Choppy lag (am i missing something?)

I recently downloaded this game through Steam’s Summer Sale. I’ve been enjoying it so far but the lag is starting to make it unbearable. It’s often very choppy and will only run smoothly for a minute or two when I first log in and then it’s all downhill from there. Multiple enemies and characters acting in the same frame makes everything slow down to the point where it’s near impossible to keep up with a moving enemy and attack it.

However, I feel like all the signs point to the fact that I should be able to run this game fine, playing on my laptop on the Jenova server. Maybe I’m missing something. I ran World of Warcraft and Star Wards: The Old Republic just fine. The cut scenes during this game run fine. I’m on a wireless connection on a Dell Windows 7 laptop and the game says my connection is excellent.

My computer’s specs are 4.00 GB RAM (with 3.80 GB usable) and an Intel® Core™ i3 CPU M370 @ 240 GHz 2.39 GHz. I did a ping test to North American servers and the minimum was 26ms, maximum was 74ms and an average of 31 ms. Not exactly sure what these mean and if low is good or not. All the graphics in-game are turned to the lowest settings. I have my computer’s visual settings set for best performance. Battery is on high performance mode. I ran a disk degraf and a disk clean up. I have around 200 free GB on the hard drive. I gave FFXIV high priority when running.

The lag was so bad even after these adjustments that I turned to the WTFast program. Running the basic version, I noticed slight improvement at first but after running the game for a few minutes, it went back to how it was before. I played around with different servers to connect to, some with better results than others, but none with outstanding results.

I’ve read multiple guides and tips and implemented some of them but ultimately, I think I’m missing something. Maybe it is just my computer? Maybe it’s the game. Any last-ditch things I could try? I really want to enjoy this game and I think I will but the lag is killing me.

I don't believe your PC will be able to run this game sufficiently. It's open world, which will tax your CPU, and you're using a i3 with Intel HD Graphics, which are not all that great to begin with. Since you've already tried everything possible, I think it's safe to say your laptop can't handle the game :/. But just to make sure, have you checked to make sure your resolution was set to the lowest setting as well?

Seems like it is a borderline situation of you being able to play the game. Also, lower ms is better. It means less delay.

Mine was fine before I added another 8gb memory.