I noticed the last month or so periods of extreme slowness that makes me go crazy, mob die, pk die, and get generally annoyed, and I log off.

My ping is normal.

Are you cpu limited due to massive amount of newly installed code, or are you running five beta testing muds too? I can't stand this slowness, what is happening?!

I've noticed this too from time to time. Where you walk three or four rooms, then there's about a three second lag, then you walk three or four more rooms, and again, the three second lag. It comes and goes, and fortunately it is much less frequent these days than it used to be way back when. I always wondered if there was a reasonable explanation though. Something to remember though, is that it won't be just you moving slowly. It'll be everyone, generally speaking.