To avoid Windows 10 UAC install the program in a folder called C:\Games outside of the normal Program Folders.
Graphics Settings
Resolution: The number of pixels present on screen in both the horizontal and vertical directions.
Aspect Ratio: 4:3, 16:9
Refresh Rate: The number of times the display refreshes the screen in cycles per second - Hertz (Hz).
Frames per Second (FPS): One frame is the action of activating all pixels on the screen to represent the image to be displayed. Every change is a new frame. FPS is the number of times the frame is changed per second. A monitor of 60 Hz cannot display faster than 60 fps. Any number equal to or higher than this represents a good FPS value. Film displays at 24 fps, video displays at 30 fps. If your FPS is higher or lower than your refresh rate you may have to adjust V-Sync.
Anti-Aliasing: Removes the jagged edges on diagonal lines.
Linear Filtering (Bi/Tri): Samples nearby pixels to produce texture qualities better.
Anisotropic Filtering: Samples textures much like Bi/Tri-Linear for mipmapping, but with higher quality.
Texture Quality:
Ambient Occlusion:
High Dynamic Range Rendering (HDRR):
Bloom:
Motion Blur:
Depth of Field (DoF):
Network Speed Troubleshooting
Check your PCs processes through the task manager to see if your system is performing nominally. High CPU, Memory or Disk usage is non-conducive of a good network experience. You can also check the network/wi-fi performance tab. You may need to run these tests with Anti-Virus turned off, other applications running in background turned off, and no other persons connected on the network under test (NuT).
Test your in home connection. Know your routers internal ip address. You can run command ipconfig | find "Default Gateway" hopefully only one result is returned as an ip address. If more than one address returned either you have a vpn, second nic, vm or some other network pathways that you hopefully know about. Next, run a ping <ip address of router> ENTER to determine latency to router. If you have another system available setup jperf on both and see what your internal throughput is.
If you are playing over a wireless connection, re-test using a cabled connection to router. Wireless transmissions can be bursty, expecially in high RF areas.
Know your game servers physical location and IP address ,or determine using netstat -n -p tcp -b | more ENTER in a command prompt while the game is running. You can then check a whois service online for the IP address to find owner and location.
Run pathping -n <ip address goes here> ENTER in command prompt to ping each server between you and game and get result
Use a service like OOKLA Speedtest to determine what your throughput to nearest ISP server and to server nearest game server is.
Run traceroute to the IP address using command prompt command tracert <ip address goes here> ENTER. See if any hop in path is high latency usually 250+ ms and the service may be degrading.
You may want to run pingplotter software to get multiple traces to see if your service degrades over a period.
If more than one computer connects to the game at same time you may need to adjust ports in the game settings for each computer and allow those through firewall.
If you are still having an issue, try restarting system and re-running tests.
Contact your ISP and ask them about Traffic shaping, traffic policing and if there is a Fair Usage Policy in place that may be affecting your data rate, or run a throttling test https://www.battleforthenet.com/internethealthtest/.
Run ping -l 1472 <ip address goes here> ENTER to see if your Maximum Transmission Units (MTU) are capable of a full ethernet frame without fragmentation. You can lower the value to find when fragmentation no longer occurs or raise to see if your circuit is capable of more.
Optionally, use a looking glass server such the one at www.he.net to determine the AS routes to your game. This will tell you which ISPs you hop across to get to your destination since a trace route can change across an ISP or multiple ISPs.
Known Game Server IPs
Neverwinter
208.95.184.0/22
CRYPTIC-NET-PWNAGE-US01
Perfect World Entertainment
Redwood City, CA
208.95.185.58
Ports: TCP: 80, 443, 7000-7500
SWTOR
LoTRO
gls.lotro.com
DDO
gls.ddo.com
WoW
Using a VPN
VPN requires more overhead to send traffic and receive traffic, so you now have lost some bandwidth. You are protected from DDoS because encrypted and can access content. Your traffic is encrypted and cannot be policed or shaped based on traffic type, but can be policed or shaped based on port speed of physical connection.