EQ Chronicles: The Lag Monster
On the (we thought) final leg of the Shaman Epic Quest, we ran into the biggest monster an online game can throw at you - lag. Ouch.
Setting off on the second (and hopefully) final leg of my Shaman friend’s Epic Weapon Quest, I was feeling confident. Behind the wheel of a borrowed level 60 Mage, surrounded by other experienced level 60’s, I knew the dungeon we were entering - the City of Mist - was going to seem unreasonably easy. After the first battle, when not everyone who was coming had appeared yet, it was. I had time on an unfamiliar character to adjust screen settings, and maneuver my point of view to best frame the scene for screenshots. Even the difficult battles weren’t too bad and soon we were on our way toward the final step when our friend would hand in an item, we’d kill a final entity, and he’d have his Epic Weapon. There wasn’t anything in this dungeon that was going to provide serious challenge, or so we thought. Then we ran into the most frightening monster of all around an innocuous corner.
Lag.
For the uninitiated lag refers to an unusual period of communication delay between somewhere on the net and somewhere else. Most usually it happens between you and your ISP. While playing an MO, it means the server (in the USA) doesn’t receive packets of information from your computer and so continues on regardless until it does. When the packets finally get there (or more usually are lost) the game state has changed significantly and the server does whatever makes the most sense. In most cases this means it picks up from the time connection is reestablished, meaning for all the time in-between the mobs got to attack and you didn’t. So you die.
And we did. All of us.
Thanks to a massive lag spike from Telstra, our uber party fell. All I saw was monsters and people running in all directions as my system extrapolated their actions from the last moment of connection. Everything suspended for a while, and the scene flashed to a dark screen while I heard the death cries of several characters, most notably mine.
LOADING. PLEASE WAIT…
Dying is very expensive at high level, and costs a lot of experience points. What had happened was already bad, but for me at least there was much more to come. The Mage I was playing respawned beneath the feet of a Giant in the zone its owner had bound it. Naked Mage vs. armored Giant. Mage died, then spawned again almost immediately (the game is programmed to spawn dead characters at their last binding point - an area you have magically pointed your character to through a spell), and died again. That made three deaths in two minutes.
My system was going through the load sequence to spawn again for another certain death, so I did the one thing I could. EQ is a virtual world, and I live in the real one. I rebooted my computer. Needless to say that was the end of the raid.
I did learn an important lesson even if it was at the expense of someone else: never bind your character at a dangerous zone. Forget how convenient it seems, don’t do it. Oh also, never play anyone else’s character. It hurts when you lose experience points yourself; it’s unconscionable when someone else does it for you, even if it’s not their fault. The most understanding person in the world is still going to be at least a little upset.
It’s the second time I’ve been taught that. I think I’ve got it now.
posted by monty · at 6:01 am · filed under EQ Chronicles