lol APAC ping to increase by 1000% Thanks BW.

Let's hope this is true. Frankly I think it's 100% referring to just the new shadows system: Regardless, their wording suggests that the load on the system will be reduced, this means nothing to the current engine's limitations given my system is hardly utilized running this hopelessly threaded game - The "core changes" may simply be noticeable to lower-end PC's, and the only benefit for higher-end PC's will be the new shadow system. lol I remember the 1.3 patch notes..... Still funny. We'll see, i'm definitely not getting my hopes up that's for sure. This way I won't be disappointed yet again, but may be happily surprised. I think the former. Carrot on a stick.

Umm... Shadow optimizations? Lol... You're funny - Sorry, try doing some testing and research - Any decent rig can far outperform this game engines limitations, unfortunately no amount of hardware can actually substitute for a broken engine. Shadow optimization, great... Not my issue at all, everything on high, everything on low, you will receive the exact same bottlenecks in warzones, some operations, and high population areas due to this games pathetic engine. This is with any PC. Let's not debate this here. Read my thread here, and find countless others, then we'll talk: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=507316

Who cares... How is this worthy of front-page news? lol... How about fixing your game engine instead, then move onto the petty little improvements.

Sorry do you normally sleep between 5pm and 9pm?

Absolutely. Poor guy - No sense.

I laughed.

Noones freaking out. It's not a debate as to whether the current engine being used is not up to the task in some situations - It's a fact... And has been proven many times. The engine still needs lots of work - And we are paying BW monthly to work on this game. Some want content - Others optimization. There is nothing wrong with us expressing our opinion and EXPECTING BioWare to work on their engine at some stage.

Read my thread here for SOME information on this engines issues - It's a useless support ticket however there are some things explained in some of my posts. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=507316 In the end - The engine choice (As stated by BW in an interview I have watched) comes down to FAST content production only. That's all. Usually when an employee of a gaming company is asked about their engine or an engine they have used they will state more than simply "fast production." Do some research on the hero engine - It's been created with one goal in mind: FAST, EASY content production. The graphics renderer itself is 1 thread only - Rendering STOPS altogether, this is the reason for lower frame rates in areas where more information is to be processed, and this also gives you the stuttering effect you may notice from time to time. This can be fixed - Whether it will be, is another story. BW is at a stage where it needs to prioritize development very carefully to keep current persevering subscribers happy. Quality of service is something they have obviously had on low priority for some time.

... This game runs on DirectX 9.

I can achieve the same fps caps you are talking about on a much lower spec system, in the areas you are referring to. The game engine does have fps caps due to it's own bottle-necking, not an intended cap - An un-threaded render-er means your cpu and gpu are not being utilized anywhere near the extent they can be with any CPU nowadays having at least 2 cores and hyper-threading. The simple fact I can achieve the EXACT same results on an i7 with a gtx 670 (With apparently the GPU capping according to the game engine, even though the GPU usage sits at 50% (70% for on very rare occasions)) after upgrading from a gtx 560 Ti achieving the very same fps caps, whilst still the game engine told me my GPU was capping me also. If you like you can read my thread about how hardware is simply not being utilized by this engine. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=507316 Content production over performance. This is an engine ISSUE, not a planned cap. Although, not to say the engine isn't working as intended. It is. The HeroEngine was designed for fast production, marketed to any man and his dog that would like to create an online-based game. Check their website.

Not to put a damper on this: Just giving my results: I found no performance increase trying this unfortunately. i7, 16gb RAM, gtx 670, SSD's

No It's not small drops and then a raise back up in fps, if it were small texture loading issues that would be fine - It's a static low fps with lots of players around in fleet. However most importantly i'll receive occasionally static low fps around 15-25 in VoidStar or Huttball - This is simply unacceptable. On fleet, I can understand, no worries, couldn't care less. But when I need to fast reaction times and smooth gameplay, I want it for the money I spend on my hardware, it's very disappointing when the software utilizing it simply cannot do so. The 600 series is a new card, so there are no supporting drivers below 300, and beta drivers do not help, and are unstable also. However I had the same issue with my old gtc 560 Ti, even on older drivers. I think many people have the same issues I do, but tend not to notice them to be quite honest. Custom built PC all great brands, I know what i'm doing - I can run any game on maxed out settings BF3, Crysis 2 HD textures, anything at all and not drop below 60fps once at 1080p. Back to the original OP - No, I have not seen an increase in performance at all since 1.3. The only thing that may have raised some peoples FPS in fleet is they lowered the number of players within each instance.

i7, 16gb RAM, 3 X Intel 330 SSD's, gtx 670 gfx card. With all settings on high and "Visible character limit" on low I will receive 60fps most of the time on fleet, with drops to around 45fps with lots of people around. With "Visible character limit" on high, I will receive around 25fps static with lots of people around, and 60fps without. In warzones I will drop to sometimes as low as 15-25fps. This is an issue with the game engine - Nothing to do with your hardware, your hardware, and mine can handle this just fine. Believe me, ive tried everything: Disabling HT on my i7, and forcing NO parked cores. Reinstalling everything including Windows, SW, drivers. Upgrade to a gtx 670 from a gtx 560 Ti. Bought 2 more Intel 330 series SSD's to install OS on one, and games on the other, also tried both on the one SSD. Disabling page file, moving paging file (Neither of those are going to help anyway). Setting up a ramdisk. Running under compatibility modes. My GPU usage sits at around 30%, and CPU at around 40% MAX. Nothing will work for you, and BW will not give you any help on this. Those popping in to say they never drop below 60fps or receive stutter are simply talking out of their ***. This has been verified after talking to guild members, and later requesting their actual FPS at different times, they didnt even realize they were dropping way below 60fps at the time. The only things i would recommend is definitely running SW from a SSD - And disable HT on your i7, and prevent core parking - This will help with stuttering, and you'll get around a 5ish fps increase under heavy load. Other than that - Either endure like we have for so long - Or join the hordes of members leaving this game

Question: Are you currently working to improve the efficiency and performance of SWTOR? This is in reference to fps issues on high-end systems, very widely discussed within the support forums, all to no avail. This is not a support request - This is a widely known problem with your game engine, which is driving people away from your otherwise great game. I won't be sticking around much longer. I have done a survey amongst our guild and others, all high-end systems with graphics settings on low, or full; experience the exact same fps bottle-necking when character numbers within an area increase - Even with just 16 people in a warzone, frame rate can drop to as low as 20 at times (Worst case scenario). It is totally reasonable to expect 60fps constantly within this game. Some stuttering is acceptable (It's an MMO) - But as low as 25-30fps on an i7, 16gb ram, SSD's and a GTX 680 (And higher spec'd systems) is simply unacceptable when rendering a game that is obviously horribly optimized in regards to texture loading and seamless loading of character data and their textures - These should be priorities when designing an MMO... There are countless threads within both support and general forum, all which have died due to nothing but pre-written responses from support staff, none of which go beyond suggesting to update drivers, a basic and obvious task. This is simply avoiding fixing the real issue here - Your game engine. I and much of the SW community would appreciate as much information as possible on this, I'd love to continue playing this game, but unless I can enjoy it, I'll simply play something else. Please give me a reason to wait!