Tips for Future HC players. Also, my 87 bowa rip'd via Server Lagg :(

I am not too sure what could be causing the game server to lagg spike out of nowhere, but my 87 bowa has been nuked due to it. Firstly, we all know the game server has it's issues, to the point of dropping entirely. I've adapted to this, believe me when I tell you I have. I play extremely safe and always run my screen in the highest resolution so I can simply shoot enemies off screen. I expect lag spikes to happen randomly and have been for obviously the past 87 levels on my bowa and that's how I've been able to survive. I run a full-belt of rejuvs no matter what. There's times that I've been wacked with a lagg spike and gone down to half life and been able to survive due to having rejuvs.

I lost a lot of gear that took me many grueling hours to accumulate. Including the MF charms I saved gold for a very long time to get. I've helped out all the hardcore players I've come across so far (even though there's very few of us unfortunately) including the one and only LocKziLLa lol. Now the fact is, I was killed because of an issue that is well out of my hands and that's the server's netcode (is my guess.) The same issues happen on softcore as well, so the issues aren't just on HC.

Simplified tips for future HC players:

-Run the game in the biggest resolution possible.
-Always have a belt full of rejuvs.
-Stay away from almost all endgame content unless you're geared to the teeth.
-Always have a merc with you. Act 3 lightning merc has static field. (helped me a lot)
-Expect lag. Until we can all figure out what is causing the server lag, always be prepared.
-Use a class and build that you know you're comfortable and confident in.
-Stack Faster Run/Walk charms. I can not tell you how important it is for you to have these. There has been times where the game has lagged, and I've clicked away and been able to survive because I can simply avoid the damage during the lagg.

There's probably more but these at least have kept me alive.

Ironically, this is the first time I've ever received a lag spike in the Catacombs. Which is why I've been running it so often. I opened up the door to kill andariel, game lagged and I was killed by zombies, (that i've killed hundreds of times before) right inside the door.

@Game Snowish told me to post here, so I am. Figured I would make it constructive. He also told me it's important to have a screen shot with proof and the time/date...thankfully I took the screen shot.

http://imgur.com/a/zp42f

Im sorry to see this bro :(

Well I am pretty confident Game (I am sorry I don't know his real name) will resurrect my character. Should I die a fair death, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Unfortunately the issue being the server is well out of my hands and I shouldn't have to pay for it. It's a fairly severe technical problem and I am hoping it can be solved. I'd like my character back and I am probably going to switch over to softcore once my character is returned until the netcode/server bugs become resolved.

I dont think Alex ( @Game ) will restore ur char, ur not the first person who died due to lag. Once a char has died there is no way to restore it, ive been told. :( Sorry once again!

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Originally Posted by Mephisto

I dont think Alex ( Game ) will restore ur char, ur not the first person who died due to lag. Once a char has died there is no way to restore it, im sorry :(

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You open the character up in a character editor and uncheck the box that says dead. And if I am not the only one who has died to lag, how come the lag still exists and why hasn't it been fixed? Not to sound like a mean prick or anything, but should I be treated by admins by about their own server killing people, and you not reimbursing the player because of excuses, I can easily go and play the other 10 thousand different mods and 10 million different video games that currently exist. The fact is, whatever server you's are hosting this Diablo 2 mod on, are poor quality and your players are paying the price because of it. You don't tell your population this that and the other thing about why you can't bring their characters back. Your team is fully aware of the server issues, therefore until you fix them, anybody who has been killed on HC due to lag (with proof might I add. I added the screen shot) absolutely has to be reimbursed. I mean that is if you actually care about your population and players.

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Originally Posted by Mephisto

Once a char has died there is no way to restore it, ive been told.

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Is that what you've been telling people who have lost their characters due to your servers? Do you understand how unbelievably unprofessional that is? Look, if you's are actually taking this mod serious, you're going to fix your communication with your players. Otherwise, prepare to end up empty just like all other games/d2 mods lol.

Like I said, Im only telling u what I know, I will leave the rest to @Game or @acyroma. I made a 99 on here before on hardcore and trust me I know how you feel. I mean lets say u die on battle.net due to lag, will u get ur character refunded? I doubt it. Once again, lets wait for Andy or Alex to read this, and see what they say.

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Originally Posted by Mephisto

Like I said, Im only telling u what I know, I will leave the rest to @Game or @acyroma. I made a 99 on here before on hardcore and trust me I know how you feel. I mean lets say u die on battle.net due to lag, will u get ur character refunded? I doubt it. Once again, lets wait for Andy or Alex to read this, and see what they say.

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Fair enough.

It was me who you helped with gear, not DrLukifer. Thanks again Thor! And im very sorry to hear that you died. I did the same on my HC barbarian. It was those dolls when they explode. Was no where near them, yet they killed me somehow.

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Originally Posted by Lockzilla

It was me who you helped with gear, not DrLukifer. Thanks again Thor! And im very sorry to hear that you died. I did the same on my HC barbarian. It was those dolls when they explode. Was no where near them, yet they killed me somehow.

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I absolutely apologize for that. D: I get names mixed up >< Also, I don't mind dying legitimately to be honest. It's happen to me plenty of times. This is why I am putting up such a fuss about this death. It was unfair and illegitimate...I am not trying to start trouble with anybody here. I am simply defending the fact that I just got royally screwed over...and by what I've been told, so have many others. The problem I am seeing now, is let's say Alex does give me character back...who's to say I don't get lag spiked again, right? I mean hardcore needs to be working properly, especially on the server-side of things....otherwise it shouldn't be an option to make a character as Hardcore. I think my death has shined light on a relatively serious problem and in a sense, Annihilus is keeping D2 alive for a lot of people. But should core issues not be fixed, it will simply be left in the dust as most other mods, private servers and games are. Not only that, but LAN support needs to be a core part of the game. Let's say I don't want to play online and prefer to just play locally...the option isn't there to do so, which could ultimately lead to future players quitting. I've been here for awhile now. Dedicated both in-game and quite literally voting every single day. I want this server to stay alive but there absolutely has to be cooperation between players and administrators.

I'm sorry you lost your character man, I lost a Inferno cows I finally was able to start yesterday but at the end of the day, you can't make a hc character with only one life and expect another shot because lag happened. You are playing online, lag will happen whether it's on your end or the servers end. It was the same on bnet and although it's not an intention for the game to lag, you go into hc knowing full well that lag can and will happen, and you only get one life so it was bound to happen. If you want reimbursement for technicalities then you should just play softcore. Every hc player knows the cost to play hc that's why they play it, you may not be the blame for the death of your zon but you knew going in that you could lose it all any minute. That's what hc is. Not to be an asshole I'm just saying. Sorry for your loss.

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Originally Posted by naptologist

I'm sorry you lost your character man, I lost a Inferno cows I finally was able to start yesterday but at the end of the day, you can't make a hc character with only one life and expect another shot because lag happened. You are playing online, lag will happen whether it's on your end or the servers end. It was the same on bnet and although it's not an intention for the game to lag, you go into hc knowing full well that lag can and will happen, and you only get one life so it was bound to happen. If you want reimbursement for technicalities then you should just play softcore. Every hc player knows the cost to play hc that's why they play it, you may not be the blame for the death of your zon but you knew going in that you could lose it all any minute. That's what hc is. Not to be an asshole I'm just saying. Sorry for your loss.

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So you're saying I shouldn't support the servers player base, stick to single-player where lag does not exist, ever. It isn't just "lag happened, give me another shot" The core of the server is causing players to get killed. The players aren't the cause of the players to get killed. Lag can and will happen is absolutely no excuse dude. If you go back and read what I said about me expecting and adapting to the amount this server lags, you'd understand where I am coming from. I made sure by surviving 87 levels and through the lag spikes and nonsense this server threw at me on hardcore. I'll tell you what was bound to happen. My character was going to die at some point, (not by my fault). I was going to come to the official forums and shed light upon the core issue this server is suffering from in hopes the admins actually cared. This whole thing about comparing b.net to this is unbelievably invalid so please, whoever reads this current comment, please stop comparing the two. Also, I do play softcore. I am fully aware the cost of playing HC, in the sense of a legitimate death, not a death that was utterly forced upon me from the quality of the server which I do not own. I get it, dedicated servers cost money. But if you run a game server well enough, people donate and will continue to donate, therefore the cost of a dedicated server is well taken care of. This isn't the case. I am not getting defensive against anything you said, rather you are defending the ill-facts about this server.

It all boils down to this. If Alex intends to keep his server alive, he'll do what is right, especially when he understands the issues are actually on his side. If not, people move on. D2 is an ancient game. Alex has taken the responsibility of doing his best to keep it alive, giving Diablo fans a new experience and keeping people here to play. There's no LAN support, dyes in singleplayer don't work, and playing alone inevitably gets boring, the only way to play Annihilus, is quite literally playing on a low-quality server...that in itself defeats the purpose of playing at all. I rest my case.

Sadly the lag spikes and dropping of all games has been happening a lot more frequently lately.
I'm not sure why, but in the past this didn't seem to be such a big problem compared to how it is now.
Hopefully it can be fixed soon so the hardcore players and all players can go back to playing normally.
I know it doesn't help, but I'm sorry to hear this happened to you, it's very unfortunate.
But also, it's not something to get so worked up about, it's like a passing storm.
Eventually this problem will be fixed, so for the moment it's just best not to play hardcore.
This is basically like complaining about getting wet when it's raining outside.
But you chose to go out in the rain and nobody was forcing you to do so.
If you noticed there was so much lag, your best bet probably would've been to wait to play hardcore.
I'm sure Game has noticed the constant lag and games dropping and plans to try to fix it.
He obviously never intended to let this happen, and would've avoided it if he could've.
He's only human and mistakes are made, it also takes time to fix things and real life comes first.
You should come play softcore anyways, hardcore would make me rage quit even if I died legit.
I've always thought hardcore was the dumbest part of Diablo 2 and I've never considered playing it.
But that's just my opinion, hope things go better for you in the future sir.

Sorry to hear that Thor :(

ive lost my barb due to the cause of a lag too. Just like my amazon before.
Im pretty sure you will get your gear back, if you ask game for it and there was a serverdown (or at least something that isnt your fault). Though im pretty sure there will be no characters revived...
The race to 99 on hc isnt possible with the server atm. It used to be that laggy in the past, when theres too much players playing and that is surely a thing at the moment. Ive never seen so much ppl play.

In the last ladder lag wasnt a problem at all. If you noticed it and left the game it disconnected you fast enough. It dont seem to work in this season for some reason. Maybe there have been changes

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Originally Posted by Thor

So you're saying I shouldn't support the servers player base, stick to single-player where lag does not exist, ever. It isn't just "lag happened, give me another shot" The core of the server is causing players to get killed. The players aren't the cause of the players to get killed. Lag can and will happen is absolutely no excuse dude. If you go back and read what I said about me expecting and adapting to the amount this server lags, you'd understand where I am coming from. I made sure by surviving 87 levels and through the lag spikes and nonsense this server threw at me on hardcore. I'll tell you what was bound to happen. My character was going to die at some point, (not by my fault). I was going to come to the official forums and shed light upon the core issue this server is suffering from in hopes the admins actually cared. This whole thing about comparing b.net to this is unbelievably invalid so please, whoever reads this current comment, please stop comparing the two. Also, I do play softcore. I am fully aware the cost of playing HC, in the sense of a legitimate death, not a death that was utterly forced upon me from the quality of the server which I do not own. I get it, dedicated servers cost money. But if you run a game server well enough, people donate and will continue to donate, therefore the cost of a dedicated server is well taken care of. This isn't the case. I am not getting defensive against anything you said, rather you are defending the ill-facts about this server.

It all boils down to this. If Alex intends to keep his server alive, he'll do what is right, especially when he understands the issues are actually on his side. If not, people move on. D2 is an ancient game. Alex has taken the responsibility of doing his best to keep it alive, giving Diablo fans a new experience and keeping people here to play. There's no LAN support, dyes in singleplayer don't work, and playing alone inevitably gets boring, the only way to play Annihilus, is quite literally playing on a low-quality server...that in itself defeats the purpose of playing at all. I rest my case.

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I am really sorry you lost your character, it definitely sucks. I hate to say it though, but we cannot restore characters or gear. I am not sure why you think this is a low-quality server, because it definitely is not, infact I am sure there hasn't ever been a diablo 2 server out there that was ran on such a well equipped dedicated server. We pay a lot more than people think for our server, and even on months when there were no gold purchases at all I continued to pay for the server out of my pocket. The server isn't the case here, it is the simple fact that we've pushed this game to it's absolute limits editing so much of the engine that sometimes it seems there is a 1-2 minute hiccup. This has nothing to do with the hardware, but rather the really old code of Diablo 2. Playing hardcore is very dangerous here, not because of this lag but also because of the content in general, it clearly was not made with hardcore in mind.

I know a lot of people think softcore is too easy because of "unlimited deaths" and that is why they play hardcore, but that is not how annihilus is. Some of the content is very hard, to the point where only 1 clan has cleared it. I know you're going to be very upset about my response, but hardcore was designed to make people mad if you ask me. I am ALWAYS working to improve the stability of the server and I am in no way saying it's anywhere close to perfect, but we're doing the best we can and if we had a way to restore characters (we don't) then just about everyone would say a lagspike killed them, and I would have to restore characters for everyone or people would say im biased, then it isn't even hardcore anymore. I hope you can continue to play softcore, but if not that is completely up to you. Again, I am sorry for your loss.

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Originally Posted by Game

I am really sorry you lost your character, it definitely sucks. I hate to say it though, but we cannot restore characters or gear. I am not sure why you think this is a low-quality server, because it definitely is not, infact I am sure there hasn't ever been a diablo 2 server out there that was ran on such a well equipped dedicated server. We pay a lot more than people think for our server, and even on months when there were no gold purchases at all I continued to pay for the server out of my pocket. The server isn't the case here, it is the simple fact that we've pushed this game to it's absolute limits editing so much of the engine that sometimes it seems there is a 1-2 minute hiccup. This has nothing to do with the hardware, but rather the really old code of Diablo 2. Playing hardcore is very dangerous here, not because of this lag but also because of the content in general, it clearly was not made with hardcore in mind.

I know a lot of people think softcore is too easy because of "unlimited deaths" and that is why they play hardcore, but that is not how annihilus is. Some of the content is very hard, to the point where only 1 clan has cleared it. I know you're going to be very upset about my response, but hardcore was designed to make people mad if you ask me. I am ALWAYS working to improve the stability of the server and I am in no way saying it's anywhere close to perfect, but we're doing the best we can and if we had a way to restore characters (we don't) then just about everyone would say a lagspike killed them, and I would have to restore characters for everyone or people would say im biased, then it isn't even hardcore anymore. I hope you can continue to play softcore, but if not that is completely up to you. Again, I am sorry for your loss.

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I appreciate the reply. I never meant any insults to you or the team or bashing the actual server. It was all I could think of at the time causing problems but you've cleared up a lot of confusion and such. I never thought outside the box and going back and reading what I wrote seems pretty closed-minded on my behalf, sorry about that. I never thought the old code could potentially cause issues either, never even crossed my mind. Everything I posted was based on what I believed to be the server and I honestly didn't know it wasn't possible to bring back dead HC characters, than again, it wouldn't of been a good idea if you did as that would've caused other issues with future HC players. I was just genuinely pissed and blabbed on about what I thought the server screwing me over without taking a breather. At the end of the day, Annihilus still is the best mod and runs on the most stable server I've played on. Keep up the good work, sorry for being so blatant, seems to be an on-going bad habit of mine for some reason

Asking kindly will get you a lot further than going off the handle. I support this team and server weekly through buying gold,and will continue to do so. The amount of dedication and hard work this team has put into this game is astounding and should be applauded. Lag spikes happen even on bnet, and its part of the game.