dooooom and gloooom! 
I heard the same complaints before when Blizzard dropped Windows 98 support.
Perhaps if you actually read the thread, you would find out if you can run the current PTR, you can run Shadowlands. Not having a SSD is not gonna lock you out of the game.
FAT32 isn’t used by default in any version of Windows that is currently supported. It’s only default for very low capacity USB flash drives. Windows 10 will default to exFAT for most USB flash drives and NTFS for all SSDs.
The more likely reason for Blizzard stating this is the “required minimum” is the sheer number of complaints they get about slow loading screens and loads in general with regard to CASC enabled games. After so many patch cycles, CASC gets fragmented enough that it really bogs down on platter based drives and the only workaround, and only in the short term, is to uninstall and reinstall or do a double-clone of the drive where you clone to another drive temporarily, format the original drive, and clone back to the original, since this will force files to be written in as contiguous a manner as possible.
On the Mac side, SSDs are essentially required because of the combination of APFS’ enumeration problem combined with CASC’s fragmentation issues. SSDs are literally the only thing propping up APFS right now, and even then players have to reinstall the game from time to time simply because the enumeration + fragmentation issue is bad enough that it can bring even mighty NVMe drives to their knees. Remember, all SSD drives’ Achille’s Heel are the random 4k R/W IOPS, especially at Queue Depth 1. This will be the case until I/O workloads become properly multithreaded, which they haven’t yet for most OSes and apps outside of specific benchmarks.
Yes, you actually can. It’s not easy to do, but it is possible. But the only reason you’d do that is if you were using it as a data drive in a Windows XP machine. Outside of that, there is literally zero benefit to doing so.
At least your desktop meets the requirements as it has a GTX 970 in it. If your laptop supports an eGPU, that could be used, but I don’t think it does given its age (and the fact almost nobody outside Apple used Thunderbolt 3 for the longest time).
1:. Probably due to loading times since Warlords. SSD becoming minimum requirements doesn’t mean it won’t work, and others have noted it will, but it probably won’t be supported.
This upgrade won’t break the bank, and could even make your PC start up faster.
Ill be seeking a refund too. I purchased this game with the understanding I would actually be able to play it. and no I wont be buying something else to be able to play. This information should have been released before preorders were allowed. Shady business I say.
I am in the beta and I can play the game fine on my laptop. No SSD drive.
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.
I expect we’re seeing a more recent increase in discussion because we announced the release date last week and gaming media is doing their rounds in preparation.
I went and bought a 500GB external SSD and transferred my WoW files to it. So far it’s very slow the first time I load into a zone but after that first load screen, when I jump between areas I’ve visited the loading is very fast.
Brother is in beta. He doesn’t really notice anything. Of course his real gaming computer is much faster than his old laptop from 2015, but the laptop ran it just fine.
When I got two 500gb SSDs I believe it cost me about $250 a year or two ago. I think you can get them pretty cheap if you wanted to upgrade. Even the older ones from 6-8 years ago still work fine. I gave my two old 250gb SSDs I had in my prev computer back from 2012 - 2018 and they work just fine, and are still fast… Boot computer in 10 seconds, as opposed to the 6 seconds it takes mine to boot.
Yeah… I wouldn’t go external if I could help it.
IMO external drives are just for when you need a lot of storage space and not necessarily accessing it all the time.
And USB 2.0, I wouldn’t be using that for active transfers like running game files.
If you don’t have 3.0, I wouldn’t even consider it.
Did you even read the thread? Shadowlands will run fine on the HHD. Download the PTR to make sure. It’s the 9.0 client.
You will be able to play. HDDs will work just fine. They just won’t work as well as a SSD because the game is being optimized to work on Solid State from now on.
Even if you can get an SSD or find out an HHD will work, you still need i5+ and more graphic power… once again, this will cost tons of subscribers…
I mean Blizz can’t win can they, they move forward like other game companies to upgrade the game to be competitive and they cop flack because people want it to remain in the dark ages hardware wise.
Yeah nothing like forcing people to buy stuff. Making you looking really bad blizzard. I cant even just go out and buy it. After this im leaving for good if they steal my money.
No game company can win. Always going to be a group of people complaining about progress.
I’d hate to see what they think of having to buy a PS5 in order to play PS5 games.
Well i didnt ask for this one bit.
Nobody is being “forced” to buy anything. We’re talking about current technology, not high-tech new fangled top of the line gear. Basic entry level computer type stuff now.
You’re welcome to download the PTR and see how it plays on your system as it may play just fine. Many have already pointed out that they don’t have a SSD and are playing without any real issues.
If that’s not the case for you, then there are a lot of more graphically intensive games that are also not forcing you to buy them and upgrade your system.
Oh so we dont need a ssd to play showlands when it comes out?
There are people in Beta without SSDs and they are playing fine, just with longer load times. Your experience may vary, but you’re still welcome to download the PTR version of the game (which includes a lot of the changes) and see how it runs for your particular setup.
Edit: To be fair, I don’t know if they’ll make it a hard-coded requirement, but it’s certainly not on the beta or ptr currently.
If nothing else,
I’ve bought 2 of these, the 512 is in a older i3 laptop for media, and a family member got the 1tb for their older PC until we can afford to upgrade the CPU,MB,PSU.
But it’s not like Blizzard is forcing everyone to buy new PC’s every other expansion either, and as the game gets bigger, better looking, the requirements also have had to increase to match.
It’s sadly not like 16 years ago, when a 2ghz single core could rule the world.
However, minimum requirements does not mean it won’t run, but if you have issues such as poor performance, long loading times, crashes, etc… support might not be able to help you out either.