Wonder if they tried able gamers.
They work with us on a lot but we canât address every single gamer.
Sadly, no. The loss of exclusive fullscreen means there is no protection against the game losing focus, which happens more often than you think when running in borderless windowed or windowed modes. On Windows, any badge icon update causes it, as do system tray notifications (e.g. Windows Defender, etc). On OS X, the Dock randomly steals focus forâŠreasons. Probably due to Appleâs App Store being tied into it and its update agent screaming bloody murder at you for not updating yet.
I actually lost a lot of progress in Star Ocean 4 on Windows when I was seven hours into the endgame dungeon with zero save points, and something knocked me out of the game. It doesnât have exclusive fullscreen mode, only borderless windowed (also called fullscreen windowed). Once the game lost focus, controller input was also lost and could not be restored. I had only mouse click and mouse movement available to me at that point. Suffice it to say, I was pissed.
With WoW, losing focus means breaking my extremely fine tuned mouse acceleration curve designed specifically for my need to be a clicker. I hold a controller in my left hand and click/turn with my mouse in my right hand. But because my right arm has less fine motor control, I had to tune my curve around that (in addition to ransom spasms when gripping items in semi-firm grip). I need that curve to remain intact, and it canât be restored by simply returning to the game via ALT-TAB/CMD-TAB. Once broken, the only way to restore the curve is to shut down the game and restart the client. Thatâs a no-go in dungeons or raids.
macOS supports EFS mode with Metal, but because Blizzard is in cost cutting mode and wanted âparityâ between Windows and Mac versions, EFS went bye bye there too. Additionally it has been brought to my attention that enabling EFS in macOS is almost a hackjob in and of itself due to how Apple implements its obnoxious âRetinaâ display resolutions, so even less incentive for Blizzard to keep that feature in.
So Iâm stuck probably never being able to play WoW again. Blizzard added controller support internally for Shadowlands, but I already had controller support working. Losing EFS didnât break that, it broke mouse acceleration curve hooking. Losing out on a game I had fifteen years invested into really killed a lot of my enthusiasm for gaming as a whole. Disabled players just really arenât on the radar at all unless there is a widespread exodus.
@Alvraen: Iâve already contacted them, including one of their accessibility agents on Twitter. I can contact them until Iâm blue in the face, but without the features being restored, the end result is the same: I still canât play WoW anymore.
That sucks wish things were different so i will wish you well in your future gaming at least you will have your memories.
Thanks, but Iâd rather have fun with WoW than just memories. 
Maybe wow will VR one day like RP1.
Might be an issue there as well since Iâm blind in one eye (unless they improve VR to work with folks with conditions like mine). For reference, Iâm half blind, half deaf, and have a deformed right arm (all of this is on the same side of my body).
Hereâs a better description of my situation regarding my arm:
It does have a tiny SSD as a recovery drive but that is it. The 15" model used a HDD in order to cut costs.
Yeah donât do this.
This is actually terrible advice.
Going to say this again because itâs just not sinking in yet:
YOU DONâT NEED AN SSD. They just arenât going to SUPPORT them anymore.
HDDs are rapidly becoming outdated hardware, but they will still WORK.
I think that people are getting hung up on the âSSDâ description like itâs always an entirely separate digital drive that has to be installed. I had similar performance to a SSD running WoW off a large high-speed USB thumb drive, those run about $30. Also, itâs doubtful that a year-old laptop has a mechanical hard drive in it. Itâs almost for sure that it has a digital hard drive integrated into the motherboard, which is basically a âSSDâ.
WoW chews up and spits out mechanical hard drives. This has been a known thing for some time now. But the workarounds that people developed for that SHOULD still be good. WoW is incredibly portable, and just moving your entire Blizzard directory to a high-speed USB thumb drive and running it from there should do the trick. Itâs the difference between eliminating the arm movements of the read-write on a HDD platter and instant digital read/write access thatâs key.
The current system requirements are set for players to have what we consider to be a good experience with the game. We have updated our minimum system requirements to reflect that World of Warcraft will also run on a Hard Drive (HDD); however, note that players using an HDD may experience lower performance or quality of play depending on the performance of their drive.
Edit: If you recently viewed this article, you may need to fully refresh (Ctrl-F5) to get the newly updated version to show.
Just an FYI, while this is a very nice external drive for a very nice price, itâs not a SSD! I know, because I got all excited and got one after seeing this and while Iâm pleased with my purchase and it DOES launch WoW faster than my internal hard drive, itâs not a solid state so Iâll have to get one of those eventually too.
So I shouldnât go with the external SSD drive for my laptop? I should get an internal one installed? That sounds a little more expensive. What will happen to all the stuff currently on my drive?
This is where backing up things come into play. Either copy them to USB thumbdrives, cloud etc. Then copy them to the new drive once installed.
In the past, taking it to a professional and they would have the capability to transfer everything over to the new one. Now, there are many options for people to do it themselves. Cloud storage, external HD/USB drives, etc.
Or take it as an opportunity to start fresh, and only reinstall programs you need.
When I got a SSD, I installed it in addition to the mechanical drive, and then ran a program to clone the existing mechanical drive to the new one. There are free programs that will do this. That way, you donât have to reinstall Windows and all your programs, and you can have the speed benefit of booting at SSD speeds (which are very nice). Then you just need to go into your BIOS and change the boot drive order to put the SSD first.
Then the only decision to be made is what to do with your OLD drive. Personally, I kept mine around for storage but deleted most of the programs off of it to make room. I left Windows and the boot partition, though, in case the SSD ever failed, to have a backup.
SSDs are so cheap that it may not warrant a mention these days, but back before I could easily afford one, I ran WoW off a USB 3.0 high speed thumb drive and it worked great. Now Iâm spoiled by a rip-roaringly fast PCI SSD, but in a pinch, and especially for people who donât want to muck around with the innards of their computer, a fast thumb drive will likely give them a big performance boost over a mechanical hard drive.
There are some thumb drives whichâre basically miniaturised SSDs, and will perform much better than standard thumb drives.
They do cost, however.
If you have cloning software, you can create a clone or image of the drive to be restored to the new SSD after removal of the original drive (this involves having bootable media with the cloning software on it such as Acronis True Image Homeâs bootable media that you can create). If both the internal drive and SSD are the same size, you could also use an external dual bay drive dock that has its own built in âoffline cloningâ function such as those from Inatek or Sabrent. I have used the drive dock method to clone a failing DVR drive and PS4 Pro drive with success. So there are methods to get your drive cloned if you choose to go internal.
External drives via USB arenât the most ideal route, but they can be faster than platter based drives even with the overhead. Whatâs important is less about throughput and more about seek times, which are virtually nonexistent on SSDs regardless of connection method.