Feldon 
We are now seven months past the “End of Life” date for Windows XP, but you wouldn’t know it from the number of players reporting issues with the Altar of Malice beta. While the crashes being reported are far from exclusive to any particular version of Windows, it’s a little frightening how many EQ2 players are still running a version of Windows which is not receiving any type of security updates and which is limited to just 3GB of memory (with a scant 2GB of that being made available to EQ2).
No game developer wants to release an expansion that renders obsolete the computers of paying customers. However through financial hardship, lack of technical know-how, or just plain inertia, some EQ2 players have been left behind on positively prehistoric versions of Windows on what are frequently perfectly good computers more than capable of running Windows 7 (which, from a user experience, is almost identical to Windows XP). Worse, these players get a degraded experience as nothing cripples a fast CPU, motherboard, and video card like a 12 year old operating system.
All this said, the EQ2 team are working hard to make sure that the beautiful new Tranquil and Phantom Sea zones work just as well on people’s computers as all the existing parts of Norrath. EQ2 Senior Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale took to the forums to assure players that support is a top priority:
Hey folks,
We are taking this seriously. The goal for the team is (and always has been) if you can play on Live today in current content, then you should be able to play in the expansion when it launches. We certainly didn’t expect to have issues and didn’t plan to require more memory – though we are surprised at some of the specs we’re seeing some people play with. But, like I said, we’re focused on improving the memory issues in the terrain zones right now and we need your support to test when we get fixes in. We’re sorry it’s been frustrating for some of you, but without your help a lot more people would be frustrated. Hang in there with us please!
One of the most helpful suggestions has been to increase virtual memory. While this change will do no favors for those who already wait an eternity to load some of the more complex zones, at least your computer (or game client) won’t crash in the process. From Maevianiu on the EQ2 Forums:
Doing some general looking over the crash logs today I see a lot of people, mostly on 32 bit Operating Systems, have very low virtual memory when starting EQ2. If you are crashing going into the new zones try increasing your virtual memory settings. This might help if trying to run EQ2 with other programs like a voice chat, parsing program and web browser at the same time.
Let EQ2Wire Help You!
If you have questions about how to upgrade an older computer or an older version of Windows, I and others would be more than happy to help in a respectful non-condescending way!
Install Win 7 and you will have even LESS free memory to run EQ2.
Nothing cripples a computer more than having to swap all the time to harddisk.
Win XP vs Win 7, mostly win XP or Vista wins that. So what was the point of win 7 again?
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/windows_7_review?page=0,3
Not sure if you linked to the correct page in that MaximumPC article as I read it pretty much as a slam dunk in favor of Windows 7.
If I may clarify a few things….
first off, with winXP pro setup properly, the OS only takes 500MB ram, leaving the remaining 3GB of ram for program use.
any, *any* person whom runs their PC with Administrative privileges will experience the worst the Internet has to offer, and often does; regardless of any “security” patches installed.
*any* 64bit OS will be able to map much more memory, to include winXP 64bit.
reducing the bloat of applications, which sadly few programers do of late, is a far better protocol.
french translation on http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/48-frontnews/293-aom-et-vieux-pc.html
Windows XP and the version DX it runs is more than capable of running games with far more fidelity than EQ2. So the OS while old, can never be used as an excuse.
@Bobby Not the OS itself but the memory limit. I had different games crashing after several zone changes on XP, but no problems after changing to Win8 with 8gb Ram.
Memory requirements are increasing – they have to because they cannot control which items people are wearing. It’s not like a FPS where they can tightly control memory requirements by limiting what textures are used in a level. Plus, they are going for the “wow” effect in the new overlands with high resolution textures (needs memory) and high poly geometry (also needs memory) made possible by their new terrain tool. But when there are still people using 32 bit (XP or 7/8/8.1 installed as 32 bit) systems which are limited to 2 GB per process they are hitting a limit.
So yeah its the 32 bit version because of the ram limitations that is causing the issue not really XP. What ever they did with the new zone creator really caused a huge spike in resources but most of that got fixed.
Before one of the patches even on extreme performance It was having issues.
Why people continue to use WinXP by choice is beyond me. WinXP isn’t really capable of making good use of solid state drives (no TRIM support), newer graphics cards, has poor support for multicore CPUs, and newer hardware won’t even have drivers written for them.
I’m not saying Win 7 is perfect, but if your system can run it, damnit you should be running it. Win 8 can be skipped, of course.
Plus, you know, no security updates of any kind. When someone puts XP on an i7, a kitten dies.
sounds like an excellent reason to install window XP 😈
…. so many cats, so few recipes. 😈
EQ2 runs great on Windows 8.1 Upgrade to it already. There’s no excuse. I bought an ASUS desktop last year for just $600 with an i7 and 10gig of RAM and got rid of my old machine running Windows 7 with an AMD processor and 4 gig of RAM. It was unbelievable how much better the game runs. The machine is silent and I can raid on max settings, although I turn them down a bit because of the spectacular graphic displays caused by the mage group. You can’t see what you are fighting for the fireworks and explosions.
Interesting, so far my experience with Window 8/8.1 consists entirely of people coming to me and asking me to uninstall it and put Windows 7 on their computers (usually new notebooks).
I have had about 5 of these in the past two months, all people who have been using Windows 8.1 for at least three months. Not sure what the problems are, but they are all willing to be without their notebooks for a few days and are happy with Windows 7 when they get it back.
I ended up having to give up my WinXP a few years back as more and more products refused to run on it.
I do seem to recall that the very first EQ in 1999 made me upgrade to a proper 3d video card and I also recall grumbling most mightily at that time, heh. Worth it.
Those protecting XP over Win7 (or even 8.1) are dinosaurs. XP was good while it lasted, but modern computers with modern hardware require a modern operating system to run well.
64bits is the way to go for operating system, even when you play 32bit games. With 64bit OS you will get more memory for programs and graphics hardware than with 32bit operating system.
Of course that requires you to have 4GB or more memory. Preferably no less than 8GB on a gaming system.
Game that support old 32bit XP /3GB switch, can use 3GB of memory per process, thats 50% more than the vanilla 2GB.
Usage of the 3GB switch cripples 32bit OSes as the kernel memory is practically cut in half. With Graphics cards having 1GB of graphics memory or even more, that means Kernel will run out of address space and thus computer wont work properly.
DITCH THAT 32BIT OS!
Install Windows 7 64bit, or Windows 8.1 64bit.
I run games on Windows 8.1 64bit and happy with it. Its even faster than Windows 7 on my hardware.
I recommend people go to Windows 7 64-bit unless they have a touch-capable PC. Yes 8 has some nice performance improvements under the hood, uses less memory, and has a fantastic Task Manager, but the UI is still a bit clunky. I run 7 on my desktop and 8.1 on my Surface 2.
I think we’ll see widespread adoption of Windows
910.Windows XP x64 Bit Exists ….
Its not very mainstream though.