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Lord of the Rings Online: DX10 Patch

Turbine's DirectX 10 client for The Lord of the Rings Online is upon us. Though the company admits that its DirectX 10 offers "minor visual upgrades," we seek to find what kind of performance penalty comes with the new DX10 code. All is not well in the land of Middle-Earth...with DX10.

Introduction

Originally launched on April 12, 2007, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar has grown to become one of the most active MMORPGs around. A big part of the game's popularity comes from its steady stream of free official updates and content additions since launch. The first update, "Chapter 9: Shores of Evendim", increased the game's landmass by some 20% and added over 100 new quests.

The Lord of the Rings Online and Chapter 11: Defenders of Eriador

The latest free update, Chapter 11, brings with it an extensive list of changes made to the game, not the least of which is the addition of several new areas to the landscape. There are new quests, new items, and new arms and armor to equip and use. It also added a new 12-player raid known as Nûrz Ghâshu, or "The Rift", featuring a boss battle with a Balrog of Morgoth, a huge demon of ancient Middle-Earth, kin to the beast that dispatched Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings books and films. There were numerous updates to each player class, but the most extensive attention was given to the Minstrel (healer) and Lore-Master ("nuker") classes. Both of those classes received several new skills and abilities, as well as changes to existing skills. They even added player housing to the game, allowing players to use their battle-won gold to purchase houses, furniture, decorations, and lawn ornaments, as well as enabling an additional long-term storage location.

In addition to content additions, Chapter 11 brought with it the addition of DX10 code to LOTRO. Like World of Warcraft and similar online games, when the patch goes live across all servers you must update the game to this new patch before you can play. Therefore this patch is mandatory if you wish to play.

DirectX 10

Of course, the change that interests us most is the DirectX 10 code. According to the release notes:

There are a handful of graphics features which will be available only to DX10 users. These are mostly minor visual upgrades with the exception of the dynamic shadows which are a pretty dramatic change. Specifically these are the features we’ve implemented:

Dynamic outdoor shadow maps: This is our big upgrade for DX10. Outdoor shadows will now use dynamically rendered shadow maps. Buildings will self-shadow. Trees cast shadows on players and scenery. The leaves move and it makes you happy. This feature is intended for users running in Very High or Ultra High.

Water improvements: the water now has soft shorelines and uses true depth calculations to determine the amount of fog visible.

Soft particles: Particle effects will now fade when they intersect with other geometry to avoid harsh lines.

Far terrain lighting: Far terrain lighting is improved for DX10 users. This effect may not be visible yet in all parts of the world. This is also only on by default in Very High or Ultra High.

The bolded sentence above is most interesting. They are clearly stating that most of the changes are minor cosmetic changes, except for the dynamic shadows, which they claim make a big difference. Improved shadows is a common theme that we have seen in DirectX 10 enabled games. Soft particles are less common, but we have seen those before as well.

The water, however, is something new. LOTRO already has remarkably well-executed water, even though it is static. In fact, the only complaint we've had concerning water in LOTRO was the intersection of the water geometry with the shorelines. It has always been abrupt and it has always looked strange. Hopefully this update will do what it says it will do, and fix that problem.

Apples-to-Apples

Today, we will be evaluating the newly refreshed LOTRO experience on five different video cards in an Apples-to-Apples format. That means we will use the same in-game settings, resolution, AA level, and AF level for each video card we test. Of course, at the end, we will show you what we found to be the highest playable settings for both games on all five of these video cards.