I’m running World of Warcraft 10.0.0 (46313) arm64 on an M1 Macbook Air (2020) running MacOS 11.6.
I don’t know the exact reproduction steps but this has happened to me several times tonight: WoW started consuming massive amounts of RAM. Normally it uses somewhere on the order of 4 gigabytes but it got up to 57 gigabytes the first time and 80 gigabytes the second time before my system started complaining. The third time I watched the memory usage more closely and saw it get over 55 gigabytes before I closed the game.
In all cases where this occurs, I was in Oribos idling. I don’t know whether it has to do with the city itself, something players are doing there or just the fact that a lot of players are in one area. It doesn’t happen all the time while I’m there. Leaving Oribos to visit another zone or logging out causes the memory to stop going up so rapidly but does not free any significant portion of the memory that was leaked.
I am having the same issue, I can’t play the game for more than 15 minutes before I run out of RAM and need to force shutdown my machine. Have an M1 Max Macbook Pro. I was also in Oribos trying to set my new talents. Please patch ASAP.
It is not happening in Oribos on the PTR (10.0.0 46293) which likely means either it is a bug that was introduced between 46293 and 46313 or it has to do with the players in Oribos in the live version.
Yet another update: Oddly enough, it appears that the memory leak only occurs when I’m tabbed out. As long as the window is on the screen, there’s no problem, but if the window is minimized or hidden then the memory usage starts climbing rapidly.
Same here, running Monterey 12.6 on an M1 Macbook Pro.
Memory using spikes up to 150gb (!!!) then the system becomes unusable. I do alt-tab fairly often so I’ll have to keep an eye on that. Thanks for the tip.
I’m having the same issue on macOS Ventura. I thought maybe it was due to Stage Manager, but I have the same issue with or without Stage Manger turned on. It also only happens if I go go to other applications other than WOW. If I stay in WOW, Im’ good, but like many of us, we want to go outside WOW to do other things, so this is a major memory leak! Blizzard needs to patch it right away. It’s not fixed as of the time of this posting, I just had it happen again. Please let us know if there are any other fixes or work arounds other than simply staying in WOW! Thanks!
Here’s a FIX for the Memory Leak: Go into Settings>Options>Graphics and put a checkmark in Max Foreground FPS Toggle. Set it at 60 or whatever your Mac can handle. That fixed it for me. I sit at 7.18 GB of RAM used now. I can go out of WOW without issues. Hope this works for all of you!
Fixed it for me. Thank you! Game would consume all memory, start paging then freeze before every single time. Now it seems solid at 5gb or so all the time.
I have been having the same issue, at one point WoW got up to 89 Gb RAM usage, and of course crashed my Mac (Mac OS Ventura). I always tab out of wow and noticed significant overall performance drop on the entire computer since the pre-patch.
The Turning Max Foreground FPS Toggle does not seem to stop or stabilise the memory climb issue, and once the game is on the RAM usage keeps creeping up.
Same issue here, and while I submitted a ticket to hopefully reach someone I wanted to throw some additional information here.
See this post for folks who beat me to the punch on the Spaces issue and have narrowed it down further to include lack of FPS Cap and use of Vsync:
Mac OS 12.4, MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) 16GB ram.
Running at 1440p/full resolution - Fullscreen (Windowed), FPS limits enabled from forever ago at 30 Max Background, no max Foreground, Target FPS = 60
Deleted Addons Folder/WTF Folder/Cache Folder prior to launching
~2.6GB memory usage at character select.
~4.5GB memory usage loading into Oribos and standing idle/looking at talent select.
Some minor memory creep standing idle/looking at talents.
Please know that I use “virtual desktop” to refer to the Mac OS feature of “Spaces” - sorry for any confusion.
As soon as I “alt-tab” to the other virtual desktop, activity monitor shows the WoW process RAPIDLY double memory usage and keeps growing. Switching back to the WoW virtual desktop stops the memory growth but does not shrink the memory allocation.
Alt-tabbing to an application on a second screen while staying on the WoW virtual desktop does not appear to cause memory leak. Bringing an application to the Foreground in front of WoW while being on the WoW virtual desktop does not cause the memory leak.
Swapping WoW to Windowed mode and working with it in the background without swapping to a different virtual desktop does not cause a memory leak.
On my second monitor, working on a second virtual desktop does not cause the memory leak so long as WoW is present (Foreground or background) on the other monitor’s desktop.
Putting the WoW game window onto a different virtual desktop also works and does not cause a memory leak.
tl;dr The only way I can get a memory leak to happen in the WoW client process is by having the game open on a non-active virtual desktop/Spaces instance across any number of monitors. As long as the WoW window is present (fore- or background) on an active virtual dekstop/Spaces instance, the memory leak does not appear to occur.
You can reproduce this memory leak (M1 Mac) by first starting WoW in full screen and then switching virtual desktops (e.g. to open Safari browser while playing). Memory usage will quickly spike (< 30s) and consume all memory – reporting over +100GB of usage.
I have been doing testing with this, it does appear to be related to spaces. I can verify the memory does not leak until it is not being rendered on screen. It is happening in all expansion content I have tested. Happened on my new wargen hunter, in the old world starting area, in the class hall quests from legion, and in Night Fae area on my monk.
This is happening alot of Windows version as well. Alot of users are getting this. I do think its an Alt tab or transition bug. I REALLLLLLY hope they fix this soon. The game is almost unplayable like this.
