Since the 1.16 update, Realms has exhibited lag that becomes so bad as to make the game practically unplayable. The problem appears to become worse as additional players join.
Symptoms include:
Mine carts on powered rails slow down, their position updating as slowly as once every two seconds. When this happens, the mine cart can be half the speed of a walking player, or worse. The slowdown comes and goes without a repeatable cause. Sometimes leaving the cart and re-entering it can cause or stop the lag. Sometimes crossing a chunk boundary seems to change the amount of lag.
When mining blocks, the "drop" animation may play as many as six times before the item actually registers as dropped and is picked up by the player. When this is occurring, if a column of gravel falls onto track or a torch, the spray of repeating drop animations makes it practically impossible to see.
When placing blocks, especially in rapid succession, blocks may disappear immediately after being placed. (Prior to 1.16, blocks would re-appear after being mined; in 1.16, we instead have the opposite problem of blocks disappearing after being placed.)
Mobs may move in stop motion, their position updating once or twice per second. This also affects the rate at which hits are detected on them: you hit the mob, it takes a second for the hit to register, and in the meantime the game may register one or more hits against you by the mob.
This issue is particularly bad with slimes. After attacking a large slime, there is a pause of one or more seconds before the smaller slimes spawn. See https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0XciVC13vDNCGCQWN6HAtRNQQ#save.
The issue occurs for multiple players in our realm. In my case, I am playing on an Xbox One X connected directly via gigabit Ethernet through business-grade networking hardware over a 300Mbps/30Mbps cable connection. My latency to AWS is 39 ms (US-East Virginia) to 120 ms (US-West Oregon). Other players on our realm are located in two other states. Between us, we use three different ISPs. The issue is independent of networking hardware, ISP, or Xbox One revision.
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This is also an issue for me, im paying for the realm subscription but i cant even play on it because of all the lag. please fix this issue mojang so we can play what we paid for.
We are getting this issue lately as well, exactly as explained above. Mostly when two or more players are on, but even one player is online this can happen. Seems to be getting worse this week. My internet is 300-500 mb down and 25-30 mb up, so speed of my connection not the issue.
Also experiencing this issue, have excellent fiber internet. Getting server errors additionally and booted from game. Is there a customer service person I can talk to about a refund or extension of our Realms subscription? We're paying for a service we aren't getting.
i am also experiencing this lag issue with my Realm, but it should be noted that other members of my Realm, (on different consoles than XBox), are seeing the same issue.
it's getting to the point that i am investigating other hosting options.
I really wish I'd seen this issue before paying for realms. Does anyone know if this issue affects dedicated servers as well, or just realms?
This is game breaking, I'm playing solo on our realm and I can't do much. Every time an new entity drops from an ore block or just anything really, it lags like crazy. And it's not the device (played on Windows 10, Nintendo Switch AND Android) nor is it my connection (400+ mbps)
I made my friends and I move to Bedrock and Realms because I thought it would be more stable under Microsoft's umbrella... So far, I regret my move and this is completely unplayable. If this doesn't get top priority when people who play realms repeatedly pay a subscription, I think it mean you care little about your customers. This has been going for too long now.
We found that the unplayable lag went away almost completely after we all stopped playing on the realm completely for 2-4 weeks. The realm worked without any undue lag, regardless of player load, for a few months thereafter (right up until 1.17.30, which broke Realms in so many other ways as well).
Since the problem persisted across server version upgrades, I don't think the issue was due to a memory leak / long uptime for the server instance. If so, I would've expected improvement after a server version upgrade.
It makes me wonder if the issue is related to specific server hardware instances; possibly, discontinuing use of the realm for several weeks causes it to be stopped and later migrated to another server when accessed again? That sort of thing happens with cloud services, and would explain the results we saw.
Under 1.17.3x, we're seeing some lag, but not as bad as when I originally reported this. Occasionally, block drops are delayed. This is particularly noticeable when mining deepslate coal; when doing so, blocks frequently disappear and then reappear instantly. Travel by minecart is generally smooth, with only minor "hitches" that are barely noticeable. (Before our break, minecart travel would routinely pause for half a second or more every few seconds, frequently resulting in minecart travel being slower than walking speed.)
My brother has been having major lag issues and can't even play because anything he does eventually sends him back to the same spot. I had him clear his cache resources and now he can't even join the realm. He is on the PS4.
I did some mining with my family, gathered a bunch of resources then ended up in the spot we were at before we headed out and lost 30 min worth of playing and collecting.
I have not had that happen since and thought maybe it was due to the realm trying to save, which fails and auto restores the last backup? But that doesn't account for when I was watching my brother glitch out and mine seemed fine.
Very frustrating for paying realm users and hope it gets resolved soon.
Note: Problem started with MCPE 1.16, but is equally bad, if not worse, under 1.16.1.