Why can my outdated laptop run swtor but not wow?

Also Windows Vista.

Better memory management. My guess is that SWTOR has – from the start – built in better memory management for low powered machines – in other words, it was built to be sensitive to those types of constraints.

WoW was likely built like they used to build programs – it takes its memory and uses it like a pig, and it doesn’t have any memory manager or memory release mechanisms built in.

Newer programmers are better…

It depends greatly on the graphics engine. If a game runs well on your machine most games with the same engine will run fine. Wow is also a memory hog for what it is.

Possible to lower graphic settings before starting game?

Any video controls other than in game?

Always worth checking the game forums or try their customer support. Maybe there is something else going.

Video card have the latest drivers and windows updates?

WoW is pretty old. It came out back before multi-core CPU’s were available to average people. It is probably only using one core and Starwars the Old Republic is using both.

My guess would be the graphics settings. If it shuts your computer down, that’s a sign that maybe the GPU is being flogged to the point of overheating, triggering a thermal shutdown.