Tera: Online Random Question Thread

[warc]

Purchasing question. I pre-ordered through amazon a while ago to get access to beta. After playing and deciding to stick with my purchase, I decided to not cancel it. However, I just decided to cancel the pre-order and get the digital collector's through EnMasse. I used my same account as my amazon pre-order and only purchased the $10 upgrade. I'm assuming I'll have to actually buy a copy of the game when it goes live? As of now I've only paid $10 for the game and tera account shows I have beta access active. EnMasse did say that they would make sure that pre-orders through amazon or actual stores would not have to wait for shipping the physical disc to play. /povertymode

edit: come to think of it, the amazon preorder code was probably beta only. I can dream i guess.

[shepardG]

@inda

Those aren't "braids" ... It's bacon

[Coren]

Random TERA question, who is using SSD for the game right now, and does it give a noticeable performance difference? Load times seem super fast compared to other recent mmo's on the old bulk drive. Thanks

I am. SSDs are great. However, since I didn't play the game before I got one, and after, I can't tell you about "noticeable performance difference" in TERA itself.

[JigglyJam]

Like coren I've had an SSD since before I installed TERA but looking at some videos of other people I can tell there is a difference. Specifically loading times for example like going from character select to in game, it's almost instant for me but watching those videos I get antsy and think "Why is this taking so long?" NPCs load up faster too. The only time i see the blank NPC loading model is in areas of huge traffic like "Isle of Dawn everyone is making a new character at the same time and staying in channel 1" huge. Velika I don't have that problem.

[Katlan]

SSDs give a negligable difference lol. It doesn't make your pong magically faster and that's the cause of 90% of load times and mob/npc loading. Not only that, having the SSD constantly being overwrite every other second of online play is a terrific way to destroy its longevity even w/the auto dump feature. SSDs will eventually slow down, all your doing for that tiny performance gain is making it happen faster.

SSD is great as an OS drive, not a good data drive

[Rulke]

Okey, as release date is nearing:

Where is the best place to purchase a US (en-masse) copy of TERA? I'm in the UK. I am thinking amazon but a digital download this time around seems better, I don't trust my postal system.

I'm not too concerned with starting "later" than people, as I have no desire to "race" to top level. Although I guess in retrospect this might get me screwed over continously as we're on a PvP server. Oh well, deal with it and toughen up I guess.

Is there any news of "referral" schemes coming? Basically if you refer a friend, get extra bonuses for you and friend. I might wait a month before I actually buy it as I'm busy in May with some work projects, so if any schemes come up I'll probably ask for a referral later from someone on the BG server and guild.

Skimmed the thread a bit, I guess ping isn't too big of a deal anymore?

Are you able to access EME's site from EU? (I think it auto directs to Frogsters). If you can I'd say just DL it from them directly if you don't mind a digital only copy. Outside of that I imagine Amazon is next best option as they will ship to you and you'd have a physical copy.

Nothing about referrals yet.

[Senji]

SSDs give a negligable difference lol. It doesn't make your pong magically faster and that's the cause of 90% of load times and mob/npc loading. Not only that, having the SSD constantly being overwrite every other second of online play is a terrific way to destroy its longevity even w/the auto dump feature. SSDs will eventually slow down, all your doing for that tiny performance gain is making it happen faster.

SSD is great as an OS drive, not a good data drive

Its great your excited about tech and helping people, but no.

Instances, objects, npc, busy areas will all load faster. Modern SSDs are like overclocking modern CPUs; you wont burn them out or slow them down, and their lifespans are so great that the pathetic amount you take take off wont factor in because you've replaced them 5 times over due to upgrades.

[Senji]

Okey, as release date is nearing:

Where is the best place to purchase a US (en-masse) copy of TERA? I'm in the UK. I am thinking amazon but a digital download this time around seems better, I don't trust my postal system.

I'm not too concerned with starting "later" than people, as I have no desire to "race" to top level. Although I guess in retrospect this might get me screwed over continously as we're on a PvP server. Oh well, deal with it and toughen up I guess.


Skimmed the thread a bit, I guess ping isn't too big of a deal anymore?

Amazon has digital downloads.

Ping isn't a problem from the UK. Plenty of elite pvpers playing and you'd never know where they were from if not for vent.

Purchasing question. I pre-ordered through amazon a while ago to get access to beta. After playing and deciding to stick with my purchase, I decided to not cancel it. However, I just decided to cancel the pre-order and get the digital collector's through EnMasse. I used my same account as my amazon pre-order and only purchased the $10 upgrade. I'm assuming I'll have to actually buy a copy of the game when it goes live? As of now I've only paid $10 for the game and tera account shows I have beta access active. EnMasse did say that they would make sure that pre-orders through amazon or actual stores would not have to wait for shipping the physical disc to play. /povertymode

edit: come to think of it, the amazon preorder code was probably beta only. I can dream i guess.

You're going to have a add a retail code, the preorder code is a trial. EME said people would be fine, but didnt give a hard number yet. SWTOR gave 2 days grace period, GW2 is giving 5.

[Gulkeeva]

Skimmed the thread a bit, I guess ping isn't too big of a deal anymore?

Since there is no "latency" monitor ingame, it is hard to tell, as most games will do stuff to give leeway in laggy people (up to like 300ms).

Only "lag" i've really experienced is FPS related (aka the massive crazy event).

------------

on the SSD issue, as its been mentioned several times, SSD is good "first load", after that it is up to the system memory, as most everything you look at will load from memory not SSD (otherwise people's SSD's would be shtting a brick at the obscene amount of read/write it does).

Memory speed -> several times faster then SSD, thats why I recommended more memory. Once you load a zone, once you load certain gear.. a model... etc its going to load instantly the next time you see it. If youtube would accept my video, it would be a good example of overclocked memory loading few "hundred" players, dozens/hundreds? of mobs, the only thing holding me back was the video card (it was at 100% usage on that event sounding like a jet engine on an airplane ready to crash into a fiery ball of shit)

For most normal instances (like 40 people sitting outside CR jumping around/dueling/pking each there to death) there was little to no fps lag, CR zone loads in about 3 or so seconds (I did it about 60 times anyway that day).

Windows 7 does pretty good job with "caching" stuff, especially games with all that stuff (like warcraft occupies about 10GB after playing it for a day)

[Coren]

So I've read that the unreal engine is substantially more processor-dependent compared to other engines. If this is true, what video card are you running that was about to shit a brick? I was considering upgrading until I realized that it may not help as much. I'm finally about to upgrade to 8gb ram, so that won't hurt.

[Coren]

Instances, objects, npc, busy areas will all load faster.

This. Everywhere you go on the game has to pull information from the hard drive. Loading after teleports is a good example. Everything when you load in has to come off the hard drive. Any time I'm going somewhere with a group of people, I find myself halfway to the next NPC before the rest of my party even loads in at the telepoint.

[Gulkeeva]

So I've read that the unreal engine is substantially more processor-dependent compared to other engines. If this is true, what video card are you running that was about to shit a brick? I was considering upgrading until I realized that it may not help as much. I'm finally about to upgrade to 8gb ram, so that won't hurt.

ATI 5870, pretty outdated video card ;/

also...

my memory usage (most all of that blue bar is from warcraft being "cached" into memory, so load times are in the 1-3 second range usually)

http://www.neko-sentai.com/images11ya/memory.jpg

[Salodin]

Checked the official web site but didn't see word on it, how do I get in on the open beta?

[Tisi]

You can input the beta code:
TERABETA
and that should be all you need!

[Senji]

So I've read that the unreal engine is substantially more processor-dependent compared to other engines. If this is true, what video card are you running that was about to shit a brick? I was considering upgrading until I realized that it may not help as much. I'm finally about to upgrade to 8gb ram, so that won't hurt.

ATI 5870, pretty outdated video card ;/

also...

my memory usage (most all of that blue bar is from warcraft being "cached" into memory, so load times are in the 1-3 second range usually)

What Gulk has been touching on/doing is setting up a ram drive, though you need the ram to support it. If you're upping to 8, should bump to 16. Or at least going with 2 4gb sticks to add to later rather than 4 2gbs.

[Meyor]

I have an empty 60gig drive ready for the game, just wanted to make sure it would make a difference, where as SWTOR, installed in said drive, did nothing for load times. Thanks for input.

[Coren]

I'm looking to upgrade my entire PC later this year. I currently run an old bloomfield i7 with a 470 gtx video card. I've really like the sandy bridge based systems we've built. The 500 series are quite nice, and the new ATIs are a pretty damn good bang for the buck as well.

[Jojimbo]

If you are using a first gen i7 then there is no need to upgrade to SB, you could probably wait for Haswell next year (OC the i7 if you haven't). You could upgrade GPU to a GTX 670 or something when they are released if you want a perf boost (or even GTX 680 if you want to upgrade now)

[The Stig]

Thanks guys.

I found the amazon download button, so I'll most likely get it like that. Seems most secure.

Ping? Good to hear it's even less of an issue. Yay I can finally play with BG people!

[Coren]

Just preordered my wife's copy on amazon. How long does it take the preorder code to arrive in email?

edit: nevermind, arrived already