Why is there a copy protection system in the graphics, and is it crippling the game?

The primary, widely accepted theory for how light propagated for over a century was that there was a medium, called the luminous aether, that acted as the carrier for light. The first test anybody managed to come up with to try to detect it was the very famous Michelson-Morley experiment, using the world's first interferometer. This experiment came up with quite likely the most famous null result in history: the result they got was within the known experimental error of the device, and thus quite possibly really zero.

Further refinements of the experiment were carried out with various advances, the overwhelming majority continued to show results within the error of the device, even as the sensitivity was increased and the error reduced. This didn't shake belief in the Aether, which had been accepted for so long hardly anyone dared question it.

The experiments assumed that the aether moved, by the motion of the earth through it if nothing else, and tried to detect the variation in the speed of light caused by the movement of the aether.

The series of null results, however, led to a few people trying to rectify the theory to fit the data, this led to all sorts of novel extensions on the existing theory, but the aether was still generally accepted as fact.

The first failure to detect the aether happened in 1887. It wasn't until 1905 that someone finally managed to put everything together in a new, aetherless theory. His name was Einstein, and he'd just come up with the Theory of Special Relativity.

Acceptance was not instantaneous, it took a lot of testing, further null results on aether detecting experiments, and a lot of other experiments testing Einstein's new theory before it largely displaced the idea of the Aether. This happened about 1911.

The process here is what's important: A theory is put forth, data is gathered in an attempt to find out if it's correct. Based on the data that comes in, the theory is revised, over and over, via discussion, correspondence, and a lot of thought, until finally a new, better, more plausible theory comes up that is found to fit the observed data.

The aether was postulated based on very little data at all, but became accepted as scientific fact anyway. To this day, no refinement of the original experiment, no matter how it is varied or how precise it is, has ever managed to detect a definite movement in the 'aether'. But the experiments did create a process that eventually lead to a better, more accurate theory being found. And a few more since then!

That's what we need here.

We've got the wild-eyed theory with almost nothing backing it up, that MAY fit with some of the observations. It's tenuous at best, and in some ways fairly implausible, but it fits better than other things that have been put forward.

What we need now is to start the process of finding out what IS going on, and adjusting, rewriting, or replacing the wild-eyed theory with a better one.

A collaborative process that continually improves our knowledge and understanding as a whole, in order to eventually end up at the correct result.

And as far as stephen's textures response... ummm... well I've mentioned a few times it probably at least partly had something to do with a lot of characters being in one place, which is pretty much what he's saying: that the load becomes too much if there's a lot of people close together.

This WOULD explain the bit in the one DLL that reduces the texture sizes...a bit. Maybe.

It sounds like it's probably more a problem with loading the assets into the memory in the first place than with what happens when they get there, though.

I haven't found much about the details of how the hero engine works from what I've looked at so far, and frankly I'm too tired at this point to parse it properly anyway. If it could be confirmed, however, that the 'remote renderer' stuff is part of the hero engine's system that's simply been renamed, and that the naming similarity with the copy protection method is just a coincidence... we'd have enough of it to pretty much blow the theory...though not to replace it with anything, which'd be better.

Oh man,.. This is a problem, They need to fix this MMOs fail all the time over stupid stuff, something serious like this could honestly kill it, I hope something can be done.

I'm confused. I am not a tech guy AT ALL. When I read that does that mean that the highest res textures are already in game then and are just called Medium?

High resolution textures are currently only used during cut-scenes, if your graphics quality is set to high. Otherwise, medium textures are used outside of cut-scenes.

If you select "low", you get low textures for both (or maybe low for normal, medium for cutscene? not sure, haven't tested.)

This is why they're removing the "medium" option, it is ambiguous. As of the patch, there will be only two:

Low: always low

High: always highest supported (medium normal, high cutscene)

Hopefully something like Ultra: (some High some medium normal, high cutscene) is on the way, and it sounds like they're on it. However, major changes to the rendering engine like this will take a very long time to implement, and must be vigorously tested. I would expect several months.

This official answer doesn't really explain the insane load times and the spike in transfer rates over the internet at certain points of loading a zone.

In fact this official answer would tell me that Loading times should go faster since we are using a lower Texture resolution than possible as they optimize their system for 99% majority of computer specs.

Look I have an i7 - GTx 560ti and 16gigs of Ram and the game never makes my Cpu temp go higher than 45degree Celsius, yet I see huge loading times and lower than "High" textures rendered all the time in game.

Now officially this wont stop me for playing as I played Everquest in much of the modern MMO times (And that game's graphic engine is OLD). But it would be nice to know that I have the option to run the game in a mode that would make my Computer choke on itself.

Hopefully something like Ultra: (some High some medium normal, high cutscene) is on the way, and it sounds like they're on it. However, major changes to the rendering engine like this will take a very long time to implement, and must be vigorously tested. I would expect several months.

The High-Res official response this morning seems to confirm OP's suggestion. The repository referenced as being overwhelmed by calls could be the local server handling decryption, and so their solution were texture atlases.