General Discussion

I have a question reguarding security on my PC while playing MMOs. I play MMOs with all my PC security stuff turned on. Including a firewall and anti-virus software running. Most MMOs I experience no performance issues but a couple including LoTRO and EQ2 I get some performance loss with these running. Not much but in the case of LoTRO a slight hitching can occure and a framerate loss. As a test I turn off these features and the game stopped hitching all together and there was a norticible performance increase. In WoW I did not notice any increase and the fps remained the same.

My question is if I turn these off just before I load one of these games and only play the game with them off. No other use like internet etc. only for game how does this effect my security. Am I ok with turning security off just for the game then back on when I am done playing? I realize I need this security but when only in a trusted MMO like EQ2 or LoTRO am I vulnerable?

Thanks for any input I can get on this issue.

No one has any information on this?

If you are playing a mmo you are still connected to the internet therefore vulnerable to viruses, keyloggers etc

If you turn off your anti virus you should be fine when playing the game, just do not under any circumstance turn off your firewall.

Your computer will hitch when you have a anti virus running due to it constantly scanning your computer, which will make it run slower. Anti viruses generally ownly detect and delete viruses once they are already on your computer, they do not act like a firewall which prevents you from getting them in the first place which is why you can not turn off your firewall.

Edit: forgot to mention if you turn off your virus protection yet the game still hitches, make sure that the firewall has ports opened for the game you are playing you can find out how to open them up or check them on the games main site.

If the hitch is livable, I say leave the firewall and antivirus on.

A firewall does not, in and of itself, prevent you from getting a virus. It merely prevents a virus from coming through on an unauthorized port. Some firewalls go a bit further and filter at the application level. With that in mind, IE/Firefox might be an application that the firewall trusts, however, that does not mean you cannot get a virus using those apps.
A real-time virus scanner would typically catch a virus coming in through one of these trusted apps.

In the end, it always comes down to risk vs. reward. There is risk involved in disabling any security measures on your system, but these can be managed. If the performance gains are substantial enough, you might risk the slightly increased exposure in order to enjoy your game a bit more.

Whatever you choose, I would recommend keeping regular backups of any information that you would be upset to lose.

Maybe of interest to you would be another thread:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/167432/page/2

It seems to discuss a "hitching" problem in LoTRO.  Not to say your circumstances are the same or not, but might be worth reading and seeing if anything there fits.