We have found some causes of server “lag” (slow play, particularly slow attack rate). The next update, planned to come before the weekend, should fix a few causes of this lag, and give us new tools to use to find other causes that may remain.
We think the chief cause is that monster AI was fixed after some key areas being broken for some time. Now that monsters are able to do a lot of thinking that was blocked before, they may be getting into “loops” that suck up server time. We plan to fix this while not making monsters less intelligent– though we recognize that sometimes monsters are so smart that they are a bit annoying, running away with an unmonsterlike love of survival. This can be easily adjusted and we are looking at the issue now.
Matthew “Stucco” Ford
AC2 Team
Lead Program Manager of AC2
@Microsoft Game Studios
Published: Sep 25, 2002 10:52 am