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

I would say models and/or character textures, but otherwise I agree (and this is what the OP has been saying too). If not local decryption, it could be local software rendering of the same elements. Both seem a bit bizarre but would be ways of protecting the assets.

It would explain some of the experiences people have reported, and doesn't strike me as implausible. Equally I'd be prepared to believe that this is a false alarm.

I do think there are problems with the speed and quality of rendering. With my brand new mid-range computer and mid-range but current graphics card, I would expect to get better graphics in 2012 especially when paying £44 upfront + £9 per month. I had to turn down the settings and resolution to get acceptable frame rates and as acknowledged in the "ability lag" thread graphical elements are often unresponsive.

So I'd like a response from BW on this thread, and action on the general quality of rendering which is mediocre.

Luckily the game play is engaging, so I am still hoping for a patch, but won't be paying many monthly subscriptions unless this issue is address.

/subscribed

Same, using 3G mobile internet, latency 60-80ms. I wish I had same latency when we raiding Uldular with our guild. With average 300ms 25 man raid was less laggy than single player game in this game.

OFFICIAL RESPONSE ON PERFORMANCE ISSUES.

So, that should put it all to bed.

The high resolution textures and the medium resolution textures use entirely different rendering methods, so they cannot mix them. The medium textures are done using a texture atlas. The high resolution textures, even on a high-power PC, would not be able to handle rendering all the players with high resolution and bump mapping.

Again, they are working with a 3rd party engine, the Hero Engine, so this makes everything harder.

Hopefully they are hard at work now on a solution, I would imagine a hybrid system that can render the closest characters at high-resolution and then the rest using atlasing. This will take a very long time to develop and test, so be patient.

I'm glad to have a response and hear they're on it.

ALL CLAIMS ABOUT MODEL OR TEXTURE SECURITY ARE UNFOUNDED.

For reasons why and the ability to test it yourself and verify that this is not the case, please see my post on the last page or two.

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. The few that apparently found something weren't able to be independently reproduced, and still didn't give anything like the expected results. 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.

Indeed, and the response makes perfect sense, and explains why high res textures were everywhere in beta and then removed.

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?

Agreed. So please read what I said, follow the tests I put forth, and recognize your hypothesis is testably false. Then consider the many alternative hypothesis I have put forth, and the supporting evidence therein.

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.

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.