Star Wars the Old Republic: Gaming on the low end

Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to the Assassin's Den!

So I've been thinking about some of the technical problems I have with Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I've come to the conclusion that almost all caused by the age of my computer, a few bugs in the game notwithstanding.  This computer that I'm typing this article out on was bought in 2007, and it's still really good at everything but SWTOR and a few other games made after 2015, and I thought it's time to talk about some of the issues I have, and some workarounds.

1. Performance- If I try to run this game on any real graphical settings, the game chugs. Pop in, being frozen in place, frame drops, all that. And that's why I'm forced to play on the lowest settings, in windowed mode.  At least, that's what Customer Support has told me.  And for the most part, playing on lowest functions properly, but I still get the frame drops, pop in and being frozen in place sometimes.

2. Audio Glitches- During cutscenes with explosions, the voice and music slow down and distort. This is most glaring during KOTFE Chapter 16, when Senya goes to save Arcann and talks to Vaylin from across the room. This happens no matter what device I've got it coming from, so I think it's a conflict between the game and my aging sound card.

3. Issues with cutscenes- This game is cutscene heavy, and under certain circumstances, they seize up entirely.  Some of them get pushed along if you wait; the portion where Valkorian knocks you down the stairs during his final set of cutscenes does push forward if you wait. But there are quite a few cutscenes that refuse to do so.  The most glaring are as follows;

• Shara Jen. Just her. All of the cutscenes that happen when she call the Agent ship freeze up entirely for me, and refuse to advance. 
• Warrior opening of Chapter 3 of their class story.  The first time the Emperor's Hand calls the ship, the cutscene freezes and refuses to advance.
• If Koth is dead in KOTET Chapter 4. The scene where you're supposed to talk to Vette to advance the story after a large battle with Iokath droids siezes up and refuses to advance.
• Theron Shan Romance while siding with the Empire on Iokath.  The scene where Jace Malcom dies and Theron cradles his father siezes up and refuses to advance.

It's for these reasons why I advice the next entry in this article.

4. Get used to how to do tickets- The only way to get past those frozen cutscenes is to contact CS. And here are all the mandatory stuff you need to tell CS before you can actually tell them your problem.

• Your current server
• Your current character
• The location it's happening
• The player affected (you in this case)

 From here, you need to tell them, in great detail, what happened and what trouble shooting methods you performed in order to fix the problem, which, depending on whom is answering you, may get ignored entirely. The trouble shooting methods are as follows;

1. Make sure you don't have any crew skill missions going on at that moment, since some CS reps will refuse to accept them on your behalf.
2. Ensure you are playing on lowest settings and in windowed mode
3. Reset the mission
4. Relog into the character
5. Relog into your account
6. Ensure your video card is up to date (this is where the conflict lies, and if your machine is as old as mine, your most recent update is 4 years old)
7. Flush your game's cache (you can find guides online for that)
8.  Completely reinstall the game(Or just say you did, since that's supposed to remove any previous conflicts)

And I must stress, MAKE SURE YOU WROTE DOWN ALL OF WHAT I JUST SAID IN THE TICKET. You don't want to miss anything in the event that you get a good CS rep the first time.

At this point, you stress you don't care about what storyline bits you miss by them pushing the cutscene forward, more than once at this point, and then tell them what's happening.  And then, you hope that you get someone useful who actually does as you ask, and doesn't close the ticket unresolved.

And I want to take a moment to rant here about that; closing tickets unresolved.  You see, when I worked CS while on Active Duty, I was told you NEVER close the tickets until the customer is satisfied with the solution.  But apparently, SWTOR tickets are set so CS HAS to close tickets in order to talk to you in said ticket, resolved or not. And I'd say 70% of the time, CS Reps will just tell you to do what you already listed that you've done and do nothing to solve the problem.  You have to open a second ticket, referencing the first one, to get them to resolve the cutscene issue.  I once had to open 3 tickets on the same issue before that CS rep FINALLY did as I asked and pushed that forward. I complained on twitter about that, and it took EA saying "Yeah, this is unacceptable" before anything got resolved.  EA. One of the worst companies to work for was the one who agreed that SWTOR CS wasn't doing their job. Think about that for a moment.

Now, do I believe SWTOR is not worth playing with all these things I've just said? Absolutely not. I'm still a subscriber, and I still love the stories.  But if you don't have the money for a more up to date machine, you're going to be dealing with a lot of the same issues.  And there are some easy workarounds; Don't Kill Koth (though you can still go Dark Side in KOTFE Chapter 10), don't romance Theron if you intend to side with the Empire on Iokath.  But sad to say, the Agent story is unplayable for me, since Shara Jen calls the ship after every mission for most of the game.  I'm honestly willing to fight through the Warrior one, though, since I actually like the Warrior story too much to not do, but the Agent, which has been getting on my nerves ever since I started experiencing symptoms of my now diagnosed, and treated, mental illness, I can't even force my way through it anymore thanks to these issues.

In short, these are the important things to know if you're playing with a computer as old as mine. Be prepared for them, know the workarounds, and stay beatiful freaks!