Suddenly taking a long time logging in/out

[Barleduq]

It is taking me upwards of a minute to log in or out of my toons in wow - not to launch the game, but to actually get from the character selection screen to being ingame, or doing a /reload. It started suddenly, but I don't remember when, it wasn't something I noticed at first since I tend to go do something else (read a blog page, play minesweeper, etc) when doing things like that.

Could this be the result of an addon? These are the ones I run:

Addon Control Panel
Altoholic
Analyst
(AnnounceResurrection - something that someone wrote for me, that tells me when a resurrect cooldown is done, for when I'm doing corpse runs for world events and I have 2+ minutes to wait before I can come back.)
Archy
Auctioneer Suite
AutoRepair (not on here, from curse)
BadBoy (and ccleaner)
CritterEmote (the one that makes your companions do random things) (also from Curse, iirc)
DragEmAll
Elephant
Fishing Buddy
Gatherer (and the wowhead db)
IgnoreMore
Lagbar
LightHeaded
MoMo_Critter_Emote (the one that keeps track for the "All the Squirrels I've Loved Before" achievement and it's sequels)
Postal
RangeDisplay
SilverDragon
SpeedyGonzales
SwindlerPreventer
TomTom
TrackOMatic
Wowhead Client

I do have the Gatherer DB and the SilverDragon DB loaded in.

I *had* been using FlightMap, PredatorArchy (in that I had it installed, and was waffling between it and Archy figuring out which I liked), and GossipMonger, but I decided I didn't like them and removed them completely. This didn't change anything. It wasn't doing it when I had *only* auctioneer, altoholic, postal, fishing buddy, Gatherer, and MoMo_Critter_Emote. Analyst, IgnoreMore, and CritterEmote are my most recently installed ones, and do not appear to have added to the problem.

I'm trying to get clues as to which might be causing the slow-load-in before I take the plunge and turn EVERYTHING off and turn things back on one at a time. Or is this just something one lives with when one is running 30ish addons?

[AcidWeb]

You have turned on option to show LUA errors? If not try it - maybe something will show up.

If that not help - As you said try turning on only one addon to find the culprit.

Originally Posted by Barleduq Or is this just something one lives with when one is running 30ish addons?

I run over 60 without any problems.

[Barleduq]

Originally Posted by AcidWeb You have turned on option to show LUA errors? If not try it - maybe something will show up.

I don't know? Where is that? (currently on maintenance window, can't quite test things now... which is why I'm here, cruising this site, instead of mining thorium for my JC...)

[semlar]

Disable all of them, if your loading times are still slow then it's not an addon.

If it is an addon, enable half of them and check again. If it's slow it's one of those addons, if not it's in the other half.

Keep disabling half of the remaining addons at a time until you narrow it down.

Enabling display of Lua errors is under "Help" in interface options.

[Dridzt]

You can stop guessing and use WarmUp to check which addon adds what.

The version hosted on WoWi is unfortunately not working with 4.3 but there's an updated version by Cybeloras that works with 4.3

If it gets approved you'll find it here.

After logging in do /wu to show WarmUp window with detailed breakdown of how much loading screen time each addon adds.

Warmup will auto-disable itself after it gives its report.
If you want to test the time taken to reload instead of logon do /rlnd (ReLoadNoDisable) so that it doesn't auto-disable itself.

Edit: Forgot to add that a significant delay can be added from addons that reference files in their .toc or embeds.xml that do not exist,
as then the game tries to read the file, fails, and has to write an error report to disk all of which can delay things depending on your HD quality/fragmentation etc.
You can check \World of Warcraft\Logs\FrameXML.log for such problems and report to the respective addon authors.
An addon can produce FrameXML.log errors without producing lua errors in game so unsuspecting users will never realize it's adding load time.

[Petrah]

Something else to check along with what others have said:

In the World of Warcraft directory there should be a folder called Logs. Inside of that folder should be a file called FrameXML.log (you'll want to view this with Notepad ++). Check that log for addons that have loading errors and report those errors to the addon authors.

Another thing I thought of is to check your hard drive. Here is a free benchmark utility that has always served me well.

[Barleduq]

Originally Posted by Dridzt You can stop guessing and use WarmUp to check which addon adds what. The version hosted on WoWi is unfortunately not working with 4.3 but there's an updated version by Cybeloras that works with 4.3 If it gets approved you'll find it here.

I looked there, and there's a file, but it says it's an addon for something else? Can I just download it or do I need something else?

Originally Posted by Dridzt Forgot to add that a significant delay can be added from addons that reference files in their .toc or embeds.xml that do not exist, as then the game tries to read the file, fails, and has to write an error report to disk all of which can delay things depending on your HD quality/fragmentation etc. You can check \World of Warcraft\Logs\FrameXML.log for such problems and report to the respective addon authors. An addon can produce FrameXML.log errors without producing lua errors in game so unsuspecting users will never realize it's adding load time.

Ok, looked there and while I saw a lot of errors saying that various things already existed, I didn't see anything that said something was missing. I'm also not completely sure that the log included an entire login/reload - not all the addons were listed, but that may not be significant.

Would a copy of some/all of the messages be helpful?

[Dridzt]

You don't need anything else, it's the full addon WarmUP updated for 4.3
(Cybeloras did the patch as I mention on that page but I've used it and verified it works)

Addons not mentioned in FrameXML.log is a good thing, it means there were no warnings or errors to log.

If no missing statements then most your addons are in good condition with respect to files referenced.

About things already existing I'm guessing most would be font overrides.
It's a minor issue.

Anyway, WarmUp will tell you how much time each addon adds to your loading times.
(remember to check my previous post on how to use it)

[Phanx]

I use about 150 addons, and have no issues logging in or out of the game.

In addition to errors, other things to look for are addons that save a large amount of information between game sessions. Reading huge tables at login is very slow, and writing huge tables at logout is very slow.

In your list, I'd try disabling the Wowhead Looter, Auctioneer, Elephant, and maybe Analyst (I don't know what it does, but it sounds like something that might save information between login sessions) and see if that helps. If it does, then the problem is simply that these addons have accumulated too much data. Try clearing out old data and see if that helps. For example, if you run the Wowhead Client to upload your data to Wowhead's servers, it will clear out the Wowhead Looter's collected data afterwards, so you're not wasting time loading it every time you log in.

Also, the game will load much more slowly if it is not in focus. So, if you're alt-tabbed, or running in windowed mode with another program focused, it will take much longer (anywhere from 2-10 times as long) to load.

[Barleduq]

I wish i coudl cut and paste...

This is on my laptop, a macbook pro from 2007 - this isn't the machine I was noticing it on, and I'm trying to figure out if it feels longer than before. It doesn't take as long as my linux desktop; I have all the same addons in place, but I do use it less often.

4.131 seconds Addon Loadup
3.315 seconds Warmup Garbage collection
0.475 seconds Longest Addon: Fishing Buddy
Biggest Addon: Gatherer
Most Garbage: Fishing Buddy
0.038 seconds Blizz Combat Log
0.473 seconds Informant
0.016 sec Blizz Combat Text
0.053 sec World Entry Time
8.826 sec Total Time

It then gave readouts for various things loading, and then continued to give info as I opened things, mailbox, smelting things, and so on.

Interested in finding out how these numbers compare to other people. Will be doing this on the desktop also. FWIW I'd logged in an out of almost all my toons updating altoholic on this machine, so it wasn't a 'clean' thing.

[Barleduq]

Possibly Needed Data: Desktop is an older IBM ThinkCentre with extra memory and a newer graphics card, running Linux Fedora Core 14, and I run WoW under Wine (as suggested/recommended by Blizz.). Laptop is MacBook Pro (2007 model year) running 10.6.8, with more-than-baseline memory and faster disk but not an upgraded graphics card as i recall.)

The timing for the laptop and the desktop as reported by the addon WarmUp is approximately the same - not significantly noticeable, certainly not on the whole-seconds level of significant digits. And definitely not multiple minutes. This would indicate to me that the issue is something else, tho I honestly don't have a clue where to start looking for it, as I don't have enough understanding of what is happening system-wise when WoW is getting ingame.

If anyone has any help/suggestions I'd be happy to hear them. I think it's time for me to go off into the hinterlands of Wine + WoW forums and ask there.

Thank you very much for the help - and I'll be keeping WarmUp around, it seems interestingly useful.

[Rilgamon]

Here I know that when the login takes longer my (slow) harddisk is busy.
And additionally my memory (only 2g) is sometimes the reason.
Two bottlenecks that affect the loading time more than anything wrong in wow

If it started suddenly then perhaps your harddrive is getting old (a drive is old after 3 years counted from production date )

Another idea, a few patches ago they included a "reorganization" ... have you waited for it to finish ? If not this might still going on in the background perhaps

[Phanx]

Originally Posted by Rilgamon Another idea, a few patches ago they included a "reorganization" ... have you waited for it to finish ? If not this might still going on in the background perhaps

The "optimization" process only runs while the Launcher is open, and while it is running, the Launcher will not allow you to cancel the process, and will not allow you to launch WoW until the process completes, so there is no way it can be running while you are playing WoW.

[Rilgamon]

true ... but the launcher is not required so, I mentioned this because it could be a cause

[Barleduq]

Indeed, and as I use Wine, the launcher *doesn't work to launch WoW* (curses deleted) so I launch directly. I will say, however, that on the last patch, when I launched WoW.exe, it started to download data, said "patch needed, click here to download', when I clicked it pulled up the launcher, downloaded the patch, and *then* failed.

So the reminder is valid! But I have launched the Launcher and had it tell me 'everything's done' so I'm assuming it is. I will concede that the fact that this happens on the Linux Desktop and not the Mac Laptop is suspicious for that, tho.

(what happens when I launch the launcher is that it comes up, sits there, fails to find the news server, and does .. nothing. Clicking 'play' produces no game, and clicking the 'X' to kill the window doesn't. I have to force-quit it via the GUI clicky thing, as killing the underlying process doesn't make it go away either. This is a Known Problem in the Wine community wrt WoW, and afaict there's no fix.)