WoW loading times

[QuantumPion]

Does anyone know of a reason why zones in WoW seem to take a long time to load? I have a very high end computer and when loading zones the progress bar immidiately fills up, but the game then takes 10-20 seconds before showing the game world and another 10 seconds or so before all items appear (e.g. other players and some objects are invisible or only show up as a shadow on the ground until they are fully loaded).

I am using XP now, but I noticed that for the few weeks while I was using Vista, the load times were much much faster. I also notice that many other players, most of whom I know to have more modest or low end computers, are usually able to load zones faster then me (e.g. when we both enter a portal at the same time, by the time my screen is done loading I already see them running ahead of me some distance).

I don't know what would be causing this behavior. I have 2 gigs of ram, a raptor hard drive, e6600 cpu, geforce 8800 gtx, running at max detail settings. I do not hear any hard drive activity while I am waiting for zones to appear, after the progress bar has filled up. Also this is on a fresh XP install, there are literally zero programs running in the background with no extra services running, and using the latest drivers for all my devices.

 

[Matthias99]

but the game then takes 10-20 seconds before showing the game world and another 10 seconds or so before all items appear (e.g. other players and some objects are invisible or only show up as a shadow on the ground until they are fully loaded).

I'm not sure about it taking 10-20 seconds to start showing the game world, but it gradually brings in model data so that it doesn't bog down if you zone into a place with lots of different characters (most prominent when being ported to a major city). That's a feature, not a bug.

running at max detail settings.

An obvious suggestion would be try lower detail settings and see if it has an effect.

I do not hear any hard drive activity while I am waiting for zones to appear, after the progress bar has filled up.

If you look in Task Manager, is your CPU maxed out while this is happening? It might be doing things like actually building new 3D models and loading them to the GPU, which can take a while in a complex zone.

 

[plion]

My guess is some addon is causing problems, try loading the game without any addons and see if that solves the problem. then focus on finding the faulty addon.

 

[QuantumPion]

Okay 20 seconds is probably an exaggeration, I guess its more like 8-12 seconds, but still annoyingly long. I thought it might be loading video textures or something, or that it could be caused by mods. But again, when I was running WoW in Vista with the same mods and video settings, the loading times were literally 2-3 times faster, and I did not experience the invisible people 'feature' once the zone did finish loading.

 

[skace]

How is your network traffic? Was the Vista and XP tests during similar times of the day? Similar traffic on your end? Similar number of people on the servers end?

 

[Runes911]

Originally posted by: plion
My guess is some addon is causing problems, try loading the game without any addons and see if that solves the problem. then focus on finding the faulty addon.

This is most likely your answer. I had mods that slowed my load times down A LOT because it had to update zone data when you changed zones. Try what plion says by turning your mods off totally just to see if thats it.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: plion
My guess is some addon is causing problems, try loading the game without any addons and see if that solves the problem. then focus on finding the faulty addon.

Do what he said.

You'd be amazed how much crap those add-ons use and how inefficient the Blizzard LUA language makes them.

You can also check out the add-on called "Warmup." It will tell you how long each add-on takes to load, how much memory they use and which one has the highest in each category (time to load, memory use).

 

[Kur]

Increase the memory for addons.

 

[Smilin]

You can also eliminate caching as an issue by going out someplace where no other players are at, exiting the game then going back in.

 

[abaez]

Yea, I've increased the memory for addons like to 200mb and its still quite slow. If you have alot of addons it will take longer, especially DB intensive ones like auctioneer or lootlink.

One day try disabling every addon and then loading, it's AMAZINGLY fast. Not even 3 or 4 seconds. I really keep a rein on my addons but everyone I use I really need, so it's just up to you.

 

[wheresmybacon]

How's your latency? If you have a crap connect load times can take a while from what I've seen.

 

[Anubis]

its the addons,

 

[Vortex22]

I have the same problem. It's NOT my addons or internet connection. The load bar only takes 1-3 seconds, but it sits there for a good 15-20 before actually returning to the game. It's much faster on my old Athlon XP1800 (load bar takes longer but there is no delay). I've tested it on both machines with identical addon setups, and with no addons loaded. The one thing that seems to be common among people who have this problem is a dual core CPU. I tried playing with processor affinity settings to no avail. I can't figure it out, and neither can anyone else on the WoW tech forums.

When I'm in a group with other people and we all zone in/out of something, I'm always the last to show up by a significant margin, even though my computer is the fastest of the group many times. There are no other performance problems; it runs WoW smooth as butter except for the load screen issue. I also have the "invisible character" problem after loading.

 

[Vortex22]

I just installed Warmup to track my addon load times. With all addons enabled, it only took 2.6 seconds to load them all up. My time from load start to entering the world is 24 seconds however, so something is taking up over 20 seconds of idle time.

 

[Acanthus]

Moving to an OCed Core 2 Duo from a single core A64 significantly decreased my load times.

Same amount of memory, exact same HD.

 

[skace]

If you think it is dual core related and you have an AMD dual core, you might be missing those fixes from several months back. I think one was a MS hotfix and the other was a driver. Don't exactly have the data here, I know I installed them when the thread was around, you may just want to check if thats all up to date.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: skace
If you think it is dual core related and you have an AMD dual core, you might be missing those fixes from several months back. I think one was a MS hotfix and the other was a driver. Don't exactly have the data here, I know I installed them when the thread was around, you may just want to check if thats all up to date.

WoW is not multithreaded, and the AMD was single core.

The only changes between the two systems were CPU, Ram, Mobo and Windows Vista.

So this verifies the OPs findings as well in an indirect way.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: Vortex22
I just installed Warmup to track my addon load times. With all addons enabled, it only took 2.6 seconds to load them all up. My time from load start to entering the world is 24 seconds however, so something is taking up over 20 seconds of idle time.

I'm always the first to load and I have a C2D E6600... explain that . My add-ons always make me take awhile in initial loading (not changing the instance that I'm in).

 

[imported_Shivetya]

connection speed.

it does send/verify lots of stuff during zone loads, ever since I changed connection speeds (1.5 to 6.0) I am usually the first to zone (in my guild most of us live on skype so we have strange little contests and one upmanships)

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: Shivetya
connection speed.

it does send/verify lots of stuff during zone loads, ever since I changed connection speeds (1.5 to 6.0) I am usually the first to zone (in my guild most of us live on skype so we have strange little contests and one upmanships)

As long as I have a decent connection, I never really noticed a difference. I mean I did notice a difference between dial-up and broadband though :laugh:. I usually attributed some of my speed to the fact that I have a high-end computer.

 

[QuantumPion]

It's not connection speed and its not addons. My ping is usually 20-80 ms, and I have tried deleting the entire interface folder and WTF folders, load times are still crap. Again, when using Vista, my load times were much better. My guess is it is either a driver issue or some memory management issue with XP.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: QuantumPion
It's not connection speed and its not addons. My ping is usually 20-80 ms, and I have tried deleting the entire interface folder and WTF folders, load times are still crap. Again, when using Vista, my load times were much better. My guess is it is either a driver issue or some memory management issue with XP.

Resource managing is supposed to be one of the large improvements vista has over XP.

It has a better network stack.

More efficient memory allocation.

Better task scheduling for multicore.

 

[QuantumPion]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: QuantumPion
It's not connection speed and its not addons. My ping is usually 20-80 ms, and I have tried deleting the entire interface folder and WTF folders, load times are still crap. Again, when using Vista, my load times were much better. My guess is it is either a driver issue or some memory management issue with XP.

Resource managing is supposed to be one of the large improvements vista has over XP.

It has a better network stack.

More efficient memory allocation.

Better task scheduling for multicore.

Yeah I am thinking that dual core cpu may be the issue. FWIW I seem to remember reading somewhere that WoW IS multi-core as of 2.0.

 

[Smilin]

WoW takes advantage of multicore.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Smilin
WoW takes advantage of multicore.

Ill be damned, it does.