LOTRO Performance Guide (SPG)  

LOTRO System Requirements

Minimum system requirements:

• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz or equivalent
• Video: 64 MB NVIDIA GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500
• DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
• OS: Windows XP
• RAM: 512 MB
• Disk Space: 7 GB available
• Internet: 56kbps Modem
• Optical Drive: 2x DVD-ROM

Recommended System Requirements:

• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz or equivalent
• Video: 128 MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 6800 or ATI Radeon X850
• DirectX: DirectX 9.0c
• OS: Windows XP / Vista
• RAM: 1 GB
• Disk Space: 10 GB available
• Internet: Broadband DSL/Cable
• Optical Drive: 2x DVD-ROM

For the most impact for your money, RAM is the best place to enhance your game. Currently players are finding that 2GB makes a dramatic impact on performance. So any way you can increase your RAM it's worth it. Next would of course be the video card.

Turbine offers a number of ways to tweak your graphics in-game.

Graphics Tab

Quality

Detect Optimal Settings: Detects the best settings for your current hardware. This will automatically adjust most of graphics options to provide an optimal balance between performance and visual quality.

Overall Graphics Quality: Adjust the overall graphics quality.

Display

Full Screen: When checked, the game runs in full screen mode. Otherwise it runs in a window on your desktop. You can also press 'alt + Enter' to toggle full screen mode at any time.

Full Screen Resolution: Allows you to select from a list of supported full screen resolutions. Higher resolutions typically look better at the expense of performance. We recommend using at least 1024 x 768. Options: 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x720, 1280x768, 1280x800, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1360x768, 1360x1024, 1400x1050, 1440x900, 1600x1024, 1600x1200, 1680x1050, 1920x1200

Windowed Resolution: Select your display resolution when running the game in a desktop window. Higher resolutions typically look better at the expense of performance. We recommend using at least 1024 x 768. You can also resize the game window by dragging the edges of the window border when running in a desktop window. Options: 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x720, 1280x768, 1280x800, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1360x768, 1360x1024, 1400x1050, 1440x900, 1600x1024, 1600x1200, 1680x1050, 1920x1200

Aspect Ratio: You can override the aspect ratio for the game's graphics with this setting. Selecting ‘auto' will choose an aspect automatically based on your display resolution. In some resolutions (where pixels are not square) you can override the aspect ratio by changing this setting to match your monitor's aspect ratio. Options: Auto, 4:3, 5:4, 16:9, 16:10

Anti-aliasing: Enables anti-aliasing and configures the anti-aliasing quality level. A large number of anti-aliasing samples will increase visual quality but may greatly decrease performance. Options: Disabled, 2x, 4x, 6x

Color

Brightness: Adjusts the brightness of the colors displayed on the screen.

Contrast: Adjusts the contrast of the colors displayed on the screen.

Gamma Level: Adjusts the intensity curve of colors displayed on the screen.

Advanced Graphics Tab

Objects

Object Draw Distance: Adjusts how far away characters and scenery objects are rendered. Set this to 'low' to improve performance. Options: Low, Medium, High, Very High, Ultra High

Model Detail: This setting controls the distance at which complex 3D geometry will be rendered. Set this to 'low' to increase performance at the expense of visual quality. Options: Low, Medium, High, Very High, Ultra High

Animation Smoothness: This setting controls how smoothly distant characters are animated. This doesn't affect your own character. Using a lower setting will increase performance. Options: Low, Medium, High

Material Detail: Adjusts the quality of certain surface shaders, such as tree leaves. Set this to 'low' to significantly increase performance. Options: Low, High

Scenery

Landscape Draw Distance: Adjusts how far away landscape geography will be rendered. Lower distances can increase performance and will significantly decrease load times. Options: Very, Low, Low Medium, High, Very High

Frill Distance: Adjusts how far away landscape 'frills' are rendered (foliage and ground clutter). Use a lower setting for better performance. Options: Disabled, Low, Medium, High, Very High, Ultra High

Distant Imposters: Enables trees and other objects to be rendered over distant landscape. Disable this to increase performance.

Atmospherics Detail: Sets the quality of atmospheric effects such as rain and snow. Use a lower setting to increase performance. Options: Low, Medium, High

Texturing

Texture Detail: Adjusts the overall resolution of textures. Higher quality textures require more video memory but will greatly increase image quality. In order to use the highest setting, you must have high resolution textures installed and up-to-date. Options: Very, Low, Low Medium, High, Very High

Texture Filtering: Changes the method used to filter textures in the game. Use Trilinear for best performance. Anisotropic will yield the highest visual quality but may greatly decrease performance. Options: Bilinear, Trilinear, Sharp, Very Sharp, Anisotropic

Anisotropic Filter Quality: When texture filtering is set to anisotropic, this adjusts the quality level of the anisotropic filter. Higher values yield better image quality at the expense of performance. Options: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Lighting

High Quality Lighting: Allows for high quality lighting and shadow features, such as normal mapping, glow mapping and specular highlights. Disable this option to significantly improve performance.

Specular Lighting: Increases visual quality by adding specular highlights to shiny surfaces. Disable this to increase performance.

Surface Reflections: Adjusts the visual quality of water reflections and mirrors. 'Post Processing Effect' must also be enabled. When set to 'low' only the sky will be visible in outdoor reflections, 'high' will reflect most nearby scenery, and higher settings will allow more distant objects to be visible in reflections. Disable this feature to greatly increase performance. Options: Disabled, Low, High, Very High, Ultra High

Landscape Lighting Quality: When set to high, enables specular highlights on the certain types of terrain. When set to very high, bump maps are enabled for certain terrain surfaces as well. Set this option to low to improve rendering performance. Options: Low, High, Very High

Shadows

Landscape Shadows: Enables soft shadows to be cast from buildings and other architecture on to the landscape. Uncheck this option to slightly increase performance. Options: Disabled, Low, Medium, High

Blob Shadows: Blob shadows will be rendered for characters when more detailed shadows are not available. You can disable this to increase performance.

Stencil Shadows: Enables shadows for characters and certain indoor props and architecture. This setting also controls the distance these shadows will be visible from. Use a lower setting to improve performance, or disable this to greatly increase performance. Options: Disabled, Low, Medium, High, Very High, Ultra High

Environment Stencil Shadows: Enables shadows cast from certain indoor props and architecture. Uncheck this option to increase performance.

Post Processing

Post Processing Effects: Enables graphics post-processing such as motion blur and bloom. Turn this off to greatly improve performance.

Glow Mapping: Enables emissive surfaces to 'bloom' over foreground objects. 'Post Processing Effects' must also be enabled for this to work. Disable this to increase performance.

Overbright Bloom Filter: When enabled, very brightly lit surfaces will always 'bloom' over foreground objects. 'Post Processing Effects' must also be enabled for this to work. Disable this to increase performance.

Blur Filter Quality: Sets the quality of the pixel blur filter that's used for various effects such as light bloom. Options: Low, Medium, High ''' Bloom Intensity:''' Controls the intensity of the dream-like glow effect that brightens the scene and blurs pixels together. 'Post Processing Effects' must be enabled for bloom effects to be visible.

Performance

Player Mesh Combining: When enabled, distant players will render faster, allowing more characters on screen at once. However, this feature requires extra system memory and video memory. Uncheck this option to free up more system resources.

3D Object Portraits: Displays player and target portraits over vital bars. Set to false to improve performance.

Texture Cache Size: Adjusts the amount of system memory the game will use for graphics resources. Using a higher setting may reduce load times and improve performance on computers with plenty of memory. Lower this setting to free up memory for other resources and potentially improve performance.

Player Crowd Quality: This option controls the graphics quality of characters and scenery when a large number of players are nearby. Use a lower setting to improve rendering performance in crowded areas.

Display

Refresh Rate: When running in full screen mode, this setting adjusts the monitor refresh rate. We recommend you set this to 'auto' which will use a safe refresh rate for your display configuration. Options: Auto, 56hz, 60hz, 70hz, 72hz, 75hz, 85hz

Sync to Refresh Rate: Enabling this option may eliminate horizontal 'tearing' artifacts in at the expense of some performance. This only works when running in full screen mode.

Triple Buffering: Enabling this option may slightly increase your maximum possible frame rate in full screen mode, but uses more video memory resources. We recommend leaving this setting disabled.

General Tweaks

• Run comprehensive spyware and virus detections programs regularly (even if you have protection).

• Ensure you have more than 25% hard drive space available on the drive your swap file resides (pagefile.sys). Typically this is your boot drive.

• Defrag the hard drive that carries your pagefile.sys.

• Adjust the setting of your virtual memory to optimize pagefile utilization. Information on how to do this can be found here.

• Turn off any third party programs including firewalls (ie: ZoneAlarm).

• Update all your video drivers and any Core Duo fixes provided by the manufacturer.

• Uncheck the post-processing effects box to gain up to 20-30 frames per second (FPS).

• Disable Anti-aliasing

• In the Options window, click the button troubleshoot and turn down the engine speed and/or FPS rate to improve your performance. You may need to try a few times to find a balance of performance and graphics quality that best works for you.

For SLI configuration owners: Make sure you have Performance in your display settings in windows set to the proper lotro.exe file. NOT launcher.exe or turbinevoker.exe but the lotro.exe. Using global driver settings for SLI configuration will effect performance, so you MUST switch your SLI configuration to the proper LotRO executable file.

Most information in this guide was borrowed from WAR Wikia's LOTRO Performance Guide at warhammeronline.wikia.com