Extremely Laggy When Playing Runescape

[LinkOlaran]

Right, I'm posting this just before I head to bed, so forgive me if this is the wrong section/jumbled in format or whatever.

 

I've been playing Runescape for years - on dialup. Yes, I know how terrible it is, and before you say get highspeed, it's not available in my area for the most part - there's maybe one company who offers it back where I live, and we're looking into it soon. But, for now, stuck on dialup.

 

Overall, I haven't had many issues. It doesn't dc very often, or lag severely (unless I try to load a page in the background). But recently, due to some unfortunate circumstances (old computer blew up, and then my laptop's modem fried when we hooked that up a day later due to a power surge coming back through the phone line), we have a somewhat new and up to date computer (at least something positive came out of it all). The connection is more or less just as stable as it was before, but recently, I've had some issues.

 

Occasionally, I'll log on, and it just lags like crazy - more like I'm on a world with 300-400+ ping instead of the 190-210 ping I usually get (for dialup, 200 ish ping is about as good as it gets). I click, and it responds usually a couple seconds later in most cases. I noticed it comes in waves, sometimes it functions at the normal speed, and then it just slows right down like something else is hogging the connection. Runescape still displays these worlds as being 195 ping or such numbers (if it'll even load ping at all, it usually refuses to when it's lagging like this). And then usually, after an hour or two of fiddling around with the firewall, restarting my pc, unplugging the exterior modem and moving it to a new spot, something makes it start working again. I still have no idea what exactly fixes it. Except this time, it hasn't fixed itself yet.

 

Quite frankly, I'm stumped. I've already gone through the firewall settings and opened up the ports associated with Runescape as they recommend somewhere in their knowledge base. I've tried disabling the firewall entirely, still does nothing (yes, I know this is a bad idea, but I'm willing to try anything to see what's causing this lag). I honestly am not sure what else to do. I think my Java version is one lower than the most recent, so I'll set that up to update while I'm asleep, but... any ideas? Are there any other methods one uses to fix lag in Runescape?

 

Any information at all would be nice, I'm willing to try just about anything now. I'll try forcing sun java on Internet Explorer (I'll note that I always use Firefox for any browsing) and see if that does anything. I suppose it could be something on my end (most likely, but what is the question), or it could be on Jagex's end (high load on servers or something, I guess?).

 

Again, any help is appreciated. If any specific computer details are needed, I'll supply them, but these are the basic ones:

 

Acer Aspire M3400

 

AMD Athlon II X3 440 Processor (3.00GHz)

4GB of RAM

Windows 7 Home Premium (64 Bit)

ATI Radeon HD 4250 Graphics

 

Unsure if there's anything else I should include. Also, everything else works perfectly fine on my connection - I can surf the web and download stuff at normal speeds, it's just Runescape that lags to all hell right now.

[Low C]

Have you checked your fps in the ~ box using "displayfps"? Your computer looks like it should easily run runescape but if you check fps you can rule out anything not associated with your internet connection.

[LinkOlaran]

I installed the newest java right before I went to bed, but the issue was still there. Set up the RS client download to download while I was asleep, and I'm playing on it now. Lag is gone - unsure if I fixed it or it fixed itself, though. Going to check and see if it'll run through Firefox using normal java or not.

 

FPS is currently hovering between mid 20s and 30s right now, probably higher if I were in an empty area (sitting in Edge with people firemaking north of me right now, so...). I do have the graphics cranked back up to the max, though. When I logged on I had the graphics set to the lowest and in my house, was getting 50 FPS then.

 

Going to try using Firefox now.

 

 

... Hrm. Getting 15-20 FPS on Firefox while I was steady around 20 FPS on the client, so that's an improvement on it's own. But the several second lag with each click is still gone :/ this is confusing me. I tried Firefox before I went to bed with the updated java exactly how it is now, and it didn't work. And now it does. It's starting to sound like it was on their end.

 

Could this be the issue? Could the server just have been under high load this morning and causing this lag? It's either that or my firewall was acting up - I did have to re enable java's and the client's permissions to go through it when I installed the client and noted it wasn't loading.

 

Tried switching java's permission back to outgoing only like it was before to see what effect that had. It seemed like my FPS dropped when I first logged in (down to 12 FPS or so) but it climbed back up to around 20-30 FPS like normal.

 

Basically, I have no clue what on earth I did to make it work, or even if I did anything. But now it's working, so I'm glad for that, lol. Still, if anyone knows for certain why it was lagging earlier today, I'd love to know.

[Sbrideau]

Is a program trying to check if it gets updates?

[LinkOlaran]

That's the big thing I thought it was going to be, actually. I have McAfee (was preinstalled on this pc, btw) set to inform me of updates and not download anything, and I can't see if anything else might be trying to update. Firefox, I know can and will update on it's own with no warning to me whatsoever, and I have no clue how to check if it is actually updating or not. I didn't get any messages about it having updated when I came on after I woke up, though. I don't think so anyway, I'll have to restart Firefox to double check.

 

EDIT: Nope, restarted Firefox and no message. It's always given me a message upon starting Firefox if it had downloaded any updates.

Edited January 2, 2011 by LinkOlaran

[Aiel]

cntrl+alt+del and check if any other processes are using a large amount of memory? (under processes)

[LinkOlaran]

Other than Java/RS Client taking up anywhere between 300-450k memory, the two next largest tend to be Firefox (70-90k) and MSN or Explorer (21k and 35k). Not too much, really.

 

I noted something just now, though. I was on w117 for a while, and it was completely full. Was doing my clue scroll, and it started lagging exactly like it did last night again. I hopped to a low pop/ping world, and it was working fine. So, I'm thinking it might've just been high load on the servers. I hope so, because otherwise I'm still clueless.

 

Thanks again for the responses.

[Sbrideau]

Probably not high load on the server but the road your connection takes between the computer and the server. Wonder why that would change though.

[jasignhagj]

I read this somewhere; if the animation in RS is choppy, you have a hardware problem, but if the graphics move fine and the game is just unresponsive, its a network issue.

[LinkOlaran]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. The graphics only get choppier in busier areas, otherwise it's as smooth as can be. This lag was affecting me regardless of where I was.

 

And to Sbrid, that sounds about right, there's no way of knowing if there's something going on around where I live or not. Either way, there doesn't seem to be much that can be done about it, other than wait for the issue to die down on it's own.

 

Everything seems to be working now, though. At least for the moment :P thanks again for the replies, guys.

[Hegelstad]

Dialup connections have bad ping so get a new connection preferably fiber. Bad ping is equviliant to slow delay when pressing somewhere, whereas lag is made when your graphics card is experiencing trouble.

[Ember]

.