Today is the day EQ2 goes 64 bit. But what will that mean for us? Back in the day (and I'm talking 10+ years ago) lag was a problem but these days with the much reduced population (even on Varsoon) I have yet to experience any since I returned a couple of months ago. So, potential lag improvement aside what can we expect when we log back in later today?
Your "expect to see" will be inversely proportional to the performance level of your rig, I suspect. If our machine(s) lean more toward excellence, we should notice nothing of merit. (EQ has done it and no appreciable difference)Should our system have a pull start & a specific fuel oil mixture, it might be curtains! The question has no one size fits all. Good luck out there!
The 64-bit update itself is more foundational. As others have said, you may or may not see an immediate difference. But moving to 64-bit components can also give the developers more flexibility and options for the future. We don't know for sure what they'll be able to do with that yet, though.
You won't really "notice" much at all as far as gameplay goes. Improved stability, and improved performance across the board. How big of a difference depends greatly on your specific setup. The biggest difference for me was when I tried the beta on my M1-based Macbook Pro just to satisfy my curiousity. The difference between 32bit and 64bit through Crossover was huge, and by that I mean it went from pretty much unplayable, to more or less tolerable. It's possible users on Linux may also see a fairly noticeable bump in performance. For Windows users though, some people are going to report massive improvements, others will not, and I don't doubt a couple individuals will claim it's actually made it worse (I'd be pretty dubious of that, though, without hard data of before and after).
As already said it should improve performance and hoprefully reduce random lockups and crashes. If it also ends up making the world a better place and brings us an abundance of peace and harmony I'll take that too! I also suspect (hope) that this may give the dev team a bit more room for overall game improvements if the performance impacts are significant enough. Things where there are currently 'limitations' that impact performance. Here's to hoping!
You wont notice it much. In theory you should get quicker zone loading times, in theory you should also notice less crashes due to memory leaks. Servers should also in "theory" work much better and hopefully network lag in raids will be noticeable better as the servers can now utilize more processing power. This is EQ2 though so you know, anything can happen. Anyone hoping for an insane, or even noticeable increase in client performance, such as higher Frames Per Second is kidding themselves. It will hardly do anything in that regard.
I was hoping it would solve the occasional (several times a day actually) 'waiting for zone server' 1–3-minute wait. No such luck on Skyfire. Other than that, it was just the usual little hardly noticeable hiccups that come with any update. I was really surprised (pleasantly) that it all went as smoothly as it seems to from my perspective.
The only difference I've seen is that zone load times are noticeably longer. I'd estimate that they've been about 10-15 seconds slower. Thie conversion may provide some benefits to people who raid or who have really high-end systems, but from my personal perspective, it's a minor downgrade because of the annoying increase in zone load time. I'm not one of those people who expect the game to be tailored to their personal preferences, so I can live with the minor annoyance.
I play on a laptop that is almost 4 years old. Intel i7 and a Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti The game was always staggery to me and hitched a lot. With the update I'm able to push the graphics to max settings with far less impact on performance then before. Loading times while zoning is still a thing but I can appreciate the world as it's meant to be now. I'm most excited for what this update can bring to the table in terms of new items and what is possible for our characters.. ^-^ This is a newer account but I first played this game in 2005, I could only play on low settings then, it's a much different experience now!
Varsoon's been lagging for the majority of its denizens all day, getting progressively worse as nightfall has approached. Input lag is a big culprit: Trying to craft, interact with NPCs, or click on doors to zone has 3 to 10 second lag response time. I'm glad the devs are actively trying to fix it; let's hope the patch tomorrow is at least headed in the right direction. Meanwhile, some people have been crafting in their homes or other quiet instances to reduce input lag time.