Greetings, TORWarriors, and a happy mid-holiday season to all. Welcome to another installment of Open TOR Policy, where I’ll examine some of the hurdles BioWare needs to overcome in order to keep their “fastest growing MMO” on track. Today: the grit and grime of pretty graphics. How pretty is too pretty? (a question I ask every time I look in the mirror).

Pretty, ain't it?

Raising the Bar

The most important thing about an MMO – especially one set in the Star Wars universe – is content. The Fourth Pillar of BioWare’s storytelling fits in perfectly with the epic scale of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the game itself, built on the Hero engine,  was designed to give players a smooth game experience regardless of their system specifications. This doesn’t mean the game shouldn’t look good, however, and there are several forum threads dedicated to graphical improvements that players would like to see. It’s here that we come to the crux of any MMO’s graphical development: how much control should the developer give players over what the world they virtually inhabit looks like?

Right now, there are options for things in-game like Shader Complexity, Shadow Quality and Character Level of Detail along with choices to affect the amount of grass and ground clutter around your character and how detailed you’d like the trees to be. But these weren’t always the options present in the game – in the Beta, players could adjust the “clipping distance” of the game, or how far away from a character objects would be drawn. While there are current options to change how pretty and GPU intensive the world around you appears, the choices are fairly bare-bones, leading to a measure of contention among fans.

The Great Setting Debate

In addition to the fairly limited visual tweaks SWTOR offers, some players are experiencing more specific graphical issues including a minimal difference in visual quality between high and low settings. Other problems such as graphical artifacts and choppy play on even high-end systems have also been reported. But perhaps the biggest gripe being spammed onto the forums right now is the lack of in-game anti-aliasing (AA). At one time, the Beta did support this jagged-edge killer, but it was removed before launch. Though BioWare lists the inclusion of AA as a high priority, as of patch 1.0.1 there has been no joy.

If you’re looking to force AA on in the game, it is possible: the Catalyst Control Center for AMD cards lets you override application settings and use 2x, 4x or 8x AA, and while Nvidia cards are not so simple you can still enjoy the benefits of AA by finding this file path:

(C)> Users > (user name) > AppData > Local > Swtor > swtor > Settings

Then open the client_settings.ini file (make a saved copy of the original!). From there, find where it says [Renderer] and add this: AntiAliasingLevel = x. “X” is whatever amount of AA you’d like (2,4,8,12).

PAY ATTENTION: BioWare does not guarantee that these settings will work, and some forum posts indicate that you may see graphical glitching. You’ve been warned!

Jaggy!

Smooth sailin'

The Inevitable Comparison

SWTOR looks good – there’s no doubt about it. Exactly how good it looks, however, is up for debate. Some players are stunned by its graphical glitz, while others say it isn’t as pretty as Rift or miss the cartoony charm of That Other Big MMO Star Wars Is Gunning For. The world of online gaming isn’t exactly all butterflies and rainbows, and camps have sprung up on both sides, some lauding SWTOR’s visual clout and some saying it has a poorly-rendered glass jaw.

There’s no question that BioWare needs to add an AA option in-game to keep fans happy, but is that enough? Will shaking the jagged edges off character models and railings over lightning-filled pits (that’s gotta be a workplace safety hazard) give players the control they want, or is there need for a more advanced set of options that will let videophiles tweak to their hearts content? What do you think, TORWarriors – does SWTOR need a silky smooth suit and tie, or will you take it in jeans and a clever t-shirt?

Linked Gallery: