lag is overrated...

before flaming read the unpalatable technical stuff.

For example : I'm sure that most of you are not aware that 5G is everything about lag ( well technically latency ) and that beside that there's not much new.

First lets define lag :

Lag is when your character moves or make some action an undertermined ( and usually undefined ) time after you punched the keys needed for that move/action.
Normal Humans have about 0,5s in reaction time so we cna consider that lag is anything above that half a second.

Now lets define latency, because it's needed as lots of people think that lag = latency :
Latency is the progapation time of a packet in the network ( round trip ).
Most of the time it involves the speed of light in SiO2 ( read : Glass or optical fiber ) or Cu ( copper ), but occasionally it also involves software processing in a router.

Now what people needs to keep firmly in mind is that Latency is NOT Lag from the game point of view. ( except in a few rare cases )

There's many external things that can generate lag while the Latency is as low as possible.
Among other things :

- RAM usage ( I had huge lag when I'm dual boxing because of the constant swap from one DDO instance to the other when I only had 8Gb of RAM... I'll see what happens with 16Gb )
- Graphic Card ( yes that can generate lag when there's just too much to draw )
- Other players ( because how the game is built, in a given instance all the players gets the informations about the location of every other players in said instance and what they are doing at a given time, and when there's too much to handle, you get rubberbanding, because somewhere along the way or in your computer packets are dropped before being processed by the game so you start moving and then go back because somebody didn't get the packets that said you were moving )
- Network Traffic Shaping ( that one is tricky, while ISPs and Carriers don't talk about it [ and definitely do not want to ] they are using some traffic shaping schemes to make sure that : 1) The Internet stay up { priority to Routing protocols above anything else } 2)  The Important Things that need near real time ( VoIP, Paid Streaming, Governmental stuff ) gets prioritized above run the mill Web, Free Streaming and Gaming.

And don't forget that in a given party is one person generates some lag for any reason all the other members of the party will experience that lag. ( best cue : when somebody is DCing due to a network issue and the whole party freeze )

Related to my earlier comment, I think the most likely "merger" is the elimination of all FtP servers and a single subscription-based server that will very similar to Hardcore. Maybe brand it as DDO 2.0.

It may not be a sound business idea but it is SSG afterall.

There have been a lot of dubious decisions made lately by SSG.

Since nothing ever happens in a vacuum, we have to assume that there are ulterior motives for nonsensical decisions like nerfing the most popular dailies to "encourage running more content and grouping" (a non-issue) and then opening up Crystal Cove and the Hardcore server at the same time (a ridiculous notion at best).

As people may recall from previous posts, I was (and still am) strongly against the Hardcore server nobody wanted or asked for. However, since it seemed it may have value for my main server toons, I logged in and was surprised by how lively it was. I was actually sadly impressed by the egalitarian nature of it: It was a completely clean slate for everyone on the server, a totally level playing field (well, except for the twats buying their way to 20, which defeats the purpose). It certainly lets you know how many lousy players there are if the number of "X has died at Level 2" announcements I saw in 30 mins of login time is an indication.

So it begs the question of whether SSG is trying to create a Self Fulfilling Prophecy with Hardcore to create a new business model (as stated in previous posts in this thread) or whether it's just them throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks.

I always assume ignorance and stupidity before malevolence. So I will reserve judgment until such time as they (inadvertently) drop a hint as to what their motives might be.

Dr_tank2vich wrote on Aug 19^th, 2019 at 2:06pm:



I can't imagine this is what they are thinking. Would there be legal recourse from basically running the exact same game but at the same time screw over all the people who bought the expansions and upgrades but were never VIP's? I wouldn't consider those people f2p.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand ssg could screw up just about anything and I don't put anything past them, but I still think there isn't much chance of this.

Skoodge wrote on Aug 23^rd, 2019 at 2:07am:

Enthusiastically agree except one quibble - it's their CRM before PR they need to work on, PR keeps things from going bad, CRM fixes it when it's already bad, and it's bad. They've got 10 year old accounts with 100 posts coming forward to complain now.

Skoodge wrote on Aug 23^rd, 2019 at 10:00am:

Not true at all. Trudh really was buying subscriptions in that thread.

Skoodge wrote on Aug 23^rd, 2019 at 10:39am:



I've grown used to fanbois, I just wish we could get rid of your giant walls of fucking text.

Cripey wrote on Aug 23^rd, 2019 at 10:43am:


And his damn analogies.