I haven't read through this entire string, but I've posted separately about low FPS or FPS drops. In my situation, I suspect it was due to an overheated machine. I have two machines which are identical, one had the poor performance the other hadn't. The machine with the poor performance I turned off for ~12 hours and when we came back to the game all was well. In short, I would say that it could be a variety of factors causing it, and this game seems more sensitive to outside variables than most other MMOs
