Quote I have been hearing rumors from many of my sources, that Bioware may start hardware-locking high-end group content at level 65. What this means is that you may have to have a self-built high end gaming rig to do HM flashpoints, ranked PVP, and ops. The reason I always hear is that it's to prevent "trolling". Basically they don't want some guy running a 10 year old PC going into NiM ops and lagging in the middle of a complicated or intensive fight.



But I, and I think many of you as well, know that this is about money, not trolls. Many large game companies, like EA, have big-business deals with computer hardware manufacturers. This is why most single player games these days (and even some MMOs) require a high-end computer to play. Most of these games will not stop working with mid- to low-end, computers, they are just unplayable, and may overheat your hardware. I have heard stories of people who have their computers crash after playing a recently released game, only to discover that their CPU or graphics card had melted or burned up, especially on laptops. Now I hear talk about companies like EA introducing hardware DRM to their games, even relatively low-end games like SWTOR. Basically what this is, is displaying a little message when you get into the game, that you don't have "authorized hardware", and thus cannot play the game. Some games, mostly online ones, will let you play it, but will restrict certain content to those with said hardware. Others may only allow a minimum low setting, which looks awful and cartoony, to low-end computers.



One of the points I wanted to bring, is that low end computers CAN handle the graphics levels of most modern games, their engines are just horribly inefficient so that the makers of the game get more money from big-business deals with hardware companies. SWTOR's engine is one of the worst of these. I have heard stories of gaming rigs with the best hardware possible having a slow experience on SWTOR. The truth is, is that even ancient computers can play this game, at the highest settings, the engine is just bad, as are most others nowadays.