Bekk

Tips to Reduce Lag!

There are several factors which can hamper your gameplay experience, and I would like to share a few tips to avoid them.

Tips to improve your overall internet performance on MMOs:

What you can do to improve your internet performance, with the explanation:

1. Most important – Have an Antivirus / Firewall or good Internet Security suite installed. This would ensure that the lag is not caused due to any background programs or Trojans accessing the internet. I use Kaspersky Internet Security, and it has been ok, so far.

2. Install an additional spyware scanner, such as Adaware, Spybot or Spyware doctor. This will help in cases of unusual lag or very high latency (ping in ms)

3. Very important! Ensure that your firewall is configured to allow full access to Zu Online or other MMO’s core executable files. (I have observed the latency reduce from 800ms to 450ms for a friend when he tried this step)

4. Avoid downloading anything in the background, especially if your internet connection is not very fast. Some Internet Security suites have a ‘Game Mode’ option which stops any pop-ups and update programs from running. If your lag is really bad, turn off any and all update programs while running your MMO.

5. Optimize your network card:
a. Open your network card settings from ‘Network Connections’ under control panel by right clicking on your LAN connection and selecting properties and then ‘Configure’. Disable the following options: Wake on LAN, Checksum Offload (both for UDP and TCP), allow windows to turn off this device (CAUTION: Be really careful with this step as it could end up ruining your internet connection, for which I do not claim responsibility)
b. Ensure that the latest drivers are installed for your LAN card

6. In some DSL / ADSL connections, there are multiple DNS servers which provide connectivity. You can check your DNS server by right clicking on your LAN connection (under control panel> Network connections) and selecting properties and then clicking on TCP/IP settings (IP v4). This is not a recommended practice, but if you are aware of any other DNS servers, or have been provided with other DNS servers by your internet service provider, then use the most effective DNS server. You can find out by experimenting with difference DNS servers. (CAUTION: Be really careful with this step as it could end up ruining your internet connection, for which I do not claim responsibility)


What you can do to improve your Zu Online performance, with the explanation:

1. Avoid being AFK or idle for long periods of time, as this eats server bandwidth and causes more lag. Zu online has been smart enough to give the ‘Auctioneer’ option to avoid AFK sellers. (My 2moons marketplace nightmares still hound me!). This also means the people ‘resting’ overnight.

2. Avoid using the Faction, Yell and World chat as much as possible. Use it only when you really need everyone to hear what you’re saying. Keep in mind that when you use one of the chats, your message has to be relayed to every single online user on the server, or at least to the faction, eating loads of bandwidth. I have seen some online games (such as 9Dragons) using Item mall items which will allow ‘shouts’, to reduce the lag this causes.

3. Turn off the world, faction and yell if you have a really bad case of lag.

4. Don’t stay for long periods of time in a crowded area, such as holy city or desert city, since this creates congestion on the server, and slows down the overall performance. This includes the people ‘resting’ in groups.

5. Use Teleporters and Ride guardians as much as possible instead of riding your pets all the way, or running all the way. Observe that when you fly, the game does not render the players / mobs at the bottom, and hence reduces your latency considerably.

6. Hunt in parties and stick together. When you are on a quest (for example), you hunt similar mobs as the people around you. Say if you need to kill 50 of a particular mob for a quest. The server has to process the termination and re-spawn of all 50 mobs that you kill, including the drops. If you hunt in a party of 5 guys, and all hunt the same mob, then if each kills just 10 mobs, your quest will be complete! Not to mention that you will save the server 200 mob re-spawns, and also get 200% to 225% the exp from mob kills. Party hunting means faster questing, which in turn means faster leveling and lesser lag!

7. Pick up your drops quickly, and avoid throwing out items of your backpack. Any item that just lies on the ground will take additional bandwidth, and you already know what that means.




I hope I have been helpful, and request the admins to sticky this if they find it helpful as well!

P.S. I do not take credit for this, I copied and pasted from the Zu online forums, I thought it might help out OnRPG so I decided to post it. Oh, also, I'm not for sure if this is the right board or not. :x

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Bekk

More people should look at this.

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Simei

The last 7 don't make any sense.. they could also just have added ''don't chat at all because it uses bandwidth''

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FabianN

Here are a few things that arn't correct



1. Most important – Have an Antivirus / Firewall or good Internet Security suite installed. This would ensure that the lag is not caused due to any background programs or Trojans accessing the internet. I use Kaspersky Internet Security, and it has been ok, so far.


Firewalls actually create more lag than they remove in 90% of the cases. And if you are behind a router, you already have a basic firewall because routers act as firewalls.
The main reason for high-end firewalls are hackers, and hackers just arn't interested in the typical home desktop.
For the typical user, the windows firewall and a router is good enough.





5. Optimize your network card:
a. Open your network card settings from ‘Network Connections’ under control panel by right clicking on your LAN connection and selecting properties and then ‘Configure’. Disable the following options: Wake on LAN, Checksum Offload (both for UDP and TCP), allow windows to turn off this device (CAUTION: Be really careful with this step as it could end up ruining your internet connection, for which I do not claim responsibility)
b. Ensure that the latest drivers are installed for your LAN card


Turning off "Wake on LAN" does nothing to your system when it's on.
And turning off the Checksum can either help or hurt depending on the system.(ie: system's over-all speed, and the quality of the nic)
If you have a system that was made in the last five years, by turning the Checksum off you are increasing the CPU power needed to manage the network and in turn are increasing the lag.

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