WoW: Shadowlands System Requirements - You Can't Play Without SSD [Updated]
The release of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will entail a significant increase in the system requirements of Blizzard's MMORPG. The company has announced that not only a better CPU and GPU but also an SSD will be required to play the new expansion for the iconic MMORPG.
Update
The confusion around the SSD requirement was premature. Blizzard's Randy "Kaivax" Jordan announced an update for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands's minimum system requirements, adding option of using HDD. This confirmed the conjecture of many players, who pointed out, among others, that people are playing Shadowlands on the Public Test Server without an SSD. Of course, staying with the HDD will translate into the gaming experience, which is also indicated on Blizzard's official website. However, if we want to play the new WoW add-on on our existing hardware, we can still wait with the purchase of an SSD.
Original message
Last Thursday brought many announcements and information about upcoming games. Thanks to that we got to know, among others, the release date of a new addition for World of Warcraft. However, a little earlier we missed another important information. Some time ago, Blizzard provided system requirements of WoW: Shadowlands and it looks like we should expect a lot of changes. The recommendations for required HDD space are particularly striking. It's not even that the addition increases World of Warcraft's space requirements from 70 GB (Battle for Azeroth) to 100 GB. With the launch of Shadowlands, the players will have to use an SSD. This includes both recommended and minimum system requirements.
Minimum system requirements of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands:
- OS: Windows 7 or later (64-bit)
- CPU: Intel Core i5 3450 / AMD FX 8300 or better
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 / AMD Radeon RX 560 / Intel UHD 630 (45 W) or better (2 GB VRAM)
- RAM: 4 GB (8 GB if using supported integrated graphics)
- Storage: 100 GB of available space (SSD)
- Other: DirectX version 11, keyboard and mouse required
Recommended system requirements of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands:
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K/ AMD Ryzen 7 2700X or better
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 / AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 or better (8 GB VRAM)
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 100 GB of available space (SSD)
- Other: DirectX version 12, keyboard and multi-button mouse with scroll wheel
Even if you weren't overly interested in PC components, you may have heared about SSDs in successive assurances from Sony and developers about the importance of the new drive standard for ninth generation consoles. It is their use in PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X that could cause more and more developers to give up HDD support for new games. Many WoW players have long since switched to SSD and many (via Reddit) can't imagine returning to the older standard. However, let's stress that the update of system requirements doesn't completely eliminate the chances of running Shadowlands on HDD, although even if it is possible, we will have to take much longer to load textures, models and locations. So let's hope that the recent forecasts for SSD price reductions will come true.
Apart from the hard disk issue, you will also notice some other important changes. GeForce GTX 560 or Radeon HD 7850 will no longer be enough to play the game - users will have to switch to GeForce GTX 760, Radeon RX 560 or better models. This is no different with the recommended system requirements: The GeForce GTX 960 is replaced by the much more powerful GTX 1080 and Radeon RX Vega 64 replaces Radeon RX R9 280. You could also use a better processor and much more VRAM. In Battle for Azeroth, the only thing that was needed was a GPU with 2-3GB of VRAM, but in the case of Shadowlands, a GPU with even 8GB of VRAM is not enough. So if you're playing Blizzard's MMORPG and you've been delaying replacement of aged hardware, the new expansion will give you an good excuse to an upgrade (or replacement) of your PC. World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will launch on October 27.
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Author: Jacob Blazewicz
Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with gamepressure.com in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).
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