Star Wars: The Old Republic FAQ — Ping, Servers, Network

Yes. PingAim is fully compatible with SWTOR. The game uses a lightweight user-mode anti-cheat that does not monitor kernel network drivers. PingAim's WFP driver routes swtor.exe traffic at the network layer without touching game files or processes. No bans have been reported from using network routing tools with SWTOR.

SWTOR uses TCP for game traffic, which has built-in congestion control — when your connection gets busy, TCP slows down and retransmits, causing ability cast delays. During 16-player operations or 8v8 warzones, both server load and your local bandwidth usage peak simultaneously. The fix is a stable, uncontested connection: wired Ethernet or USB tethering from a phone to take SWTOR off your shared WiFi.

SWTOR has six servers: Star Forge and Satele Shan (North America, East Coast), Darth Malgus (Europe, English), Tulak Hord (Europe, German), The Leviathan (Europe, French), and Shae Vizla (Asia-Pacific, Sydney). Choose the server geographically closest to you. For APAC players, Shae Vizla (launched November 2023) provides dramatically lower ping than the NA or EU servers.

VPNs are not explicitly banned in SWTOR, but following a security incident in October 2024, Broadsword began flagging logins from shared commercial VPN IP ranges. If you're on a shared VPN (NordVPN, ExpressVPN, etc.) and can't log in, try waiting 5 minutes between attempts or disabling the VPN for login. Network optimizers like PingAim use your real IP address — they change which local network interface carries your traffic, not your apparent IP — so they are not affected by this restriction.

Open the Interface Editor (Escape → Interface Editor or Ctrl+G), add the 'Signal' widget to a Utility Bar slot, and hover over it in-game to see your current ping in milliseconds. Note: a bug in some versions (7.2.1 and later) may prevent the tooltip from appearing. As an alternative, use an external tool like PingPlotter or Windows Task Manager to monitor your network latency to SWTOR's server IP.

SWTOR uses TCP port 8995 for the primary game connection, TCP ports 12000-12999 and 20000-30000 for zone and instance traffic, and TCP ports 80/443 for the launcher and patching. If using the Steam version, additionally open UDP 27015 and 27031-27036 for Steam. All core gameplay traffic runs over TCP — not UDP, which is unusual for an MMO.