Well this might cause a few folks to not come back to the game if they cannot afford to upgrade their current gaming pc. I don’t remember it being a requirement before to have a SSD in order to play WoW.
It wasn’t, previously. Was recommended, but not part of the minimum. Even in BFA, if you’re not running an SSD your load times, especially in busy places, can take up to 10 seconds or more. Given that’s likely to be even longer in Shadowlands due to engine updates, I can see why they’re listing it as required. I believe it will be playable without, but likely to have high load times, screen tearing and sputtering.
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I agree. I noticed several years ago when I replaced my HD with an SSD I got better load and less fractures through out the game. I recently upgraded my original SSD with a higher level one. Even with that change I saw some improvements, especially in dungeons and world events, etc.
Thanks for the info @Lyn and @Hashberry. I recently went to a 1 TB SSD from a 250 MG. Now I’m glad I did. The price on SSDs has gone way down, but still might be too much for some folks right now. I do hope they will play anyway.
I saw this on the WoW forums. I do not endorse nor I have I verified:
For folks with older computers, Western Digital makes a 2TB portable external SSD that is compatible with USB 2+3 as found on many older machines.
It’s on Amazon for $65 US.
https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Elements-Portable-External/dp/B06W55K9N6/ref=psdc_595048_t2_B07VP5X239
USB3 highly recommended.
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This has been updated, following similar concerns on the official forums. No need for SSD …
The text of the Systems Specifications for Shadowlands was updated a few minutes ago on our Support Site: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/256565
The minimum requirements section for Storage now reads:
Solid State Drive (SSD)
100GB available space
Or
Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
100GB available space (depending on the performance of the drive, player experience may be impacted on HDD)
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While playing ESO, I went from a HDD to a SSD. The difference for that game was noticeable especially with load times. With the posted change, I expect WOW will run “better” with an SSD but will run just fine with a HDD.
It would be pretty bad for Blizzard to announce such a change less than 60 days from launch.
I appreciate they put a disclaimer on it. Just as everyone suspected and was also experiencing on beta, it runs on an HDD, but it may be slow or choppy.
Blue post ( Kalviery), lol:
This information has been available since at least December 2019.
I’m fairly confident it was on the Blizzard Shop under System Requirements when pre-orders started but I can 100% confirm that our support article created in December 2019 has always had the information.
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Thanks for this info. Kelly and I currently run WoW on internal Western Digital ‘Black’ HDD. Performance has been fine, but we have noticed some delayed texture loads when porting back to a main city. Otherwise, the game runs just fine in dungeons, raids, and while questing, at least through Battle for Azeroth.
Things may be different now with the upcoming Shadowlands expansion. We have SSDs in our game rigs (M.2 drives) that we can migrate to, but I may see how Shadowlands performs on our WD Blacks before I migrate.
Thanks agian for all the info. 