Thursday, October 2, 2008

Lord of the Rings Online - Weekend ends before it begins

Well, so much for logging into LOTRO for the free weekend. It seems that the game and my new ATI 4870 are not friends.
When the game loads up, it resets my desktop to 640x480.
DirectX 10 features in Vista lock up the whole system, and I must CTRL ALT DEL to get the game to shutdown.

(UPDATE: It seems the game will run with all features, but only in desktop mode and not full screen. Guess I will have to see how long I can endure that. Found several forum posts out there also about the 4870 model I have and LOTRO not working correctly due to AA issues, but no fix mentioned...)

(Update 2 : More data appeared on the LOTRO forums about a driver issue. It is a back and forth with the developer and ATI techs it seems. Supposedly the end of October to fix their problem..)

I have Devil May Cry 4, Call of Duty 4 all working in DX10, but thanks to Turbine's half ass implementation, I am relegated to DX9 at 1280x1024.
This really sucks when my card can run Age of Conan at 1920x1200 full blast
I got into LOTRO at one point and as I started to move the stuttering was horrendous.
Then it locked up.
So far two mediocre games fully not liking my brand new video card.
I think I will play with games which have forward looking engines from now on (or at least games that have GOOD engines *Cough...Guild Wars...Cough*.)

(PS: If anyone is wondering, I have already run a test on the video card, with several tools, and it comes up with zero errors...same for memory and CPU...so, needless to say..Not impressed with Vanguard or LOTRO...STILL!.../delete)

3 comments:

Tipa said...

Congrats on the Blogosteria thing :)

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure I understand why you seem to have technical issues with so many games that can be run with no issues by the rest of the MMO blogosphere. Granted that LotRO seems to have been almost entirely abandoned by that group (and everyone else, really) - there are way more bloggers playing Vanguard as far as I can tell. But LotRO seems to run without showstopping problems for virtually everybody. I won't ask whether or not you have the latest drivers.

I resubscribed when LotRO pushed out DX10 - and it worked fine for me, although I still thought the gameplay was flat as asphalt. AoC looks at least as good and was, for my money, about a million times more fun.

I actually do not believe that the Guild Wars engine is all that good. It looks pretty, sure, but you pay for that with limited character movement (which admittedly has a side benefit in that bunnyhopping is impossible,) a totally static environment and landscapes that are, essentially, matte paintings that you can't explore or touch. Good game, overall, but I think at this point (bearing its age in mind) it's a fairly regressive design in a number of respects: instancing, load screens, very linear, unexplorable world. The PvP was pretty good for its time, but it felt to me like... I dunno, like I was playing Tekken or something... very arcade-ey. I have high hopes for GW2, though.

Elementalistly said...

@Ardwulf
There is no doubt about the "performance" issues with these games being an oddity.

Maybe that or I am totally aware of the engines shortcomings that they stand out like a sore thumb to me.
So far I have been able to run some pretty harsh software (Crysis, AoC, CoD) yet, these MMO's in particular are horrendous in their uneven performance.
Of course I have seen the ugly issue of the hitching in LOTRO since closed beta, and I just expect a little better after almost 2 years...and it has not changed.
Now, of course I can walk over to my wifes older PC, and LOTRO has no issue there.

But, the key phrase is "older".
I guess I am getting too next gen.
Also, fixing systems has been my job for 15+ years (I worked on Amiga's even...lol), so it is not an issue of knowledge..but of games not working the way that I wish.
I do not want to "downgrade" at this point, and will just persevere playing better looking games I guess.
(And Eye of the North has eliminated a lot of the "static" visuals you speak of, and is enhanced for newer systems. Also, there is a trick to download all HD textures for GW with a command line, which also enhances all of the campaigns)

@brenda
ooo...a new title, oh my. Well, I guess I should just take the award (as I am seem to be in some good blogging company...hehe)