Unable to login into SWTOR

[Trebor-droffig]

i'm dying here..6 days without playing im going friggin nuts ..only so many times a day to check this board..i know nothing is done on weekends but it is a hope that someone will figure out the problem before they get around to it. i  tried playing as a free player but my heart isn't in it anymore..i just can't start from scratch with NOTHING knowing i have an account with 10 yrs of sub and all the bells an whistles that go with it..no mounts no armour ,no weapons ,NOTHING i paid for..not even a damn companion.i refuse to pay for stuff on the free account whats the point after the next update it will probable block this  account too..so unless this problem is fixed im done..i just can't start from scratch again i refuse to buy everything new again

[Keirowyn]

Just now, Trebor-droffig said:

i'm dying here..6 days without playing im going friggin nuts ..only so many times a day to check this board..i know nothing is done on weekends but it is a hope that someone will figure out the problem before they get around to it. i  tried playing as a free player but my heart isn't in it anymore..i just can't start from scratch with NOTHING knowing i have an account with 10 yrs of sub and all the bells an whistles that go with it..no mounts no armour ,no weapons ,NOTHING i paid for..not even a damn companion.i refuse to pay for stuff on the free account whats the point after the next update it will probable block this  account too..so unless this problem is fixed im done..i just can't start from scratch again i refuse to buy everything new again

Yeah dude... Its a bummer. There's zero chance I'd start over... None. I'd just quit. 

[CarrieCutter]

10 minutes ago, Keirowyn said:

Yeah dude... Its a bummer. There's zero chance I'd start over... None. I'd just quit. 

Same here I hope it gets fixed

[Belerafont]

Yes, the thoughts are the same, I generally can’t understand people who express thoughts about starting from new account (only if you didn’t start playing yesterday... or you’ve been playing for less than a year, and haven’t put much effort into this game during this time). Like, how can you start from new acc if you’ve been playing for about 10 years? Throwing so much time and money down the drain? Throw away all those rare things that you earned with difficulty (I’m not a fan of collecting achievements, I’m mostly a armor collector and a lover of space barbies).... Some of which are now impossible to get in the usual way....
I had a mini-vacation at work, it started just the next day of the start of the new season, and I wanted to spend this time playing this game, not 24/7 but still, especially since the subscription was paid, to see what the new season would bring.. ..
Instead, I couldn’t trade on the GTN the whole holiday (buying and selling at the price I needed, raiding with friends to make progress or for fun, doing pvp (I need to farm valor on one character).... I can’t do anything, now the vacation is over... I lost the progress of the season and many opportunities to play with friends when I wanted... I don’t know how they will compensate me for the damage (when they fix the error itself), but it must be something really worthwhile, otherwise the only correct solution for I'm going to throw this game in the trash....

P. S.  I understand perfectly well that over the years the number of people responsible for this game has decreased, and probably funding too, and developing new content and creating something new in this game requires effort and time, and is not as easy as it might seem at first glance, but This kind of error (when some people can play, but I can’t, even though I pay a subscription) kills my humanity and compassion for the developers. We are all human and make mistakes... Please fix the game as soon as possible...

 

Edited March 17 by Belerafont

[sithwarriorjc]

Just an update from me in case it helps anyone else.

 

I had the same issues and I managed to login successfully AFTER the recent patch.

 

To rectify I've uninstalled the game and after pulling a new installer I noticed(Even though it was freshly installed on a new computer last week) the new installer defaults to the x86 directory even though the game is 64bit now. Yes I have a 64 bit computer before anyone questions that.. so I changed the default directory, recreated the folder structure in Program Files, done a fresh install just now and it seems to have got me round the issue.

I did take a backup of my settings too from App Data > Local > SWTOR just in case and repopulated them back in after launching the game once. 

Very strange considering I was logged in Friday evening and I had no issues. This has got me round the issue though for tonight anyways.

 

Hope it helps! 

[Jessies]

@sithwarriorjcI tried this, and mine is still crashing. Thanks for the idea though! 

[NikkeiSimmer]

@JackieKo - I have sent @KeiralynHalcyon's DxDiag to communitysupport@swtor.com - for them to pore over.  My wife has had to resurrect a long-dormant account in order to play (starting over from scratch).  She's so frustrated that she can't play on her old account that she's tossed up her hands and is just passively waiting it out.  I'm going to be more proactive because I'm absolutely *****d that she can't play.  So hence the reason why it's ME that is sending you HER DxDiag as requested.  😡

I'm fed up because I want my wife to be able to access her currently inaccessible account with her OLD characters to run missions with me   We were running L80s together in some of the expansion missions and now she's stuck at L16 on an account that had no characters and she has to build EVERYTHING up from scratch. 

Edited March 17 by NikkeiSimmer

[GalaxyWeasel]

I'm really not that familiar with any of this tech talk- it all sounds completely foreign to me. Because of this, I'm not going to make the mistake of messing about with my files and etc. The game was working just fine prior to the new patch tuesday (other than that Global Trade Network bug monday), so I'm just going to wait patiently for the developers to finish their week-long tea/coffee break and fix this already.

[Obiwantheboldwan]

I also can't log in past the loading screen showing Heta's smug smirk.
I already emailed customer service with my Dxdiag a few days ago, the workaround that was offered to me didn't fix it. 



I hope its fixed soon, and that subscribers are given compensation for all the lost subscription time, and perhaps some CC for all the progress we've lost on Galactic Seasons and the PVP season.

Edited March 18 by Obiwantheboldwan

[UberMalak]

On 3/12/2024 at 8:48 PM, OwenBrooks said:

A dxdiag would be handy and also what antivirus software is being used 
post the contents of the client_setting file if you can too 

remove and re-add exceptions to the antivirus/firewall exception list as well is worthwhile at this point

I am running nvidia 2080 video card and trend micro antivirus and have no issue logging into the game for example

Sorry, messed up my rig trying to free up some RAM. Back online now. 

I dont believe its related to anti-virus or firewalls, I've tried with them all disabled.

I am however also using Intel HD Graphics 620

[xXMikeanaXx]

I tried that and it didnt fix mine either. I can tell its trying to load when I have game pulled up on my laptop, because it closes it and takes it to the server screen, but then freezes at the art screen on my desktop.

 

[pripster]

So, after several calls to support, I got my sub transferred to the new F2P account.  I was hoping that might make a difference for logging into my old account, but alas, it still locks up on the splash screen.

At least I get to use up the 3 months I paid, albeit wasting all my clock cycles grinding just to get geared up.  If there is no resolution by the time that sub runs out, I am feeling like I going to call it as well, after more than 11 years.  So many things I acquired and took for granted and used with muscle memory... GONE. My whole collections.  Improved mounting... Markers... Revan...  My credits...  My CCs... I got rocket boots finally...

Things are so different as F2P now from then too.  It is much more restrictive.  

[rquinnG]

I, again, attempted the logging in from another device and turned the "Set Gear as Outfit" on all of my characters and then went back to my laptop. I was able to log-in, but the character selection screen seems to be stuck on the "High Quality" settings. I always have mine set lower for speed. Though, I logged into one of my characters and the graphics were as they should be. I think the entire issue is definitely tied to graphics, to a degree. In the sense that certainly more than one or two of the armor sets in-game are messing with the graphics and causing the loading screen issues due to the "Set Gear as Outfit" situation. Because the graphics looked as I set them on my free-to-play account, but they switch back to "High Quality" when I go back to my main account. I hope these details help find the solution.

Edited March 18 by rquinnG

[Jade_Starchaser]

The graphics being stuck on high for the character select screen makes a fair bit of sense. And it would explain why I've got not hope of logging on until it's fixed. I have a second device, but it runs even lower graphics than my main, and I bet even if I removed all outfits from all 100 of my characters, it'd probably have the same problem. 

Though I am glad the internet drop hack has worked for some. I'm glad I can get my *fix*, though it's a baby lv 2 legacy, so it's like starting over. And I don't want to do that unless I can get my coins from three years of subs, security key, and purchases, and get my character names back, and ownership of my guilds transferred to me.

[FrontLineFodder]

13 hours ago, Keirowyn said:

Holy crap... this worked.  I have 22 characters on Star Forge (plus one lvl 1 I just created yesterday as a test).

Logged onto my wife's Ryzen 7 laptop and went through all 22 of my characters and clicked "Show gear as outfit" or whatever it says... then switched to my Core i7 / Iris Xe laptop and now I can log into my account.

I wonder if its a certain newer / higher texture outfit that's causing it... like the Suppression Trooper armor a couple of my chars were wearing.  Or the Reforged Mandalorian Hunter.

Great to hear, and hope this helps other players also.

 

I am sure this info will be helpful for support, if you have not already updated them.

 

there was another post, that I cannot find now, suggesting the character selection screen was locked to use HQ textures, which sounds about right given yours and others feedback.

 

to anyone else, still having troubles, perhaps use the same outfit on all your characters, this would reduce the amount of memory needed for textures.

(make every character wear the slave girl outfit, just for laughs)

Edited March 18 by FrontLineFodder

[Keirowyn]

15 minutes ago, FrontLineFodder said:

Great to hear, and hope this helps other players also.

 

I am sure this info will be helpful for support, if you have not already updated them.

 

there was another post, that I cannot find now, suggesting the character selection screen was locked to use HQ textures, which sounds about right given yours and others feedback.

 

to anyone else, still having troubles, perhaps use the same outfit on all your characters, this would reduce the amount of memory needed for textures.

(make every character wear the slave girl outfit, just for laughs)

Honestly though... none of this explains why it was fine before the patch, and started causing problems after.

[FrontLineFodder]

1 minute ago, Keirowyn said:

Honestly though... none of this explains why it was fine before the patch, and started causing problems after.

Sounds like the update forced the character selection screen to force high quality textures, which requires more video memory.

From what I would assume, there is at least 8 textures per outfit, one per body size per gender. Possible there is more/less depending on the race also.

[CarrieCutter]

I know and how can they fix that so I don’t lose 10 years of work

[Trebor-droffig]

if  its a graphics problem there are only really a few solution..run out an buy a new computer everytime they update ,or wear no customized clothes ( in which case i want a refund for the 9-10 pages of outfits ive purchased over the years ) but that still won't help those with paid accounts now from not being able to log in..im not tech Savy enough to go through every file looking to change items to basic gear ..just like im not comfortable messing with bios files or registry files..a customer shouldn't have to be able to re-program a game just to play it

[OwenBrooks]

1 hour ago, Trebor-droffig said:

a customer shouldn't have to be able to re-program a game just to play it

Games release minimum system requirements for a reason , patches are also designed around systems meeting those requirements
Systems that do meet the minimum spec have no issue logging into and playing swtor at present 

Unfortunately systems that are below the min spec sometimes are forgotten about and it causes these systems issues 
Hopefully a workaround can get you guys back to playing again

Minspecs are listed at https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/star-wars-the-old-republic the misnomer is that intel cards will almost never meet these requirements but there are some that do, some can meet the requirements by assigning the required ram in the bios

[FrontLineFodder]

44 minutes ago, OwenBrooks said:

Games release minimum system requirements for a reason , patches are also designed around systems meeting those requirements
Systems that do meet the minimum spec have no issue logging into and playing swtor at present 
 

This is true, though if it is a bug with the character login screen forcing high quality textures, then the game will be requiring more resources then even the minimum specs may be able to provide.

I would be hard pressed to find a machine from 10 years ago that only met the minimum spec.

[FrontLineFodder]

Also I’m not seeing the issue as I don’t have high quality outfits on my characters (though I should)

[FrozenRabbit]

My computer/graphics is more then enough to handle/run this game on higher end specs. And I havent logged into the game in probably...2 years? I didnt have a lot of toons and they'd be in simple robes, no flashy/high quality (have a thing for jedi with the robes over basic combat armor look) so im really doubting its an outfit problem.

[Traceguy]

4 hours ago, FrozenRabbit said:

My computer/graphics is more then enough

Can you share your DxDiag window with VRAM?

 

7 hours ago, Trebor-droffig said:

if  its a graphics problem there are only really a few solution..run out an buy a new computer everytime they update

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but that's exactly how things are. Even for SWTOR.

  

On 7/12/2023 at 10:28 AM, JackieKo said:

Hi everyone, 

We’re seeing reports of players who have noticed a drop in quality in graphics and we wanted to offer some insight and also a few steps that players can take to improve quality. 

As a reminder, as of 7.2.1, the “min specs” for SWTOR have been updated: 

• OS: Windows 10 or later - 64-bit
• Processor AMD: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better
• Processor Intel: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or better
• Memory: 6 GB RAM
• Graphics: Star Wars: The Old Republic requires a video card that has a minimum of 1 GB of on-board RAM as well as support for Shader 3.0 or better.
• Examples include:Intel HD 3000 or better/AMD Radeon HD 7450/Nvidia GeForce 610
• Storage: 75 GB available space
• Internet connection: Required to play
• For players who use laptops, the game will default to using the dedicated GPU.

For troubleshooting steps, a great place to start would be the Troubleshooting graphics on PC article from EA Help. 

An important note for laptop players is that Windows has the ability to force which GPU your laptop uses. It can select the lower powered GPU if your laptop is either not plugged in or if you did not specify which GPU to use. 

To select a specific GPU, follow the steps below: 

• Click the Windows Start Menu
• Type "graphics settings".
• Select “Desktop App” in the dropdown and select your swtor.exe.  
• Click Options and select “high performance”

For players who use a NVIDIA graphics card, follow the steps below: 

• Right click on your desktop and select “NVIDIA Control Panel”
• Click the Desktop tab
• Check the box “Add Desktop Context Menu” 
• Right click SWTOR on your desktop and select “Run with graphics processor” 
• Click on “High performance NVIDIA processor” 

If you do not see the “Run with graphics processor” option when right clicking on the app, then you can specify the GPU the following way: 

• Right click on your desktop and select “NVIDIA Control Panel”
• Select Manage 3D Settings 
• Under “Preferred graphics processor”, select High performance NVIDIA processor” 

To know what video card SWTOR was given by Windows to run with on the last run you can get this information from the client_settings.ini:

• That file will be located in C:\Users\(YOURACCOUNT)\AppData\Local\SWTOR\swtor\setting\client_settings.ini
• The following example shows what card the game ran:
• InfoGraphicsVendor = NVIDIA_GPU
• InfoGraphicsVideoMemoryMB = 8044

There is also a setting in that file that controls when the game switches to forced lower resolution textures:

•  MinspecVramCutoffMB = 256

Note that any card with less than 256MB of memory will use lower resolution textures. However, if you change the above setting to below how much memory you have, that will turn off the forced lower texture resolution. This is a workaround to avoid the lower texture resolution, but it is highly recommended to use an updated video card for optimum overall performance.  

Thanks all. 
 

 

[ryuteki]

I've brought this up before, but it appears to have been overlooked.  From what I've read, the dedicated memory value displayed for Intel graphics card of 128 MB is a fictitious number just so that there is a value that games and other programs can look at.  It does not reflect the actual graphics processing power of the machine/graphics card.  You can change that value in the registry editor to make it look like there is more, but it doesn't actually change how the machine behaves.

Integrated graphics cards can use up to 50% of the RAM of the machine as their VRAM.  The OS dynamically assigns the ram as needed.  So if you have a laptop computer with 16 GB of RAM (like my friend who is having issues does), then up to 8 GB of RAM could potentially be assigned to video resources.  This all depends on how many programs are running.   The minimum requirement for SWTOR is 6 GB of RAM and 1 GB of Video RAM.  Most dedicated graphics cards have anywhere from 2 GB to 4 GB of dedicated memory.  The high end ones obviously can have a lot more (my desktop has a dedicated video card with 16 GB VRAM and my laptop has a dedicated video card of 6 GB of VRAM).  So a 16 GB machine with integrated graphics should *technically* more than meets the specs to run the game at lower resolutions.

This is why users were not having issues before the update.

After the update, bam - issues.  And the published game minimum specs are the same as they've been for quite awhile.  It's *clearly* a change in the update that is causing the problem.  Otherwise, all these users would have been having problems these past several years.

From what I am reading, it seems like folks are pinning it down:

• The character list screen for the selected server is loading high-resolution graphics, even if the settings are set to something else.
• The more complex the outfit (meshes, polygons, colors, etc.) the more memory is going to get pulled.
• The more characters on a server, the more memory is going to get pulled.
• High resolution settings are going to multiply the amount of memory.

With those four things in mind, then the issues folks are having make total sense, as do many of the resolutions:

• New accounts won't have as many characters, so no freeze.
• "Current gear as outfit" is probably not going to be nearly as memory intensive as some of the more complex fancy stuff folks have.  We saw one example where a person "reset" all their outfits on their characters, and one by one changed them back to their full custom outfits to eventually, inevitably, freeze up when going back to the server character list view.
• Sub accounts that don't have that many characters on a server will still be able to log in.
• Systems with a dedicated graphics card and high core memory have extra "oomph" that can be thrown at the problem.  I suspect that my laptop (6 GB card) may also be having to draw upon my system's memory (32 GB) to handle the additional resolution pull from the forced high resolution in list view.
• It also explains why once users can get past the login screen, they can play normally as their normal graphics settings kick in.  Meaning that if they were to set their graphics resolution settings to high and try to play the game, even on a server with few characters, they would probably run into problems.

In essence: this is a coding problem.  Unless there is more information that is missing that can shed more light on the issue, by all reports, someone accidentally coded the character list to force high resolution graphics rather than look at the client ini settings.   So maybe try to fix that and see what happens?

To tell users to "just get a newer better computer" is unkind and inconsiderate of the financial burden that places on people.  Especially in these trying times when SWTOR is an escape from the myriad of problems that people are dealing with on a daily basis.  They are paying customers.  The devs screwed up.  It happens.  Just fix it already and stop blaming it on the hardware.

And as a side note, I make my living as a programmer.  And I have personally made errors like this introducing new coding or programming that unintentionally wrecked people's ability to use the program.  And it sucks for everyone - but it is rarely ever the end users' fault.  And such is the case here.  It's just one of the drawbacks of designing on high-end machines and not having resources/time to beta-test the changes on machines with low-end specs or with full user load.  I can make recommendations for future beta-testing procedures to make sure these sorts of things don't happen in future roll-outs.  The devs can send me a private message if they are interested.

C.