The fix i have been recommending is to max the textures cache, which should work as it says in the text.
It solved or eased all of the issues i mention below, this on a slow system running on minimal settings.
Clearly it is a temporary measure and results may differ depending on your system specs and health.
It won't work for everyone, but so far it copes with that bigger load and then throws it all into the pagefile.
Make sure your pagefile is big enough and the disk is healthy, since disk swap depends on disk speed.
If the disk can't handle it you will just make things worse, but you can try it out and reverse if need.
Pagefile default may be too little, but in win 32 ddo may be capped to 2GB anyways.
You can find out how much ddoclient is using by alt-tabbing to the task manager.
Beyond this you will need actual troubleshooting.
The symptoms are correct, from u14 people have been reporting any of these:
- Longer loading screens.
- DC during first loading screen, or red link right after.
- Multiple small freezes, be it after loading, zoning or at random.
And also side issues like:
- Rubberbanding and guild ship issues.
- Freezes related to sound.
Every update used to carry a bit of increased load but the expansion makes it much more noticeably.
The devs have worked to get rid of data frag and toon swap lag but u14 might be too big for that.
So yeah, there's a bigger load now that ddoclient and your system have to juggle and accomodate.
Proper and easier fix is to just add more ram, people that already have enough ram should seek for spikes or further issues.
You may still have to turn down the graphic settings from what they were, or get a video card with more ram.
To find out what works you need to do a full troubleshooting from the bottom up, starting at bare minimum settings.
You then figure the fine line between ddo playing nice and choking, and narrow down the list of possible issues.
Make sure to scan, update and check your system for all the usual resources.
(ram check, scan disk, graphics and sound drivers, silent antivirus, no background stuff, etc.)
Hardware damage can't be discarded without the scans, it tends to remain hidden until ram and disk begin to fill.
Likewise some people have found partially or fully fried video cards.
Windows or ddo files corruption can also be suspect when you already have enough resources.
Router hiccups are trickier, but those are a different topic, the red link of this thread seems related to the new load.