinating plants instead of cross-pollinating them with other plants.
I've also noticed a lot of situations where when the cursor is acting wonky, things I'm moving end up on the floor clear across the room, like they just randomly fell off the cursor!
I've checked that my mouse is connected and yes, it is and it works fine for other applications, so I don't think that's the problem. And of course, all of this is so sporadic that's it's hard to pin down if there is any kind of pattern to it. I'm pretty sure it's probably not an overloaded server for some of this stuff because the shards that I'm playing on at the time are pretty darn quiet ones.
I've also had a lot of long black-screen pauses while recalling into dungeons such as Shame. And when the screen catches up, sometimes it's a gray screen because my character has died. (There are also some dead shards where something else seems to be going on in Shame that is causing problems such as very serious lag and disconnections. I hesitate to say that it's caused by afk, scripting players but that is my suspicion.)
In any event, I hope the above-ground, anywhere-in-the-game-kind of choppiness and weirdness is something that will eventually be addressed and improved because it's making it really hard to decide what to actually do when logging in. I pretty much stick to crafting, fishing, and very light PvM anymore because it seems like trying to do anything else is just asking to spend most of my time stutter-stepping my ghostly characters around looking for a healer.
And I'm sorry for even plunking this in this thread because it IS negative. But my real question is where can I send connection information to an appropriate contact at Broadsword who will actually review the information and make use of it, so I don't need to post it here and make people think all I want to do is complain and put UO in a negative light? That is not my intention; but this is truly a serious issue anymore and I hope it will be addressed, especially before we have any kind of Return to Britannia promotion.
Always makes for good comedy.
