Runes of Magic US / AU

Have you tried adjusting your graphics settings down? Reducing view distance and textures will help in most cases.
Many of the rooms have multiple graphics layers that are all rendered, even when you can't really see them.
Clothes etc are the same, the engine renders everything, your legs, pants and robe etc, so set the clothes that are covered by other gear to not show.

I recommend setting your view distance to 1/2 or less because the "view bubble"(where things like players and npcs appear) is only 1/2. The rest of the view distance is just distance background and artwork.

Also try turning off other players effects, water refraction, water reflection, and/or shadows. Those will have the greatest impact.

edit:

ping deals with the connection between your computer and the server. I can only recommend trying to look at your computers background processes and see if there are some that can be closed/paused while playing ROM. Search for speed booster programs online to aid automating this. There is only so much you can do sometimes as there may just be too many players online atm.

I was just pinging badly for a good 20 minutes or so, and couldn't even got on these forums, but all seems better now.

Hey, so its not just me, ping jumping like crazy from 31ms to 10k ms, or I can do stuff to I can only look.

Haven't changed my settings since I started playing this game at the end of chap 1. My settings are lowest, view is mid, water thingys all off, no shadows.

Recently downloaded the full game twice to fix graphical issues that were apparently my fault (isn't that always the first answer we get anyway?).

Early mornings and middle of the night are fine, but starting at about siege time, everything goes bonkers. Siege usually ends up with me being a sitting duck to lesser geared players because I get off one spell while they get off 7-8.

Fought a tank toe-to-toe last night. Couldn't scratch him, I had a healer, he didn't. According to the combat log, he got off 21 skills against me while I got off 5 against him, including silence, lightning, and discharge. Without a healer, he healed up normally b4 I could hit with my next spell. Luckily a guildie smacked him for me while I kept his attention, I guess I tanked him, lol. Great heals made the difference otherwise he killed me 4 times. Seemed strange that stunned, he hit me b4 I could hit him, but ping rules all I guess.