raynes wrote:It has to either be your machine or your connection. I have a mid-low range pc, middle of the line video card, and a dsl connection and I get no lag whatsoever when I am in Zora. If it were the NPCs I would have a problem.
One of my friends told me that the first thing she does after porting into or entering a new area is slowly turn her avatar around a couple times to let the new environment load into memory before taking a step or opening any new windows. Ever since then, I have adopted that habit myself, with good results.
There are some places in the game that are reported to me as being "laggy" by many of my friends that play the game. People on my friends list seem to crash most frequently in parts of tryker (fairhaven, the waterfall near windermeer), some of the areas in zorai lands, and one bridge in the fyros lands.
Regardless of the actual cause of the problem, the end result of an area getting a reputation for crashing clients or being "laggy" is that over time, more and more people will avoid it just on the testimony of their friends, or because their friends can't or won't play there.
That's why I hope that lag issues would be considered before any new npc's are added to an area that's already got a possibly unjustified reputation for being laggy or causing crashes.
Zorai already has the most beautiful architecture and city design of all the lands, in my opinion. It's a shame more real, live people are not there playing in that wonderful land. I think they would add more to most player's gaming experience than any number of npc's, but they won't be tempted to try if every time they visit, each step takes 30 seconds to complete. I doubt most players will change their financial priorities just to upgrade their computers and connections so they can enjoy one of the four lands in Ryzom. The better solution to getting more people in to zorai cities would be to address any real or perceived issues with lag or playability of the game in that land.
Npc drummers might add to the atmosphere for the very few players that spend much of their time in the zorai lands and yet still hurt that region's population density, which is still quite low.