What is with this absolutely insane server lag?

[Belmont]

New player here. I've been playing for the last week and it's like there are moments where everything is fine, and then gigantic chunks of time where the servers are practically dying. Freezing up (Just my character), this Reduced Awareness notification, constant input delay, etc...

For a 17 year old MMO, it's blowing my mind that the server infrastructure is this bad. Especially since underneath this, there's a fantastic game and I'm hooked, but trying to continue to play and struggle through these hyper-lag spikes is becoming the definition of insanity. It's like pushing up against a wall that won't give.

[Berserkr]

It happened after what was called server consolidation where they merged some servers, server now is Crickhollow but my original is Firefoot and I don't recall any lag on Firefoot, sadly it may never get fixed either, they have a basic skeleton crew working on the game

[Harvain]

Originally posted by Berserkr:

It happened after what was called server consolidation where they merged some servers, server now is Crickhollow but my original is Firefoot and I don't recall any lag on Firefoot, sadly it may never get fixed either, they have a basic skeleton crew working on the game

Server Consolidation has nothing to do with it. The "Lag" was already well established before 2016 when the majority of the Servers were closed.

Over LOTRO's 17+ Years there was for most of that never work done to "Keep things within reason" for how everything was handled.

Imagine piling junk up constantly & never sorting it, cleaning it, etc. and how it becomes a burden to moving around, doing things with it, and an eye-sore.

That's LOTRO's "Lag". It's just the Game's Performance not having Consistent Performance Updates over the years.

Good news: They have been doing such Updates but they are small steps forward. They've yet to have a "really big Performance Update" that drastically makes things better.

[Berserkr]

Like I said I don't remember lag on Firefoot, as soon as I was switched to Crick it was quite noticeable, not arguing or anything but my skeleton crew and it'll probably never get totally fixed I'm standing by

[Talyc Verda]

The other thing I'll point out as well is that the game had Daybreak Games as its publisher for along time, and given some of the changes made since Daybreak, (and by extension, Standing Stone Games) purchase by Enad Global 7 in 2020, its probably fair to say that Daybreak really wasnt offering the support they could of been as the publisher.

Though, I guess thats to kinda be expected when SSG was having to compete with Daybreak's own MMO, DC universe Online. A game so heavily monetized, it wouldnt surprise me if Daybreak came out tomorrow and said that they were going to start charging players for every step they take.

[Chris]

Their servers are most likely as all of us can agree 10+ years old. The code for managing networking is well beyond that. They've never really cared to fix it. It has been a problem for a very very long time.