I run the haunted toaster model. Before that I ran a Nokia flip phone attached to a keyboard. Before that was a potato.
Good Corgi
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It depends on what resolution/fps you’re going for.
WoW still runs fine on ancient PCs at low resolutions (1280x720, 1366x768) and old hardware (a 2nd gen i7 on a 750ti), but will be terrible on anything higher.
It is doing everything I ask of it so no disappointment here. Hopefully, you have something more aligned with your demanding needs.
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In vanilla i had i think an emachine lol ran fine
I started in Wrath with an Apple G4 Tower running Mac OS X. I still have my tower and it still has the Wrath client on it. So if they ever re-release the 3.3.5 client, I’m ready. Nowadays I’m running on a Mac mini (M1, MacOS 12) which is not recommended for playing Wow, and it seems to me that it runs better than the IBuyPower gaming computer I also have running Win 10 which is listed as a viable platform for Wow.
Sometimes when I’m super anxious, I find comfort in nostalgia. Plus, since I grew up through those times and continue to enjoy retro console and PC gaming, I have a small collection of CRTs because I prefer the CRT look for those games though I do have a retrotink 2x upscaler—I ain’t about to drop what the newer retrotinks cost either; the 2x suffices. I have a few old consumer TVs: a 1981 5" (black-and-white) Orion-made, Montgomery-Ward-branded portable TV that I believe my aunt stole from my grandparent’s, but I managed to finally get back a couple years ago; a 1980 10" (black-and-white) Samsung-made, Sears-branded TV; a 1990 19" Philco; a 2000-ish 14" JVC that I took to college >23 years ago; and a massive 32" Sanyo 4:3 720p/1080i CRT HDCRT that I bought in 2004. The Sanyo has an HDMI 1.0 input (along with component/S-Video/composite/RF). I also have a 15" Compaq monitor from '99 that maxes out at 1152x864 at 56hz or 1024x768 at 60hz that I got along with the matching Presario PC, and a 21" Acer P211 from 2003 that I’ve had since around then that is the best CRT I have (1600x1200 at 110hz, 1920x1440 at 85hz, and 2560x2048 at 60Hz plus both VGA and RGB BNC inputs); however, the Acer is unworking and has needed work for a while (I actually have the BENQ-branded model now because I had to RMA the original Acer unit I had a couple of times, and I got this unit back the last time). The Acer is what I was using to play WoW originally at 1280x960 and 1024x768 initiall and 1600x1200 for long time before I got a 1920x1200 LCD years later.
I very rarely actually play PC games on a CRT, but I occassionally get that urge. I have a decent enough upscaler to convert to hdmi with the retrotink 2x, but, I haven’t had the need for ages and ages to go from PC to composite, so I’ve only done that once with these particular standard-def TVs. That was only to make this GIF on the 5" B&W portable TV using an old early/mid-00s VGA to composite adapter that outputs 480i combined with an HDMI to VGA adapter from amazon that I had bought to use with the Acer before it screwed up. I had to run that through a VCR to RF and use a 75 Ohm to 300 Ohm transformer because all that TV has are 300 Ohm twin-lead terminals. That setup added a frame or two of input lag, not unplayable but not great. Again, I only played that way once and to get some footage, of which this GIF is part:
I used to play more often on the 32" Sanyo CRT (which I stuupidly bought for Amped 2 on the original XBox, and I’ve nearly threw out my back moving over the years…) because you can feed it up to 1440x1080 (4:3) or 1080i (16:9 with letterboxing) in interlaced mode or 1280x960 (4:3) or 720p (again with letterboxing) at 60hz progressive. It will not accept any resolution under 640x480 over HDMI nor anything besides 60hz (no 640x400 or 640x480 or line-doubled 320x200/240 at 70Hz for VGA-timed modes). It does have a digital scaler that introduces, from my own testing, either 1 or 2 frames of lag depending on the aspect ratio (which can be shutoff with a engineering menu, separate from the service menu, hex sequence…but is annoying to have off for game consoles). That only happens on the HDMI input (720p over component has no input lag but does on HDMI). That doesn’t happen with 1080i, 480p, 480i, 540i, or 540p input resolutions, so for PC games I stick to 1080i if I care about latency and 1280x960 or 720p if I need more clarity but don’t care if I get a little lag.
But, I don’t get to play anything really on the 32" over the 10 months or so because I’ve had a cousin who lost her home and job move in with me into my spare bedroom where my classic gaming stuff sits. However, I did play some Diablo 4 on it, and I’ve played WoW on it in the past:
Because I don’t want to run my cousin out of the room just to play on my big CRT TV, I moved the JVC out of my “garage”/out-building into my tiny office room so that I have an decently okay CRT TV to play a couple of consoles on. And, since I received it, I’ve kept the little 15" Compaq monitor in there as well. I have to move things to have room when I want to use it so it’s a little inconvenient, but I’ve played WoW and other things a handful of times on it over the past few months.
As for actual hardware, the last time I upgraded the majority of my PC was to a 10400f and RTX 3060 12GB after a motherboard failure a few years ago (and I paid more the retail for the 3060 at the time). Not the fastest, but not a total potato yet. I won’t be upgrading this year for sure, but I might next. Life hasn’t really been kind as of late, so we’ll see.
But, I did test something out on a much older GPU for someone in the tech support forums a little while back: I pulled out a near-15-year-old HD5770 that I still have and stuck it in my ancient Shuttle SFF PC with a i7 990X (it normally has a barely-fitting GTX 970 in it) that stays hooked to the Sanyo CRT for emulation purposes and copied over WoW. It ran, not very well, but it ran:
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I was getting 1 FPS in Val. I turned off a bunch of addons and it got better, but my potato is still a potato. Out in the wilds, when im herbing or mining, im ok. Leveling a fresh alt in BFA, i was ok. Just the crowds of players hits hard.
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My PC is pretty good.
My human body is an ancient potato though 
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Oh how i feel that in my bones.
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My guess is that if I went to the Computer Museam and tried firing WoW up on their PDP-1, some adjustments would have to be made to get it running.
Case in point, the 6 bit byte and the 18 bit word.
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I have one of the disk packs from a DEC 10 (post PDP 10). It is the size of a wedding cake and yet only held about 100 Mb. I have some disks from another disk pack where it literally crashed with the spin dropping below what was needed to keep the heads above the platters via the Bernoulli force. When we opened it up the disk was gouged to the point aluminum filing were pouring out. The disk drives were the size of washing machines.
This was back in 1991 and we had one of the three last ones in operation. We held our breaths each time it restarted as the commands were on a fragile paper tape we had no way of replicating. And, of course, our data server was named “Frink” because what else would we have named anything connect to the Usenet? 
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I do (Ryzen 7 7800x3d), but the disappointment was more about the almost complete lack of improvement (and in some cases regression) there was comparing the Intel 10th generation to the Intel 11th generation.
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i myself never owned a pc from the time range WoW came out. when i was very young (<6 y/o) i played on a computer from the 90s but it wasnt mine.
ive used lots of computers and laptops not powerful enough for WoW, though. i was very good at coping with lag.
nowadays i play laying in bed on a 2020 macbook pro. lag really only hits me during busy hours in valdrakken and it makes for a nice makeshift heating pad.
My 10 year old computer just gave up . CPU water block got a hole in it took mother board out . So I just built a last gen cpu computer every thing new but power supply and Video card . It should be a lot faster then what I had but get about same FPS in game . Had ddr3 ram now got ddr5 .
Played on one of those c2q6800’s, 8gb ram and a hd7700 until early 2020. Worked fine for playing wow but I did upgrade at some point.
I remember playing alterac valley when wow was fairly new and had a graphic card from the 98-99 and the fan melted off.
Up until BfA, I played WoW on a really crappy Toshiba laptop with garbage specs. By the end of Legion, even at the lowest settings, the game would only run at 4 fps and I am NOT exaggerating. My father finally decided to buy me my own computer, and years later, I still use it, albeit I’ve upgraded the PSU, GPU, storage, and got another monitor.
That is pretty close to what I first saw this aired on, rabbit ears and all. It was the first tv in my room, and I had to keep the volume way down so I wouldn’t get in trouble. It was after 8pm and past my bedtime!
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I got a mid-range PC from 2021. Still perfectly fine for WoW, often sitting at 100+ FPS and gets 60FPS with ray tracing at high in Valdrakken.
But for more modern games the lack of Vram is starting to become an issue. And i’ll have to get an entirely new GPU to fix that issue. Something i am not very keen on right now. Maybe next year.
It ran ok on my old PC, a 6th gen I7 with a 1080. Things would bog a fair bit in Valdraken but everywhere else was decent at mid to high settings. My new PC, a 13th gen I9 with a 4070ti, everything is smooth as butter.
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