This game is great! That is, once you solve any bugs of errors you are experiencing.

If the game is lagging for you, it isn’t necessarily because you have old hardware.

Your Operating System (OS) doesn’t matter too much either. The game should run perfectly on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and also Windows 8 (including Consumer Preview).

This…is actually a driver issue for most people. And while you hear that updating your drivers solves issues for most games, in this case, it actually does. So if you keep encountering slow map loading or keep getting disconnected from the server because of the lag (or even are on Probation for quitting games too much) then…

Follow the suggestions below to fix your game! Works for multiplayer issues AND single player. Also, this of course applies to Steam copies of the game as well.

— Update your drivers (NVIDIA, ATI / AMD, Intel, etc) to the LATEST version
— Reboot
— Go to the NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD / ATI Catalyst Control Center
— This is primarily if you have more than one graphics card (such as an integrated graphics card AND a dedicated one — as seen in many laptops or notebooks) — set your global settings and application settings (such as under Manage 3d setting)
— Disable Sync Every Frame (VSYNC)
— Turn off shadows
— Turn off Ambient Occlusion
— Set Textures to Automatic

Collectively, it should improve your game’s performance.