This is confusing... it doesn't seem to be hardware/system related, but at the same time I want to say it is since I've NEVER had a crash on the first screen of the Balinoks (where Dvergheim is). The only map that used to (occasionally) crash me was... I wanna say the ravine map (forget the actual name). It's basically the middle map on the journey through the Ballinoks from Krofburg to Vallaki and even then it was only a question of logging back in and everything was fine. I run all my graphics at maximum (except for shiny water, as I recall that creates all sorts of problems) so that's why I find the whole issue baffling. I've puzzled over this for several days trying to think what could be causing it outside of sever-side issues but I haven't had any brilliant revelations. The only thing that struck me, is that this seems to be happening only to people running Windows 7 or newer. Is anyone who's not running Windows 7 or 8 experiencing this crash issue or am I right in saying it's only newer operating systems that have this problem?
You may actually be right, to be honest. Or something related to newer PCs at least.
I used to have the exact same setup as you with, I think, Windows Vista with only shiny water turned off. And no issues at all, ever.
The same still goes for my current system, which is pretty modern and Windows 7, it's only those select few zones in that I crash in.
A placeable that keeps trying to load constantly for those with newer systems until the game simply gives in still sounds like a plausible cause. Unless it's a certain combination of data, like textures and lightning, that isn't possible to process. But a placeable causing it by being rendered differently or something seems like a more logical cause behind it. Wouldn't know which one though. Are there actually effects, textures or placeables that are only visible or that drastically improve or change graphically when you have your settings set higher?
I do still hope the issue will be found, since it's a bit silly having to degrade the graphics of an already outdated game even more just for a select few unimportant zones in the entire game. So far I've been switching settings whenever approaching the problem areas, but that's rather tedious as well and if I turn the options back on max all at once it sometimes crashes my game as well. And not because I have a lousy PC though.
