I had the same issues, but found a fix after sifting through the various suggestions in this thread. I run AO on a laptop with a nVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M graphics card, and it's nVIDIA's Optimus tech that brought me into trouble. For those who don't know, the Optimus tech is auto-swapping between your graphics card and the much less advanced graphics that is integrated in your motherboard, all to save on your battery when not running games. When a game starts up, it switches to your high-end graphics card. But not for AO. Suggested fix (for nVIDIA users): 1. Select your best graphic card in the AO settings 2. Right click your desktop 3. Select NVIDIA Control Panel 4. Manage 3D settings 5. Preferred graphics processor: High-performance NVIDA processor 6. Run the game. Did it work? If so, go back to the 3D manager and set it back to Auto select. You can make your computer always choose high performance for AO, and this is how: 1. Repeat 2-4 from above 2. Select Program Settings tab 3. Click Add 4. Browse your AO directory folder and choose the anarchyonline.exe 5. In the 1. Select a program to customize dropdown: find AO 6. In the 2. Select the preferred graphics processor for this program dropdown: select High-performance NVIDIA processor 7. Run game. Did it not work? I feel for you, really. Funcom should fix this issue so that everyone can enjoy the game they love and pay for.
Cheers! Specs: GeForce GTX 860M graphics card w/ 2GB GDDR5 Intel Core™ i7-4710MQ processor 2.5GHz ~ 3.5GHz, 4 cores Intel 8 Series chipset 16GB DDR3 1600MHz SO-DIMM RAM