Inconsistent Lag and Random Crashing Conditions

Dungeon Master (NWN 2) Gender: Age: 27 Joined: 10 Apr 2007

Have been noticing significant amounts of these reports and just wanted to let you know we are searching for potential causes. I spent some time on Bioware forums last night, scouring for leads. As these conditions are not consistent and we can't seem to definitely relate it to any single contributor, I am suspecting this may be caused by files in Players' override folders.

Some players in these forums have reported that they don't have problems with other servers, though I'd suspect either those servers do have similar problems at times, or that they just don't have more than a handful of players. I think that all PW servers with a significant quantity of players are experiencing these same issues. I even saw a post from the most popular RP server, who normally have excellent server performance, have been experiencing these inconsistent lag and random crash issues.

It has been confirmed by admins from multiple PW servers that having some things in override will instantly crash servers, so I think its entirely possible that other things may not instantly crash servers, but may contribute to lag. At least one popular PW server is trying to force players to download sets of 2DA files into their override folders in attempt to purge potentially altered files there. Though I don't think thats a sound solution.

Perhaps we could all empty our override folders when playing on DEX2. Some items may be safe to use and not contribute to lag. Perhaps some user interface enhancement haks and voice overrides are fine, but I'd ask that everyone insure that there is nothing else in their override folders. Please check BOTH of your override directories:

C:/.../NWN2/Override, and

(MyDocuments)/NWN2/Ovveride

Perhaps shout reminders for others to do the same if when lag starts creeping up.

I'll continue to follow the news in Bioware forums to see what other PW servers are doing.

One surprising potential cause some people are reporting and Obsidian is considering is the use of WASD keys (some players use these hotkeys to move their characters about as opposed to using their mouse). That one sounds ridiculous to me as I would think it shouldn't matter whether one uses their mouse or kb to move about, though that is one of the leads they are following.

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If you are experiencing crashing when logging in, several players are reporting this problem, especially since 1.06.980 patch, and the culprit is Securom (an antipiracy feature that Atari has contracted to use for NWN2). Obsidian redirects complaints about Securom to Atari.