Vista - DirectX 11 Now Available for Windows Vista

It will work better with DirectX 11.1 lol

you would think so, but that isn't the case.

Nor will DX 11 work with Everquest, their servers are set up to use DX 9c. There were posts to Sony Online Entertainment's official forums this past weekend about it.

DirectX is a client technology. Not a Server one. It only works for PC's where you install the game on. If the game doesn't support it, it steps down to use the old stuff.

Not at Everquest. Their servers check for DX 9c, if it is not on your home computer, the game wont run.

SOE has a file check program that runs when you log in. It not only checks, and then patches, any of their files, it also checks to see which version of directx is on your computer.

My Vista computer came with dx10. Specs in my profile.

When I ran the SOE game patcher, it checked and said I didn't have dx9c on my computer.

When I went to MS site and downloaded and installed dx9c, then ran the login for Everquest, I was able to play.

Evidently they had it hard wired into their checking program to look for dx9c, if it isn't there no game play.

This gets mentioned often on their official forums on tech support. No dx9c, the game wont run.

OIC. I guess it must be a really old spec that MS decided to drop entirely from default setups. That's actually EQ's fault. They should patch it to use the available downgrades from the Vista / 7 installs.

You'll find that a lot of older game titles will require elements from 9c for OpenGL support mainly. Try some older 98-XP compatible games on the newer versions of Windows including the 64bit as well.

SOE has mentioned they are upgrading to dx10, but not right now.

Evidently they didn't specify a dx version in the early years. They added lots of graphics, and peopel complained of their view of the game becoming a slide show instead of steady continuous video.

Around that time SOE found out many players had older versions of dx and so SOE pretty much forced people to upgrade. They spent lots of money on making the graphics for some zones much better, and it was making the enjoyment drop off. They still support the WinXP server drivers, so when MS drops support for those drivers, probably SOE will up grade to dx10.

Most of that is from hints and mentions by the developers over the past 2-3 years.

As newer game titles are released requiring DX10 or above you'll have to expect they will also be moving on and no longer supporting the older titles on their servers. I wouldn't plan on XP support only lasting much longer anyways once the next version of Windows that follows 7 is being readied.

XP will be dropped just like previous versions after a certain period of time. It will upto inddividual gaming sites to keep XP servers running once MS does drop their own support. Once work begins on the 3rd version of Windows to follow any particular version the first has become too far outdated.