1. Introduction
On the 16th of October, during a routine maintenance, SnailGames USA finally enabled the 64-bit client for everyone. People were looking forward to this for about two years now. But what does the 64-bit client even do?
2. Memory allowance
The difference between the 32 and 64-bit clients is in their memory allowance. A 32-bit program (whether it be a videogame, or a plain Windows application) can make use of 4GB of RAM at most, before running into problems. This is a technical limitation that wasn't a limitation back in the early 2000s, because games and programs didn't demand that much memory back then. The same goes for the RAM on your GPU. Even if you have a GPU with 6GB of RAM, 32-bit programs can make use of 4GB at most.
3. Game crashes
As Age of Wushu grew in content, so did the memory issues. The game engine isn't perfect and doesn't manage its own memory very well. A very popular example is the Tang 4th set. Too many 4th set rages, and your client would crash eventually. Another example is the Chengdu market. Move to the Mystery Tailor in Chengdu, and the market that spawned would often show a warning or simply crash your client.
The number you see at the end of the message, is the amount of memory used by the client. The message would only show if the game almost ran out of useable memory (even if you had a lot of unused RAM).
4. The practical implications of 64-bit
Now that the client is 64-bit, players can run higher graphic settings without the fear of crashing their client. Their FPS may possibly be impacted in a good way, too.
With the switch to 64-bit, the game stopped using the "bin" directory in the installation directory. Instead, it is now using the "bin64" directory.
The "bin" directory contains your local client settings. The bin64 directory has the same purpose, but is empty at the time of switching, so people will have experienced the following side-effects after the server maintenance:
The skillbar layout resetted
The graphic settings resetted
Chat doesn't lag the client anymore (because the chat history file didn't exist in bin64)
Sky Ladder skill setup
Local blacklist
...
I know it's been a while since the switch to 64-bit. But if you still want to restore all of these without having to manually reconfigure everything in-game: Go to your "bin" directory. Copy the directories with the account names that you want to keep. Then paste those directories in your "bin64" directory.
5. Future improvements
From here on, the game engine only gets better. The next patch has the following features to look forward to:
Display more players on-screen at once
Officially uncaps FPS up to 300
It's presumably another year of waiting until we get these features.