Lag / Connectivity Issues, and an unhelpful company.

[Tsunami643216842]

Greetings

The Situation:

I have been playing SWTOR since its release in 2011. Recently (since 2017) I have been encountering more and more lag spikes/disconnections, they are now happening every 2-10 minutes. Throughout this time I have made every effort to contact EA / BioWare support only to be ignored or to encounter support staff that doesn't know how to open attachments on email (I was told to collect basic information including DxDiag, MSInfo, pathping, and traceroutes. All of which I did successfully, after sending this information in a reply to their request, I was told they did not receive them, so I sent them again, to the same reply that they had not received them. The only explanation is that the support staff simply doesn't know how to open email attachments. I'm sorry for the rant but it's beyond ridiculous.)

TL;DR:

The game has become unplayable due to lag / connectivity issues. EA and BioWare are unhelpful. What should I do?

[Belgorad]

@Tsunami643216842 

I would attach here a copy of your PingPlotter that you are getting when you are playing in order to help determine the cause of the issue.  Please see the steps below:

Pingplotter
how to get the data and watch it live.

Download Pingplotter at www.pingplotter.comInstall it so you can look at the hops to the server
To find out the server IP (it changes every time you log in now) you need start swtor and then go back to your Windows desktop.
Now run command prompt in Administrator mode
(Depending on which Windows you have, there are different ways to run it in Administrator mode, so do a quick Google search on how too for your windows version)

Type this command into the command shell after you have opened it.
Netstat -n -p tcp -b | more

(I usually have the netstat command saved in a txt file for notepad and just copy and paste it into the command prompt)

It will show you the 2 swtor connections to the server IP

It usually has an ip like this - 159.153.65.233 or 159.153.65.232
But because it changes each time you login it will be different.. Ie it could be - 159.153.65.235
This is why you have to run this each time if you want to get an accurate read on the server ping.

Once you have that ip, open pingplotter. You can then enter the swtor server ip you are connected to and it will run a live trace route, showing all the connection hops along the way.
You'll be able to see live statistics and information on what is happening.

I would run it for like 10 minutes or so and then take a screenshot of it and attach it here.

[Tsunami643216842]

As a note, it behaved itself while running the PingPlotter more or less, one tiny spike but nothing like normal. I can post again with a visible spike later on.

[Belgorad]

@Tsunami643216842 

While you were running ping plotter, did you experience any of the latency or was the game unplayable during that time?

[Tsunami643216842]

During the ping plotter run there was no major latency, only one minor spike. It was working well while it was being watched, however since then the game has returned to unplayable lag again.

[Belgorad]

@Tsunami643216842 

Can you run ping plotter during normal gameplay and as soon as you start getting unplayable lag, then save a screenshot of ping plotter and add it.  See if you can get at least 5 min or so of unplayable lag while it is running.