thank you for trying ShotByBothSides. results from the posting of the same thread in another forum on the net suggest that possibly it has no effect on windows 7. also results that do seem to show gains seem to be only from people with low performance to begin with. atm im considering if this might be because the Aero interface is DirectX and so therefore its already fully initialized and up and running all the time. it's possible any effect only occurs on XP then again its possible you guys with uber machines are "topped out" edit - that's interesting digging Tolil. i wonder... need to do some testing and check out services now. edit 2 - my XP PC dosn't have that service. the wikipedia article suggests its in windows from Vista onwards. i wonder if i have an older equivalent with another name now.

i do http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1398252#edit1398252

looking for more testers comon guys nothing to lose, lots to gain

agreed. the main point about this exercise is that, if proven, it could quite easily lead to a fix. that's why i need people to try it and post.

i'm fine with sceptical. sceptical for testing is good. as long as people try it.

ok i know some of you will think i'm insane but bear with me and i'll explain. the experiment i want you to try is this: start windows media player (personally i always play a video from my hard disk) close it. start swtor. possible alternative experiment: start windows media player (with nothing. this is the method from rndmnames post) play swtor. post your results. the theory goes simplistically like this: every time a game starts up it fires off a load of DirectX initialization calls. Windows Media Player, because its made my Microsoft and is an integral part of the OS and uses DirectX fires them all off perfectly. the game (in this case SWTOR) then piggybacks on those DirectX calls and functions better because its own are not correct. this has previously worked with other games (including, if i remember correctly, WoW during the TBC patch cycle when the game suddenly developed very bad performance issues) and its discovery by users led to patches which fixed the problem. im not suggesting for a moment this is all that's wrong with swtors performance (i still get the "memory leak" thing for example) but after being mostly ignored when i've mentioned this test i've recently began to have people actually try it and see other posts corroborating my experience which i will edit into this post. notes: this may be OS specific as there a big difference between how DirectX9 is handled on XP and 7 (im on XP) it's not due to the processor ramping up as some people suggest. i know about that and my processor doesn't ramp because its ability to do so is switched off and it constantly runs at full whack. you may have seen similar posts about FRAPS. i'm guessing fraps does much the same thing but probably not as well as WMP. all i ask is that you try it if you're willing and post your impressions edit - corroborating posts

im going to check this next time i get in game as ive noticed a lack of ambient sounds. i know Ctrl S turns the sound on and off (i think it actually reinitializes it)

i'm kidding. what's wrong with all the ones on the commendation and speciality vendors ?

no, we gave you one at the start

interesting. you sure there's not an ambience option under the sound options ? i cant go into game atm to check.

how about i pay him a couple yuan a day ? jus' kiddin' i have Mako.

i have a lifetime sub to LOTRO its a lovely game (with a very good raiding game if that's your thing) and a great community (mostly because there is basically no PvP and/or enemy faction imo) OPs screenshot is sadly let down by epic beard failure there are things both games do better. physics (as in cloth and Twi'leks tentacles) for example are better in swtor. directx 10 support is maybe better in lotro i dunno. a great many zones do not make for as impressive as screenshots as Lake Evendim and its probably best not to mention the Dwarfs of Morias voice acting...

the phasing in ice crown was one of the worst things i've ever encountered in an MMO. first night we turned up to raid the citadel half the raid couldn't see each other because they didn't bother to do a chain of optional 5 man group quests at the very end of the zone. sorting it out was a bloody nightmare. its also was not a wow invention. guild wars had it years ago (in the starting zone no less), as did lotro, even champions online. they just didn't give it a name and make a big publicised deal about it nor over use it to the point you couldn't find or group with people out in the world because they were "in another phase".

you do know most of those things don't come from WoW right ?

not in a narrative sense. you still lose that character. and as for "it takes away some very interesting conversations and any expansion content with that companion" the option to kill them was removed in late beta. when they stay alive beyond the point of high drama where you would previously have had the option to kill them there are no more "interesting conversations" than would have played out if you had chosen not to kill them (which you still could) nor would their deaths affect any future expansion content because their deaths were already factored into the story as written. what you get now, in the case of some classes (without going into spoilers), is companions hanging about acting almost like nothing happened when they should very obviously in some cases should have died by your hand for their actions. it practically ruins the story immersion in relation to some classes because there's no way any self respecting X would leave Y alive after what they do.