I swear, I'm warning anyone who sees this, you should definitely consider reading the SWTOR Technical Support forums before considering your subscription. I purchased the game at the end of December and enjoyed it quite a bit. I played for about a month before my little nightmare began.

Shortly before my subscription was official, and money taken from my account, I had been running the game pretty well on my computer. The same computer that runs Bioshock 2, Bad Company 2, and many others was running SWTOR perfectly without issues.

The game was patched before my account had been charged. One night, out of nowhere, the game performance and frame rate dropped down to 4-5 fps. This was post-patch, almost 24 hours after, when I started seeing this. I waited about an hour to try again, and nothing had changed. For the next few days I checked back every day, waiting to see if there were any updates.

I eventually started posting in the Technical Support forums, trying to get answers and ask others if they had discovered workarounds. Multiple threads started popping up about poor frames per second, or random intervals of lag. These numbers grew, and while the posting increased, there was no comment from any developer or support folks. Bioware support only mentioned that 5% of users encountered such problems and it was a user issue.

I had been running the game perfectly fine on my PC for weeks so I was a little irritated to hear that comment. Many of the users were and the numbers have grown since. I checked back every day for almost two weeks now and no developer has acknowledged either in the forums or on their blog that these issues even exist, meanwhile individuals are becoming more vocal.

My support tickets are the cream of the crop when it comes to outsourced and useless support. While noting I had ran the game perfectly for weeks before the issue came up, I submitted my diagnostic documentation per their request. My ticket sat for almost four days before I received a response.

The advice from the technical guru:

"Update your ATI Driver." -TICKET CLOSED-

I was sort of amazed. Not only had my drivers been updated, but the game would run one moment and not the next? Let alone the time it took for a reply. The game I had bought was on a 6 month subscription that I purchased based on my experience with new MMO's. They typically have issues that are given workarounds or developers will inform the community of fixes.

Buyer beware on this game. While you may have it working one minute, if it stops working for whatever reason, you'll not get the support. This blog is my way of informing you of the $140.00 nightmare. As of this evening, the game still does not run properly at a speedy 10 fps max, and I still have not seen anything solid from either a developer or tech support. I highly recommend all Giantbomb users read that Technical Support forum before buying the game for your PC. While it might work fine now, you certainly don't want to pay for it down the road the way I have.

I'm currently fighting to get my refund on the subscription.

I swear, I'm warning anyone who sees this, you should definitely consider reading the SWTOR Technical Support forums before considering your subscription. I purchased the game at the end of December and enjoyed it quite a bit. I played for about a month before my little nightmare began.

Shortly before my subscription was official, and money taken from my account, I had been running the game pretty well on my computer. The same computer that runs Bioshock 2, Bad Company 2, and many others was running SWTOR perfectly without issues.

The game was patched before my account had been charged. One night, out of nowhere, the game performance and frame rate dropped down to 4-5 fps. This was post-patch, almost 24 hours after, when I started seeing this. I waited about an hour to try again, and nothing had changed. For the next few days I checked back every day, waiting to see if there were any updates.

I eventually started posting in the Technical Support forums, trying to get answers and ask others if they had discovered workarounds. Multiple threads started popping up about poor frames per second, or random intervals of lag. These numbers grew, and while the posting increased, there was no comment from any developer or support folks. Bioware support only mentioned that 5% of users encountered such problems and it was a user issue.

I had been running the game perfectly fine on my PC for weeks so I was a little irritated to hear that comment. Many of the users were and the numbers have grown since. I checked back every day for almost two weeks now and no developer has acknowledged either in the forums or on their blog that these issues even exist, meanwhile individuals are becoming more vocal.

My support tickets are the cream of the crop when it comes to outsourced and useless support. While noting I had ran the game perfectly for weeks before the issue came up, I submitted my diagnostic documentation per their request. My ticket sat for almost four days before I received a response.

The advice from the technical guru:

"Update your ATI Driver." -TICKET CLOSED-

I was sort of amazed. Not only had my drivers been updated, but the game would run one moment and not the next? Let alone the time it took for a reply. The game I had bought was on a 6 month subscription that I purchased based on my experience with new MMO's. They typically have issues that are given workarounds or developers will inform the community of fixes.

Buyer beware on this game. While you may have it working one minute, if it stops working for whatever reason, you'll not get the support. This blog is my way of informing you of the $140.00 nightmare. As of this evening, the game still does not run properly at a speedy 10 fps max, and I still have not seen anything solid from either a developer or tech support. I highly recommend all Giantbomb users read that Technical Support forum before buying the game for your PC. While it might work fine now, you certainly don't want to pay for it down the road the way I have.

I'm currently fighting to get my refund on the subscription.

Opposite for me - performance has been increasing with each patch.

Also, buyer beware applies to all PC games - Skyrim crashes my computer (not windows) if it doesn't run as admin, 99% don't have that issue.

Man, that sounds like a nightmare.

I turn the shadows off and crank the anti-aliasing all the way up, and I have no problems running this thing at 60fps or higher. I've also seen improvements with every patch.

Then again, I'm also running the latest ATI drivers...which should be Catalyst 12.1. Are you on Catalyst 12.1? If not, you should update your ATI drivers.

I assume you've basically turned everything off in the graphics to see how that affects it, if not you should definitely swallow your pride and do that. :)

Next, have you tried reinstalling the game? You should update your drivers but I agree with you, that's not likely to help given you were running it fine to begin with. Sounds more like something might have become corrupted.

Also are you having problems with any other games?

another old republic hate forum what a surprise

another old republic hate forum what a surprise

game sucks i'm not surprised you got fucked
 
the game literally is the worst MMO i've ever played
 
resubscribed to everquest and considering playing guild wars because I can't stomach another minute of the old republic and when people at work go on and on about how good of a game it is I just tell them to shut the fuck up I don't care
 
It is like when people talk about their kids, I don't fucking care about your kids they are your kids not mine don't talk to me about that shit. Star wars is worse than people that talk about their kids.
 
 
The game runs at like 110 FPS on ultra and I have had no performance issues, it is just a boring piece of shit.

@steveurkel said: @SeriouslyNow: i rest my case

game sucks i'm not surprised you got fucked the game literally is the worst MMO i've ever played resubscribed to everquest and considering playing guild wars because I can't stomach another minute of the old republic and when people at work go on and on about how good of a game it is I just tell them to shut the fuck up I don't care It is like when people talk about their kids, I don't fucking care about your kids they are your kids not mine don't talk to me about that shit. Star wars is worse than people that talk about their kids. The game runs at like 110 FPS on ultra and I have had no performance issues, it is just a boring piece of s

@steveurkel said: @SeriouslyNow: i rest my case

game sucks i'm not surprised you got fucked the game literally is the worst MMO i've ever played resubscribed to everquest and considering playing guild wars because I can't stomach another minute of the old republic and when people at work go on and on about how good of a game it is I just tell them to shut the fuck up I don't care It is like when people talk about their kids, I don't fucking care about your kids they are your kids not mine don't talk to me about that shit. Star wars is worse than people that talk about their kids. The game runs at like 110 FPS on ultra and I have had no performance issues, it is just a boring piece of s

@SeriouslyNow: ok i know thats a pretty harsh statement but a thought we were over the whole "this game is terrible and you shouldn't buy" it phase

@SeriouslyNow: ok i know thats a pretty harsh statement but a thought we were over the whole "this game is terrible and you shouldn't buy" it phase

@SeriouslyNow: fine sure im just gonna leave :{

Too bad about your technical problems. If it's any consolation, the game quickly wears thin. I put two months in and have since cancelled. Good luck getting that refund. I hope you succeed.

I'm having trouble also, but mine is patch related. Customer service has had little advice for me except "go buy a new hardrive or RAM maybe?". The game is fun, but it's not worth it to buy new parts for it, especially since it's the only game on my comp giving me headaches. Good luck with your refund, checking the official SWTOR forums, you're not alone.

Yeah my PC ran Crysis and other games since then on high settings on 60 fps but SWTOR runs like crap on my computer. Load times are terrible, I usually have the black screen for a little while before the graphics start coming in, some planets are just unplayable, I have the game on low, shadows off, If I try to quit to desktop it can take up to 15 minutes before it actually exits, not sure what the deal is.

Have you tried playing any of those other games since your problems with TOR started? It's possible that something in your computer has actually broken.

I've had a fan in my video card die when I was starting a new game and I figured it was a problem with the game for the longest time until I tried playing another game that stressed the video card.

SWTOR has been the one game that I haven't had issues with on my computer.  Skyrim is dropping frames weirdly (maybe a vsync thing), AC: Revelations has a random crash every 2-3 hours, and trying to get the DLC content working on DA:Origins Ultimate Edition has been a complete nightmare.  But SWTOR has run super smooth.

@Kidavenger: that might actually be the problem it happened to me once

@connerthekewlkid said:

another old republic hate forum what a surprise

Ah man, you got me. All that typing for nothing! You are so smart!

@jakob187 said:

I turn the shadows off and crank the anti-aliasing all the way up, and I have no problems running this thing at 60fps or higher. I've also seen improvements with every patch.

Then again, I'm also running the latest ATI drivers...which should be Catalyst 12.1. Are you on Catalyst 12.1? If not, you should update your ATI drivers.

Thanks for the input. I did in fact have my drivers up to 12.1 for my ATI card. Thanks for the advice though. Never know what might work! :)

Wow, it sure must suck to have splurged on a 6-month subscription and then suddenly run into a brick wall of problems.

I didn't run into a lot of technical issues, my problems were more related to in-game glitches, broken quests and UI bugs (some which had persisted since beta). They didn't seem very keen on fixing them, and that plus the whole Ilum debacle left me with little interest in paying for another month.

The only real perfornace issue I experienced was when on board the Imperial Agent ship - the fans on my graphics card would kick into overdrive each and every time. Apparently a known bug, according to to the forums.

I do feel your pain, however. Have you tried running many other games to see if performance is affected there as well?

Did they ever fix the texture issue? Or I guess more precisely add the high quality textures back?

@Godzilla_Sushi: i know i think im gonna go apply to yale now.

That sucks. Hopefully you get it resolved sooner than later.

I was having a huge issues with it having odd polygons stretching and crashing to desktop with my comp saying the video card drivers stopped responding. After doing some digging I found that the issue is between my cpu and video card losing sync (or some crap like that). The way that I was able to stop it was by disabling virtual machine ability in my bios. Haven't had any issues really since then.