well for one i would recommend upgrading your video card. 2, there has been a lot of progess made, not sure if you were around for the last alpha patch, but hell i was getting 85-90fps on my 460. now its back down to about 20-30's, still overall pretty good, plays hell with my freetrack though. and it sounds like you have a router/firewall issue that is blocking the ports needed to play the game, or you do not have them forwarded correctly or dont have your universal plug and play option enabled on your router which automatically forwards ports for you. but I am proud to say for once no launcher crash on the initial hours of test playing the only bugs i encounterd was the tree issue everyone seems to have already posted as well as the huri/spit no start problem, and the decrease in frame rates, due to way way too many clouds. wish there was a way to disable them but just have to wait it out, overall good improvement, though i miss my 80fps
