I’ve been playing MMOs for a long time, and I’ve seen bad launches and really bad launches and complete and totally disastrous launches. I fear that this exposure has made me very forgiving of the problems that crop up in games that have good launches. Warhammer, in my opinion, launched very smoothly and I’ve generally been very content with it.

A lot of people gripe about the UI but I find it to be OK, and add-on support makes it even better. I don’t mind (and sometimes prefer) using some slash commands, and all the disappointment aimed at the chat interface baffles me, because it seems fine. That’s the old man in me coming out. “You spoiled kids! When I was young we didn’t have no steenkin’ tabs or filters! We had to write parsers to split out chat uphill, barefoot, in the snow!!!”

But the one thing that has been really, really bothering me lately is the lag, and in particular, root lag (I think I just made up that term). I’m mainly playing a Shadow Warrior, who uses a bow a lot. As is typical, there’s a minimum range for using a bow. SW’s get a root melee attack that, in theory, let’s you root opponents and run away to get enough range to unload a few arrows into him/her/it.

But what usually happens is I use the root and run, and the mob stays stuck right on me. If I try to shoot I get “Target too close.” Then suddenly the game will “catch up” and the mob will teleport back to where I rooted it.

If this were just a visual thing it’d be annoying, but it seems to impact game mechanics too. Like I said, I’ll get a “Target too Close” one second, then the thing will teleport away and I’ll be able to shoot the bow at it.

All of this is awkward in PvE, but in PvP it makes my root more or less pointless. Since players can resist the root, and don’t act predictably, I never know if the root took or not. I never know if I can try to attack them because they’re rooted and the game is lagging, or if they’ve resisted and they really are in my face. If I guess wrong, it generally means a Respawn incoming.

So essentially in PvP, I use the root as a last, vague hope for when I’m running away from someone bashing my skull in.

I’m 99% sure this isn’t specific to Shadow Warriors and other classes suffer through the same frustrations. I’d really like to see this fixed, and soon, because its really starting to detract from my enjoyment of the class, particularly in RvR.

Bonus gripe: What’s up with Morale Abilities not firing? I was talking to Fizz last night about this, and he confirmed the same thing happens to him. The ability is ‘charged’ and isn’t cooling down, and you click the icon and nothing happens. Click it two or 3 more times and finally it’ll fire, assuming your target hasn’t roamed out of range by then. Using the keyboard doesn’t seem any more reliable, either.

Here’s hoping Mythic is working hard on this stuff, working to get the game as lag free as possible. This Root Lag happens even out in the wilds with just me and 1 mob, so I don’t think its client-side. Or if it is, it shouldn’t be. But my point is, it doesn’t take me being in a crowded RvR Scenario for it to manifest. And it’s 100% consistent. The root never works immediately.

So c’mon Mythic! Fix my class (and any other class that requires a Root & Scoot technique)!