Stress Test? You Got That Right!

Beta test weekend #2 done. Not nearly as enjoyable as the first weekend. When they said stress test, they meant it.

The first weekend wasn’t too bad when it came to the lag. (And I’m calling it lag whether it was server lag or fps issues. My toon was lagging one way or the other.) This weekend was downright unplayable at points. There are quite a few threads with complaints about the same, so I know I’m not the only one. Here’s one that had a solution of sorts. I tried it, and it helped. It did not fix the problem, however. The game went from unplayable to barely tolerable.

Now, I don’t have a top notch gaming rig by any means, but I figure that if I can play WoW, Rift, DCUO, Skyrim, etc with the graphics settings all the way up and have no issues, then I should be able to run SWTOR on the lowest settings with no problems. That’s just simply not the case. (And btw, on the absolute lowest settings, all players and npcs changed to polygons… yeah, fun)

And I get that this was a “stress test” weekend. They were intentionally running high populations on the servers to see if they could handle it. Well, test failed, my friends. When the server instance was only showing around 100 people, I mostly had no issues. Of course, if I entered a cantina, forget about it. Everything slowed down. The same was true if I entered a fight with more than 3 mobs. Too much movement on the screen made everything slow down/skip. I guess it just makes things more challenging, right? Now, when the population reached 300... let's just say UGH! 

Right now, I’m hoping that BioWare takes all of this into consideration before the launch. I’m sure they’re interested in keeping the game playable for as many people as possible. (Unlike the people on general chat and the forums who keep saying things like “LOL, you teh sux! get a better computer n00b!!11!”) Heck, they even make the last questions you answer before logging out about how much lag and fps issues you have. I think this shows that they give a damn.

So, here’s to December 20. You can’t come soon enough.