It's overall numbers that truly matter in what argument? If the argument is, "TOR is a successful MMO," then the overall numbers are what matters. If the argument is, "there are many underpopulated servers," then the overall numbers are irrelevant. ONLY the numbers on the underpopulated servers matter. In other words, the "NOT ON MY SERVER" argument is fanboys arguing the wrong freakin argument because you think this is a "TOR IS FAILING" thread when it isn't.

You know why you get grief for the "not on my server" response? Because it's IRRELEVANT. It doesn't matter if there's 200,000 people on Fleet at 3 AM on your server. That in no way affects, improves, mitigates, or does anything to help the fact that on my server I'm lucky to see more than 50 at peak. It's like someone complaining the cost of housing is too high in California, and someone else coming along and saying, "dude, the price on houses is just fine where I live in Mexico. I don't know what your problem is. Just buy a house. Or move to Mexico."

This is the argument I see all the time from people who can't code in basic. You assume that because you haven't the first clue of how a game engine works, that no one else does either.

People used to complain bitterly about Warhammer, and many people quit the game over it, and even Warhammer didn't start to lag until there were 50 or more people in a fight, and it didn't become unplayable until you either had 50 people literally in a room fighting, or over 100 people fighting in a fairly condensed area. Ilum becomes a slide-show at 50 or more people.

I'm distoritnng? What "comparable" games are you talking about? TOR taxes systems more than MUCH MORE SOPHISTICATED games. Not "comparable" games. "Comparable" games to TOR run at 200 FPS on my machine. I'm not the one parsing my words here, it's Bioware and, apparently, you. There's no distorting in anything I say. You are correct that I have been very annoyed by much of what I've encountered in this game, but I don't mince words and I'm not distorting anything. Please stop projecting your own proclivities onto other people.

Yet I can run to the center while stealthed in Huttball, throw Mass Mind Control on a group of opposing rangers without breaking stealth, then find a player at 20% health and hit him with a 2600 damage KB, and have 4 medals before the first ball-carrier dies. (I've done this several times.) It's not a particularly well conceived system in many respects.

I was in a Voidstar today where I literally did no damage. I stealthed to the left door, planted the bomb, re-stealthed, sprinted through the door when it opened, activated the bridge, sprinted across the bridge, planted the second bomb, ... yadda yadda... basically I ninja'd the entire Warzone while my team distracted the Pubs. 1600 objective points (IIRC). Not one medal. I guess it would have been better for me to ignore the ojectives and just find the nearest squishy to stab to death at every opportunity while we lost the WZ. They could fix that immediately by just adding a "150K damage" and "250K damage" medal.

This.^^

Umm, no. I've seen LOTS of reports from players running on 3-4 year old machines claiming they have no problems at all. So they're all liars now?

Lol, I love how in your highlighted part of the quote, you specifically didn't highlight the "especially on low end machines" portion. Because I guess that's not a crucial qualifier in that quote, right? I stand by my interpretation. Bioware is spinning this as a problem with people failing to meet system requirements. That's why the only references you see to hardware in the quote are "especially low end machines" and "mid-to-low machines." Never once do they say, "there are some areas of the game where we are improving optimization for all machines." Because that would be admitting there are problems with the game's optimization, and we wouldn't want to admit that now, would we?

It's your computer. Also, when companions finish crafting and interrupt whatever you're doing... also your computer.

I love how rather than quoting what they actually said, you paraphrase it in the most favorable way possible. Here's a more accurate way to paraphrase what they said; The predominant graphics issues are with lower-end machines and we are creating an ultra-low graphics setting to accomodate those unfortunate people who are either too poor or too stubborn to buy a modern machine. (Bioware's definition of modern is, evidently, "purchased within the last 3 months at a price tag of $3000 or more.") Show me anything in the quote that can be construed as, "we know there are some general graphics issues that need to be addressed with the engine and we're working on them." They only EVER mention "low-end hardware." The only specific solution they mention is that they're working on a "very low" graphics setting. They are intentionally making it sound like the only people having issues are running on machines that don't meet the system requirement when, in reality, almost everyone you see complain about FPS issues has a machine that meets, and often greatly exceeds the recommended specs for TOR. But let's just ignore that, right?

Exactly. The mere fact you can put the game on a RAMDRIVE and suddenly see a 30% to 40% boost in FPS simply proves how crappy the memory interaction of this engine is. Hell, Tatooine runs at over 200 FPS for me when I do that, but it's a pain in the ***, forces you to basically permanently commit system resources to TOR and only TOR, and shouldn't be necessary. Why does Beslavis take 45 seconds to load? My HDD can transfer data at >100 MB/S? How big is Belsavis in terms of data? 500 MB at the most? So my HDD can transfer the data for the zone in ~5 to 6 seconds. Where's the other 35 second of delay coming from? Decompression? If the zone is 500 MB, why is it taking my computer 35 seconds to decompress what would be 300 MB or so of data? The levels didn't take that long to load in Beta. What changed? I know my computer didn't.

FPS issues "on lower end machines." Their solution? An "ultra-low quality" setting. Really? You're going to defend that as "committed to working on issues?" Bioware is basically saying, "our engine sucks so bad, we're going to have to make the graphics EVEN WORSE for it to work on the bulk of machines."

First of all, saying "most" people can do it is a reach. Secondly, people aren't fighting in Fleet. They're standing around or emoting or doing nothing. There shouldn't be anyone complaining about FPS issues in fleet. It's a tiny zone where nothing is happening except people idling.

It's convenient for you that the pre-release forums were wiped. I respect developers who fess up to problems. Bioware hasn't copped to anything. It's always someone else's fault or else "localized" issues to make it sound like it's just you, and not thousands of other people having a problem. Remember back in pre-release when people first started seeing lots of screenshots and complaining about how crappy and cartoonish the graphics were? And do you remember the argument from fanboys about why that was ok? Because "stylized" graphics DON'T require a beast of a machine to run. Now it turns out that, per the defenders in this thread, what we've received is a game with lower-end graphics quality that requires a beast of a machine to run. Yet saying that the engine sucks is a "sweeping statement" in your opinion? Come on.

The problem isn't localized. It's general. Anywhere you get masses of character collected together, the game lags all to hell. That's not a "localized" issue. If the 50 people were fighting on Tatooine, the problem would be just as bad. If they were fighting on Belsavis the problem would be just as bad. If they were fighting on fleet people's computers would explode. Yeah, people don't complain about FPS on Taris. There's 30 people on Taris and spread out throughout the zone. Stop regurgitating BW's PR.

Please explain to us, in detail, your background in computer programming. It's funny that the people who are self-confessed neophytes on this issue are the ones most likely to insist the problem is not Bioware's. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't give an opinion one way or the other.

Bioware's the one pretending that the problems don't exist and that it's only "low-end" hardware that can't play their game. The more Bioware talks the more I lose the last slivers of respect I had for them as a developer. They're blatantly lying for PR purposes. They know there are problems with the engine but they will never say it publicly. I haven't talked to a single player who says they have no problems in Ilum. The only people who say these things reveal themselves very quickly to have no clue what they're talking about. Bioware would rather insult their members by insinuating that their hardware just isn't powerful enough to run this sophisticated game. This game is not sophisticated by any measure, and Bioware needs to man up and fix the issues. Sorry Bioware. We're not stupid. We know the problem is on YOUR end. Stop telling us our computer isn't powerful enough to run your crap engine.

Maybe we'll see some of the cocky people from Swiftsure and Harbinger who keep telling us how there are no population issues with this game coming onto the forums to QQ. I will laugh at them.

Please show me your math on that, so I can laugh at you.

Wrong.

You haven't played any other games if you think that. I swear some of you guys are stuck in the past. "You can't expect an MMO to render big battles without lagging all to hell! Your computer only has 256MB of RAM and you're on aDSL!" Stop using excuses from 2001 please. MMO's can and have been doing this stuff much better than TOR does it for years now.

Interrupt a BH's tracer missile spam sometime and watch them take at least 2 GCD's to figure out what to do next. It's hilarious.

The scary thing is; Recklessness could be on about a 15 second CD, and I don't think we'd be that much more dangerous than Sorcs or Merc are right now--if at all.