Thread: There is something wrong with lotro now, it uses way more PC resources then before

I think this is the reason people are having so much problems. People say the game crashes now. People say they click a skill and nothing happens for several seconds. Could all these issues be caused by some kind of big resource drain on our systems?

Ever since U6 and the u6 patch my operating system, Win7 64bit, warns me that my computers resources are too low, and recommends I turn off Windows Aeroglass. This warning only happens when I play lotro!

I have been playing lotro on the exact same computer system, with exact same hardware, since I bought my PC in December 2010. And what really is telling is the fact this warning about my system resources only started after U6.

There must be a connection, no?

I've experienced this as well, I've always been able to play at the highest graphic setting and post U6 I have had to turn it down two levels...

Your post may be more useful in this thread

Enginekid is right, I have been noticing it too. I need to dial down the graphics to, other games and apps are fine, this started around U6, some piece of code in the game is not liking the rest in some way.

It's weird, problem will be worked out in time.

Weird thing is, other than goofy stable mount activity between hobbiton and MD, I have not seen any issues - I haven't changed my settings, I don't experience 'low on resources', I don't have skills not firing timely. I run on Win7 64 as well.

Originally Posted by Roberto_the_First

Weird thing is, other than goofy stable mount activity between hobbiton and MD, I have not seen any issues - I haven't changed my settings, I don't experience 'low on resources', I don't have skills not firing timely. I run on Win7 64 as well.

Likewise, I am not experiencing any 'low resources' issues but do encounter the odd lag spike(seems to be much improved the last couple of days). I suspect the op has a issue with their setup....

thefunny thing is..i got my computer the sametime you got yours..and I was able to play with high graphics and with each update it seems I got to turn em down one by one :\

Check you system's Task Manager and see if Pando Media Booster was installed and is running. I was having similar resource issues until I uninstalled Pando (you only need it to install LotRO the one time). Now things are back to normal. Good luck!

I have also noticed this. I used to be able to run in high resolution and in windowed mode. Over the last 2 updates I had to convert back to full screen and in some cases - usually when there is fog/water in instances or 2 raids in the Moors I have to downgrade the video resolultion.

I always thought that was expected. As games are updated, I expect that they will require more resources. Same with any other software. However I do feel that the stuttering I am noticing when I try to fire some skills is beyond limitations on my system.

I have noticed decreased performance on my wifes laptop. My desktop gets a few unusual stutters lately but on the laptop it's obviously more noticeable.

also makes my processor run about 10 deg hotter then say wow or skyrim on high res. running win 7 64 and i5-2500k

I've noticed in the Windows Task Manager that at times the system memory usage goes WAY up, when all I have running is the task manager and LOTRO. (This is when I'm waiting for the client to start responding again, or looking at why I've gotten stalled in-game).

This is similar to last year's problems before they were fixed (whatever they turned out to be).

Same issues since update 6...

Originally Posted by Glainfach

Check you system's Task Manager and see if Pando Media Booster was installed and is running. I was having similar resource issues until I uninstalled Pando (you only need it to install LotRO the one time). Now things are back to normal. Good luck!

I don't have Pando on my system. When lotro is runnin and i am alt-tabbed out to talk in forums, and i check task manager performance tab clicking resource monitor, it says it's using:

CPU 0-7%
Mem 5900 MB used, 6300MB available (5500MB on standby, 780MB free)
lotroclient commit charge = 1,793, 368 kb (whatever that means)

I don't truly understand what it all means, though.

Originally Posted by Blister_Burster

Likewise, I am not experiencing any 'low resources' issues but do encounter the odd lag spike(seems to be much improved the last couple of days). I suspect the op has a issue with their setup....

This is NOT an issue with our systems. There are players worldwide with a plethora of different internet providers and countless different systems and setups who are all experiencing the same problems. Read the other threads (especially the stickied one started by Sapience). The LOTRO client is suspect and Turbine is still looking for possible other causes on the server side. Just because you aren't experiencing the issues doesn't automatically make it a problem with the other guy's system. Actually, the fact that some of you ARE NOT having issues is part of the problem with finding the cause but does help to rule out some possibilities.

Perhaps the schedule on U6 was so tight that Turbine had no DevOps guys to spare, and one or three dozen delete[]'s were left out of the release version.

I've noticed a serious decline in performance as well, dating back beyond U6 to RoI; this is in spite of the fact I've upgraded my rig and even had to change my ISP. I don't plan on returning to LOTRO until this is resolved, simply because the poor performance doesn't permit it on my end.

I too have noticed the game running slower and slower with each update. Not sure of the cause, but when I first started playing 6 months ago, I was able to run my graphics on "high" or better most of the time. Now, anything over medium causes bad FPS.

Also, if I try logging out and logging into a different alt, the lag is just terrible. I have to actually exit the game and restart in order to use an alt.

I really noticed this the first time I participated in the Saruman T1 fight. First attempt: as soon as the game starts I get ever increasing delay on my command inputs, up to 30 seconds (!) in the end, as if my cpu (running at 100% too for some reason) was putting all the animations in a queue because it couldn't handle them all at the same time. Result: a terribly useless burglar during that fight. For the second attempt I turned down almost any graphic option I possibly could to the lowest, and the input lag still happens, even though it's a lot better this time. I've never had this happen before in any instance of the game (when I was not getting any overheating issues, but I managed to fix that quite some time ago).

Originally Posted by Alrandor

I really noticed this the first time I participated in the Saruman T1 fight. First attempt: as soon as the game starts I get ever increasing delay on my command inputs, up to 30 seconds (!) in the end, as if my cpu (running at 100% too for some reason) was putting all the animations in a queue because it couldn't handle them all at the same time. Result: a terribly useless burglar during that fight. For the second attempt I turned down almost any graphic option I possibly could to the lowest, and the input lag still happens, even though it's a lot better this time. I've never had this happen before in any instance of the game (when I was not getting any overheating issues, but I managed to fix that quite some time ago).

^ That happened to me.... as a Minstrel.

Needless to say, I was very much angry.

On topic: I agree. My performance has been much poorer since the last update. If I want to group at all, particularly for raids, I have to go all the way down to ultra low settings with ultra low textures, animations off and all that in order to actually be useful to the raid. I could run in high for normal 3 mans and medium for raids before U6.

First of all, I want to make it clear that I am no techie. Now that is out of the way, I have experienced a lot of lag spikes lately and terrain loading more slowly than before. I got lag stuck on a Shire race last night. Grrrrrrrr.....

Whether this is a program case or something on my end, I have no clue.

I've noticed some graphical lag in dense pop areas, which is normal for this old game. What is new for me, is crashing on exit, each and every time, using exit game from the menu prior to logging out. Get asked to send data to MS each time.

Getting some serious problems right now. Been able to connect for about a hour and now can't log in. I'm always getting error 50000 or a message saying that it can't connect to the connection server

Yes, it definitely seems that way. For me I don't get lag or stuttering. But it takes a LONG time to log in. Even after defragging disk and swap. Sometimes the log in takes so long that it says "disconnected" and I have to restart. The hard drive light is on almost constantly. This is definitely on the client side.

I've taken to starting the game before doing anything else like a browser, so that it isn't fighting for swap or memory.

I run Win 7 64 bit as well. And since I did a complete uninstall/reinstall I have been able to play on max graphics.

I recommend this to any who have problems. And so far a 100% success rate in fixing client problems.

Originally Posted by Stigger32

I run Win 7 64 bit as well. And since I did a complete uninstall/reinstall I have been able to play on max graphics.

I recommend this to any who have problems. And so far a 100% success rate in fixing client problems.

I did that a couple weeks ago and I saw a slight improvement, but not 100%.

I joined Lotro year ago and was surprised for its good performance, no crashes, almost no lags, everything was smooth. Since U6 it's much worse. There was problem with freezed stable-horses etc. it's better now. But lags are still present..
I love and still play Lotro, solo play is bearable even with lags.. but since U6 I'm really afraid to join group instance! I got dangerous 10-30s lag almost every instance.. During landscape travel I'm noticing lags/loading freezes when entering new part of areas, it was much smoother before U6.

I will try your advices and try to decrease graphic quality for instances.. maybe these lags are connected with graphics somehow..
Maybe Turbine wants to save money and uses less hw resources on server side?

Originally Posted by enginekid

I don't have Pando on my system. When lotro is runnin and i am alt-tabbed out to talk in forums, and i check task manager performance tab clicking resource monitor, it says it's using:

CPU 0-7%
Mem 5900 MB used, 6300MB available (5500MB on standby, 780MB free)
lotroclient commit charge = 1,793, 368 kb (whatever that means)

I don't truly understand what it all means, though.

That your PC is severely overloaded with programs running and it's not lotro's vault?

Your system has totally 12288~ MB or roughly 12.2 GB Physical RAM.
You use almost 6GB of RAM. Lotro only takes 1.79GB of that. That leaves over 4GB used by windows and other applications.
Normally Win7x64 should use around 800MB - 1.2GB depending on how keen you are on optimizing and disabling services without any applications running.

Now the browser could still take up to 1GB if you have like 30 flash videos open in tabs, but that still leaves roughly 3GB of "x" in your system running.

If you purposely don't have anything running i would say your pc is a messy place running with every service, bloatware / addware available.

It's not lotro and u6.

Originally Posted by shann81

I joined Lotro year ago and was surprised for its good performance, no crashes, almost no lags, everything was smooth. Since U6 it's much worse. There was problem with freezed stable-horses etc. it's better now. But lags are still present...

This is exactly my experience too, i came from game where bugs were something common and was impressed how LOTRO was polished, sadly this is not true anymore.

Now i'm getting mad...been 6 hours and still can't connect. Launcher open without scanning files, take like 20 minutes to show login page and if i can get through characters selection i get disconnected

I've noticed that there is more RAM usage from the 6.0 to 6.1 update. However I'm noticing LESS stuttering in 6.1 compared to 6.0. I'm running everything on the maximum settings on a PC that's about 4 years old.

Its is too bad that the client doesn't have a built in timedemo function. If it did we could have a unified meathod of measuring performance.

What if we picked a couple of easy to access places and monitor framerates while turning our characters in circles? We could post our pc's specs and then compare performance.

Agreed. It's getting worse. I'm down to less than medium graphics just to keep up and I have a really good system. It's something different than the moors. I'm over 100fps in the moors and down to 30 anywhere in pve land.

It won't help for stuttering but I found a plugin that will help you run your skill clickes confidently in the lag. It's called mouse cursor highlighter. It puts a floating highlighter over your cursor so you can't lose it. Play around with it, I recommend the thin gold frame with nothing in side.

Here is how it works. Move your cursor to a skill and wait for the highlighter to catch up. When it catches up click the skill and you can be confident that you clicked the right one. Basically it gives you a visible representation of the lag (the gap between cursor and highlighter)....where you are and where you think you are.

just had a thought - maybe because I don't raid, I don't see these problems? I quest, landscape mob kills (deeds) and the occasional skirmish (solo or duo), but I don't raid.

Maybe the issue is only related to raiding..

I have a new gaming rig (new several weeks before U6 came out) and continue to see the hitching, minor stuttering and very occasional horse ride fail. And it all happens at 150 FPS with 72-80 latency.

Originally Posted by Stigger32

I run Win 7 64 bit as well. And since I did a complete uninstall/reinstall I have been able to play on max graphics.

I recommend this to any who have problems. And so far a 100% success rate in fixing client problems.

this doesn't typically help and is a waste of time. Lotro has a bug in the client software that is causing performance issues.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...itching-issues

Just a quick point, not in any way trying to deny that something is amiss with the client.

It's never true that "nothing has changed on my computer or my connection". Yes it has. Programs do stuff, Windows does stuff, weird things happen. Your PC changes every time you switch it on and do something. Every time you add a new file, program, anything. And you can't know that your connection is the same. Your ISP might have changed some software, some hardware or a supplier. The internet might be doing weird stuff. All this is why something that worked perfectly yesterday doesn't work today, for no obvious reason.

Again, this isn't to say there's no problem with the LOTRO client. Evidence suggests there is.

Originally Posted by Depher

this doesn't typically help and is a waste of time. Lotro has a bug in the client software that is causing performance issues.

Actually, re-installing probably will help some people, if only to put the big files into contiguous blocks and perhaps improve the internal organization of those files. Using LOTRO Boost will help some people too. However, as you're pointing out... that's totally unrelated to the recent issues.

I loaded up LOTRO for the first time in a fair while last night, and didn't run into any problems. I took a look at it with Resource Monitor, perfmon, and procmon while I played, and didn't see anything out of whack there either... it looks pretty similar to what I've seen before (although I do think the run rate for network bandwidth is a bit higher - still, it's so low that such changes shouldn't matter). No obvious memory growth issues once I'd been on long enough to stabilize, no deadlocks, no disk I/O saturation problems.

Of course, the time and the way I play may have a lot to do with not seeing these problems. I get on at like 1-2AM EST, and play solo 99% of the time. I don't PvMP, don't raid, etc. Basically, I don't stress out the client very much, and I may miss certain stimulus that's causing client problems for some players entirely.

Khafar

I have a suspicion that their may be some kind on memory leak. Last night while our kin was in ToO I was started getting "lag spikes" at an increasing frequency until at one point the client just crashed. I loged back in and it was a night and day difference how much better I was running. Odd.

I use Win 7 64 bit with 4GB of memory.
I usually have a virtualbox running linux open at the same time as running LOTRO.
All this worked fine before U6 and before I switched from DirectX9 to DirextX11.

What I noticed was that virtualbox plus LOTRO together max out my physical memory and start paging which slows everything down a lot.

Shutting down virtual box I saw lotro using up to 2GB of memory which is kinda the limit for 32 bit processes depending how the application was written.

So I tried to go back to DirectX9 and things were much better memory wise although I have no comparison of the memory really before and after U6 as I never had a problem before.
So it could be that DirectX11 is the lone culprit and I need to do some more tests.

I notice that the hitching, stuttering and stable horses problem seems to be connected to resource loading of the client as the horse usually stops when there is a change of scenery.

I haven't noticed any slowdowns myself, but one thing I would definitely try is downloading fresh installation files and reinstall the whole game, including generating new configuration files (mainly but not only userpreferences.ini). There might sometimes be something fishy going on in some cases. For example, specific changes might be done to the game over the years, and I bet I am not the only one who simply copies lotro folder over without installing. Been running it this way for over 3 years, so doing a "refresh" doesn't hurt, I believe. Also, if you don't have a SSD this might help with game files fragmentation, too.