Forced to take a break from UO

[hawkeye_pike]

I am a big UO fan. I would very much like to play. But, technical issues are so annoying currently, that I decided to stop playing until those problems are resolved. If these issues continue, I will consider canceling my subscription (because why should I pay and not play?).

Login Issues:
This always has been a problem. However, during the past weeks, this error occurs more and more frequently. In 30% of the cases (happening on all times of the day), I simply cannot log on. After entering my password, the Enhanced Client simply says "Connection Lost", and the Legacy Client says "There is some problem communicating with Origin". And I know that I'm not the only person having these problems.

Stability Issues:
The Enhanced Client often keeps crashing to the Desktop without an obvious reason. It also has massive performance issues with particle effects (especially noticable with the nova spells from the new monsters, but also with other field spells if they are appearing in large numbers). These spell effects cause massive lag (screen freezes for 20-60 seconds), and will lead to a client crash. Want to prevent Enhanced Client users to enter a specific area? Just cast 10 Energy Fields and they will reliably crash and probably will not be able to log in anymore. As much as I like this client, it currently is unplayable, unless you're a crafter or banksitter.
In Ter Mur and the associated dungeons, the Legacy Client often crashes to the desktop and cannot be started. I ended up dead many times, losing all my items, because of this annoying bug. It makes the Legacy Client unplayable (I'd prefer the Enhanced Client anyway).
This is a Client Catch-22.

As you can easily understand, playing under such circumstances is no fun, but frustration. I want to add that these problems have aggravated during the past weeks, becoming a massive nuisance.

Also, nobody seems to be able to resolve the long list of Enhanced Client bugs, which I have been posting in every forum (also in the beta forum) for several months. Which leads to the assumption that they will probably never be fixed. I tend to give up on that subject. And I won't even start mentioning scripters, hacks and cheats.

It is a shame that such a great game will lose customers because they cannot resolve their technical problems.

 

[Dol'Gorath]

Sounds like it's a problem on your side. I have had none of these issues at all.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Re: Connection Issues... perhaps you're not the only one, but you might wish to do route traces and provide them to both EA tech support AND your own ISP. Sometimes the connection issues people experience have nothing at all to do with EA or Ultima Online, but rather an issue along somewhere in the network path along the internet.

Re: Enhanced Client... It's still in beta. They've not released it as a fully live, functional client. You're going to experience weird things like crashes. Submit bug reports as to what happened, where, what was going on, et cetera. The only way they're going to find and eliminate these bugs is through diligent reporting. If that's not for you, then perhaps the 2D client is.

And I suspect this will receive a "Why did they turn off KR then?" response... KR was in worse shape than the EC, and there's no reason that they should continue to support KR while still working on the EC. At best, you'd still have KR without any access to any SA content... and that's not a very good solution at all.

 

[Lord_Spartacus]

Hawkeye,
Have you tried using another computer to try and connect? It could be computer related. Do you have a laptop or are you able to try and log in from a friends computer that might be using a different ISP? Trying these might help you determine if the problem is on your computer, or maybe the way your ISP is connecting to EA. The "stability" issues sound like graphics card issues to me ... but I'm no expect. Trying to log in on a friends computer might help determine this as well. Even if you have a high end video card, it might be working right. Good luck.

 

[twoburntfouryou]

I also began having problems with the tomb of kings dungen. Client Crash's then when I try to log back in it gets all the way to my char name then crashes and I get that silly grey box asking if I want to report the error. I have now many times had to go in and rename the file of that chars name to log back in. This does not always work right away. I have called EA about this and they act as if they have no clue as to what is wrong. Its has always happen while I am in the tomb of kings dungen. And when this happens strange thing is I can log into any other shard except mine? Maybe its in my computer maybe not I have no clue but I have never had this issue before SA. I do wish someone would look into these matters.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Thanks for encouraging me to go troubleshooting. Let me clarify:

I have a VERY good and reliable DSL internet connection. IF (!) I am able to log in, the game runs practically lag-free. My traces are good, although I sometimes notice some delays from the EA servers (but that's not uncommon; it has been like that since years).

My graphics adapter is a common device, not high-end but still powerful enough. I have the latest drivers. Players with expensive high-end adapters have the same problem with particle effects. It's not my hardware, it is crappy programming.

I am a computer expert. My system is a performance optimized Windows XP on high-end hardware.

Conclusion: I am quite sure that the problem is not located at my computer or internet connection. It is a Login Server / Client problem. And this is rather obvious.

 

[Lord_Spartacus]

I was just saying no matter how great your computer is or how great your ISP is ... it wouldn't hurt anything to try I realize "some" people are having issues, but it does not seem to be a large number ... just trying to help with some possible solutions. Good luck.

 

[Mitzlplik_SP]

Sounds like it's a problem on your side. I have had none of these issues at all.

Yes,what ^^ he said.

Sorry Hawkeye I know its not what you want to here but I can almost promise you that it is problems on your end of things.Blaming EA for your ISP`s instability or bottlenecks in the web is stuff that is out of their control. I have had similar problems with this and other games.Since I have 3 comps I usually fire up w/e I am having troubles with on a diff pc to compare.%90 of the time its something in my hardware or something to do with my connection.

Theres so many things that can effect your stability its stupid. One thing I`ve found that profoundly effected my connection and stability was this POS wireless router I tried to use(actually 3 of them). After a week of aggravation I threw it in the can and reconnected my wired router.Haven`t lost connection in over a month since doing that. Thats just one example.

I have many rl friends I`ve hadta help troubleshoot their machines to find instabilty problems. It is never the fault of whoever they were trying to connect to.It always boiled down to a crappy modem or router or just some junk/outdated parts in their machines.

I feel your frustration but your blaming the wrong entity.

If it was happening to a big percentage of peaple I could aggree its something on EA`s side. Just because someone has a godlike PC doesn`t mean you`ll be problem free with some games,it just makes you overconfident that you won`t have problems and unwilling to try certain things that would prove to be your problem.

 

[Cear Dallben Dragon]

as far as stability. its defiantly the beta client. I have a computer with the processing power of jesus, and a 10meg+ cable connection. after about 10 minutes of fighting the slasher with his crazy fields everything but the terrain disappears and the lag is god awful. Pike have you tried reinstalling the new client after backing up macros?

 

[Astrel]

Using the Classic client in Ter Mur, spells like flame strike regularly freeze up on screen and don't disappear, causing slight lag at times resulting in a jerking char motion and missing a second here and there at others, meaning that one moment I am in one location and the next moment I am further down the road. It is neither my comp (almost new, everything top end) with 30MB+ cable and the server not too far away. Fortunately, no crashes. When I did use the new SA client (before its official release) it crashed often so there was no way I was going to trust it after one patch.

Generally, I never experience lag (although I did not go to the recent events) and it has been years since I have.

 

[Frey Wavestrider]

I have been lagging terribly as has my wife. Both of us did not have problems before SA and the lag is in both the enhance client and the classic. IF the machines and the connection does not change and the code of the game does, then it may be an issue on the server/code side and hopefully they will figure it out.

 

[Sabbath]

Well Hawkeye, if you do decide to depart for a while, I wish you a quick return with your issues fixed. You've been a very helpful and dedicated player. And thanks for keeping up the UO Travelogues and Adventurer's Guide website!

Good luck!

 

[Thangorodrim]

Thanks for encouraging me to go troubleshooting. Let me clarify:

I have a VERY good and reliable DSL internet connection. IF (!) I am able to log in, the game runs practically lag-free. My traces are good, although I sometimes notice some delays from the EA servers (but that's not uncommon; it has been like that since years).

Well, if you are expert then you should know that traceroute is not a performance analysis tool, rather a network cartography tool. You can have a variety of problems that cause congestion, packet loss, or frame issues and neither icmp nor udp based traceroutes will provide reliable indicators of such.

Install wireshark for windows and perform some captures of your UO sessions. Post the pcap.

My graphics adapter is a common device, not high-end but still powerful enough. I have the latest drivers. Players with expensive high-end adapters have the same problem with particle effects. It's not my hardware, it is crappy programming.

I know of the particle / field spell memory leaks and resource allocation locks of which you speak.

I get them on my notebook with a so-so graphics adapter. I do NOT get them on my much more powerful workstation.

My graphics adapter is a common device, not high-end but still powerful enough.

My system is a performance optimized Windows XP on high-end hardware.

Which is it?

I am a computer expert. My system is a performance optimized Windows XP on high-end hardware.

Skipping *nix flamebait - what exactly are your performance enhancements?

Conclusion: I am quite sure that the problem is not located at my computer or internet connection.

It is a Login Server / Client problem. And this is rather obvious.

Actually its obviously NOT a login server / client problem because other EC users are not experiencing the problem, myself included.

Further, the empirical data actually points to a local problem since your network issues are not being commonly reported.

I hope I don't come off hostile, but I don't think you have actually delved quite as deeply as you suggest.

Bottom line: its beta, try to provide diagnostic data to the developers and match your expectations to the fact that the EC is not officially released.

Disclosure:I am using the EC exclusively and experiencing no show-stopping problems.

Good luck.

 

[Harlequin]

Login Issues:
This always has been a problem. However, during the past weeks, this error occurs more and more frequently. In 30% of the cases (happening on all times of the day), I simply cannot log on. After entering my password, the Enhanced Client simply says "Connection Lost", and the Legacy Client says "There is some problem communicating with Origin". And I know that I'm not the only person having these problems.

I'd not played much using the SA client. But I've been using the Legacy client most of the time since SA was released, haven't gotten the "There is some problem communicating with Origin" message upon logon. So far so good.

Is it still happening 30% of the time for you now or only during certain times of the day? Does turning off your firewall temporarily and restarting the legacy client help at all?

 

[Farsight]

Don't knock a potential cause just because you don't know the guy.

And don't knock his connection issues because you don't have any.

If your EC is stable, and mine is not (mine isn't to the point of unplayability in certain areas, other people report "I'm fine, so it's your fault!), that doesn't mean that someone in the client development team should not be looking at the issues. The game should work just as well on someone else's Pentium as it does on my Turion. It should work just as well on windows xp as it does on windows 7.

And since we're in beta, as a few of you so kindly pointed out, that means that we should likely expect a little bit of feedback at least. Near as I can tell, there has been NO feedback from the devs (i.e. good point, we're looking at it, nothing we can do) at all since at least the closed beta finished. If they want the product to be worth while on "release," then feedback is a rather important part of the process. Otherwise SA will go the same way as KR quickly.

 

[Pawain]

That sucks!

I hope you can get back soon.

I play classic client on a computer with 2M ram P4 3GHz. Using cable.

I have not had any issues with lag, log in, or gameplay.

 

[Miri of Sonoma]

I have been experiencing terrible freezes. I am using the 2d client and there are times when my character will freeze up for minutes!

 

[Warsong of LS]

Well, I wish you good luck,

since upgrading my account to SA, I have had zero problems, but I still use the 2D client. I did try the enhanced client, I had crashes which you describe and it really hurt my eyes after a few hours of use. Personally after nearly 12 years of p(L)aying for UO, I am tried of being EAs permanent unpaid bug tester/QA department. I will enjoy 2D and UO until they pull that plug. I will continue to patch the Enhanced client to see if it ever gets completed but I doubt it, based on EAMythic past history.

 

[Lady Aalia]

Hawkeye,

I connect form Germany also,
that said i have no trouble logging in or with Lag and i play Atlantic.
My ISP is Telekom DSL 16000.

To me it really does sound like a problem on your end too, had a simular problem about 2 years ago and it turned to be a busted switch in Ladenburg, just across the river from us.

Anyways good luck and if you need anything , just shoot me a message

 

[The Fallout]

I have honestly had no problems at all (except the day the EA servers went crazy but they acknowledged that.) not once have I had any more problems then the usual occasional client error in 2D and nothing at all in the Enhanced Client. You might have weird connection from the EA servers depending on where you live I guess.

 

[Nenime]

Well Hawkeye, if you do decide to depart for a while, I wish you a quick return with your issues fixed. You've been a very helpful and dedicated player. And thanks for keeping up the UO Travelogues and Adventurer's Guide website!

Good luck!

Well said. I totally agree.

About the crashes: In the Dawn/Shadowlord main event I thought it was just me that I have had just one screenshot every two minutes to look at - instead of a continuous game. Tonight the same at the Slasher: his spells *Ku Ort* + *Mur Kal Ort* = frame freeze + PC reboot. What I don't understand is that the CPU (Athlon 64 3200+) and RAM (4GB) usage were not at peak while crashing.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

At least some here seem to be able to understand that I'm not an incompetent fool who has no clue, but that there are real issues out there.

The timeouts I get from EA's router to the login servers (159.153.224.222) must mean something. They surely don't mean that my internet connection has a problem. I also heard that different routes cause different problems. Which means, depending on your location, you will get timeouts or not. I doubt that recommending a different network analysis tool will help here.

I also know from several people (see posting above) who have high-end gaming computers that the Enhanced Client lags and crashes in described situations. The Legacy Client crash in SA without being able to re-login has been reported by many many people. You still can question my computer configuration - delusion or denial? Whatever.

The point is, there are problems, there are customers who are dissatisfied SINCE WEEKS, and there is no response from EA whatsoever, although these issues have been reported over and over again (the complete client bug list has been first published during the closed beta, about 4 months ago; not one statement from EA).

Need I say more?

 

[Lord Frodo]

I understand what you are saying. People forget that KR was doing this too. 2 people with the same computer, 1 could and 1 couldn't run KR. Super high end computers couldn't run KR while others could.

I couldn't run KR but I can run SA, but as it is still in beta and is not as stable as 2D + UOA, I will use what is best for me.

Can you run the old client?