/signed

Fan sites and gaming sites are picking up on this story as well. The silent majority who are on the fence about continuing with subscriptions will take notice. People are used to quality products, especially if they are paying monthly. In my book, blurry, muddy looking characters are NOT subscriptions quality.

Uh, I didn't quote Occam's Razor - sorry if I lead you to believe that.

That long post about texture atlas does NOT explain why the option wasn't left in. I said option. Some people don't mind having slower performance for prettier graphics. Or they don't mind turning the option off when they encounter crowds of people. It also doesn't explain why on earth it would take them a full quarter of a year to figure out how to put the option in when it was already working fine in beta! If you have a better explanation, please proffer it.

Well, in order to prove my hypothesis, we'll have to wait for the results. I'll admit my hypothesis was wrong if they release the high res textures for free! If, down the road, they offer it as some sort of paid DLC, then you'll have to admit I was right. Time will tell!

EA is brazen enough to try it

I think they turned them off and are acting like it is a monumental task to get them turned back on because they want to sell the high-res textures in an expansion pack.

In several threads people have been trying to make sense of Bioware's decision to pull the detailed character and object graphics completely instead of making them an option. Questions: Why limit everyone, even those who weren't suffering significant performance hits? Why say it will take 3 or more months to turn something on that was taken out of beta in one patch cycle? Answer: They had plans to sell a high-res texture expansion pack. Occam's Razor - the simplest explanation in this case is to follow the money. It's really the only thing that makes sense. I suppose another explanation could be that the dev in charge of this who took it out of the beta client quit or something, and everyone else can't for the life of them figure out how he did it. Hah.

Nah, some armors have more fine details in the paint, etc., and look awful with the low res textures. I've seen some awful looking BH and sith armors too. Be sure to zoom all the way in. Cheers.

Mind putting on some higher level trooper or jedi armor and zooming in on your character? Take a SS and if you have sharp textures, I'll eat my keyboard.

Background scenes look good, but zoom in on your character and show us those blurry armor textures! EDIT: United beat me to it.

Their community rep, Stephen Reid, has recently told everyone that they disabled high res textures and most lighting affects becasue it caused big performance hits on some people's computers. That's right - he's claiming that instead of putting options in the UI for us to select different graphics levels, they've made all of the textures low res and blurry. 100+ million budget and I'm assuming a big chunk to graphics and the game looks like it was released in 1999. Some people have some great side by side screenshots of how the graphics looked in beta when they had high res textures enabled and how they look now. It really COULD be a lovely game...

Guys, I ask that you apply some critical thinking. There is more to this than SR is letting on. High res textures worked in beta. They worked just fine for many of us, even with lots of people around. If they slowed the game drastically for some people, what would YOU do if you were a developer: 1. Put in a 'high' or 'ultra' setting in the UI that warned the user could drastically slow down their PC. -or- 2. Remove the high res textures so that your brand new game on which you spend 100's of millions of dollars developing looked like it had graphics from circa 1999? On top of that, pleae think about these two things: 1. If it worked in beta and they took them out over 1 build, why is it going to take 3 months to research how to put them back in? 2. Why is SR talking about 'visual fidelity' when we are specifically talking about the high res textures that USED TO BE IN THE GAME? All I can say is that using some critical thinking, my conclusions are once again 2 fold: 1. SR in no way promised that the high res textures are coming back, no doubt in an attempt to cover himself. 2. There MUST be some other reason for taking them out. Maybe some tester's computers caught on fire? Maybe it's a legal issue - Lucas only wants the game to look great in cinematic scenes? LOL who knows. Again - my trust in Bioware was shaken with SR's attempt at the Jedi mind trick, and my family's subscriptions will be dependent on a firmer statement from someone other than a PR rep.

Hence the mistrust most of us have. Their stance simply isn't logical - something more to this story is not being told.

Actually, some of us have been around a long time, and when we start to see game company reps use quibbling, vague terms like 'greater fidelity' instead of what we are asking for (high res textures), we are savvy to the fact that someone's trying a Jedi mind trick on us. The fact that nothing concrete is being promised and we have a vague future date to expect this uncertain boost to 'fidelity' does not engender a lot of faith. Maybe it's that some of us have a background in critical thinking? Or that we read a lot of Orwell and Bradbury? Or maybe we can just smell manure from a few miles farther off than you can.

The attempt at handwaving and 'these are not the textures you are looking for' that came straight from SR earlier today makes me very distrustful. I'm seriously worried that his latest posts about them taking measures to improve the fidelity of the game's graphics are just more hand waving and they are hoping the protests will fade away. I would really like a firm commitment from one of the producers that this issue is going to be fixed. Honestly, SR burned my trust too much for me to just wait and see what comes out in the next 3 or 4 months. I know the few accounts that my family and I hold are a drop in the bucket, but I'm hoping we aren't the only ones that will hold back on resubbing til we get an honest commitment.

Just want to reiterate in this new thread: My continued subscription is based on them getting the graphics looking at least as good as they did during beta when I made my decision to purchase the game.

Sorry you have a really slow rig, bro - but that's what menu options are for. I want my high and ultra settings.

In my experience, SS's taken and advertised as 'in game footage' usually are possible with highest settings.

Seriously - can someone with their own server or some space on a server copy the media on the SWTOR website before they try to take it down? We need some record of how the game used to look when they were marketing it to all us suckers.

Two things: 1. People who are saying an MMO can't have high res textures need to go out and try some other MMO's. Even DDO has high res textures! Try LOTRO or Rift or Aeon or... the list goes on. 2. I hope the game review sites that gave this game 9/10 or similar ratings based on beta graphics get wind of this and adjust their scores. If you know someone, spread the word. This is really bad, Bioware.

This will have me cancelling my family's 3 accounts sooner rather than later. Specifically for the following 3 reasons: 1. Our characters look like garbage close up. I like to enjoy new armor as I get it, but when it is blurry and you can't make out the details that are obviously supposed to be there, it breaks my immersion. 2. Bioware has advertised this game with much higher resolution textures than are available in game. 3. The doublespeak in this post would make Orwell proud ('high' setting is a UI bug.. lol), and I'm not going to be treated like an ignorant sheep by a company I pay money to.

I was trying to imagine what could possibly be the explanation for their reluctance to allow the option of high res textures. If it causes client instability/low frame rates on slower machines, the option should at least be there for those of us with high-end machines. To add to the mystery, Stephen Reid has admitted that they are not available and late last month called it a 'bug.' This week, however, he has been cryptic about an official statement that requires multiple sign-offs before we can see it. I'm afraid that the idea of some sort of absurd copy protection that is bottlenecking the system makes perfect sense. I can only think that it is LA that is the culprit, as Bioware wouldn't want their game to look like garbage, and would turn this off or at the very least allow for an optional, locally stored, high resolution texture pack for those of us that care about how our characters look.

Be interesting to see if we hear something today. I like how SR left himself an escape route: that if his draft wasn't approved last night, we probably won't hear anything today.

Honestly think this problem needs to be made a bit more high profile. How are game sites giving this a 9/10 when the graphics look like blurry garbage up close? No folks, I'm not talking about the environment background graphics - those are lovely. I'm talking about anything you can zoom in on. We are supposed to immerse ourselves into this world, and to me having blurry armor and clothes on everyone just spoils it. Maybe I should get rid of my nice monitor and play at a low resolution... Does this make it look better or something?