Recently I started having these problems with incredibly low fps (1-10) in Lions Arch. Its not coming from population, I tried logging on during offpeak hours, with ~2 other people around, but the problems stay the same.
Lowering graphic options didnt make a difference either.
Its also not like I changed anything about my system either, the game ran perfectly for 1.5 years on high settings, but since new year I started having these very low fps problems. Sometimes I couldnt even steer my character to stand at the TP traders in LA because of the latency.
Other maps and dungeons get hard fps drops too, but in LA is where its unplayable.
Also, the startup of the game takes forever, as do the loading times for anything, maps, dungeons etc.
When I enter a map I also often miss icons for skills, icons for items in my inventory and environement objects. They load after some time, but it takes minutes.
Opening trading post freezes the game for about a minute, then it slowly loads all the pieces of the window in bits.
Even closing the game will freeze everything for 1-2 minutes until I get back to my desktop.
I reinstalled twice, no difference.
Other games play as smooth as ever.
Computer:
2,00 GB RAM
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor (3.20 Ghz)
ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
Windows 7
I saw theres some other threads about fps drops, but apparently those are other problems, as I neither run on a mac nor do I only get the problems in crowded places or run the game on a weak system.
