ItsTooSweet:
Let me ask you something YankeeJim. It appears to me that the meter doesn't follow the same pattern every time. It doesn't appear linear. I've seen it speed up sometimes at the beginning of the meter swing, the middle, or the end. I am assuming, and maybe incorrectly, that this is to combat auto-dingers. How is this controlled?
I know exactly what you are looking at and no, that's not the way it is supposed to be. Mine doesn't do that- hasn't for a number of years- and Flash is probably causing most of your grief.
By way of example, if I were to hit Play Now in this browser there's no way I could play. The meter is ridiculously erratic, doesn't stop where I want it to and the game is miserable to play- the same complaints a lot of players have, especially after a Flash update. I don't even try anymore, I play in my dedicated Comodo Dragon browser. It's an older version of CD (29.1) with an even older version of Flash (18.0.0.232).
The combination of the two work exceptionally well and I don't mess with it. I can't even navigate away from the Game Client because all of the plugins except Flash have been disabled. Auto update is disabled, too. The browser is for the game and nothing else.
The SRWareIron browser used to be my backup during the time I was figuring all this out. You can see for yourself the difference a dedicated browser makes like this: DL that browser, set the home page to the game client (http://www.wgt.com/gameclient.aspx), close everything else on your computer so nothing else is running and then open that browser and play a game.