I’m currently terrified by this requirement and was wondering if it’s an absolute Requirement? WoW is currently running fine on recommended settings at 90FPS on my 3ish year old Omen laptop and I have no idea if it has an SSD and I won’t have the funds to buy a new PC for at least another 4 to 5 years.
Am I going to be able to play without one or am I going to have to postpone playing WoW for the next couple of years?
Thank you for your time and have a good day/night
Its minimum requirement I would also follow its being discussed there.
When pre-patch lands, you can determine whether the game runs acceptably on your machine at that point.
If you have a service tag handy, you can likely plug it into HP’s site and determine that way whether you have an SSD. SSDs may also be retrofitted into most existing PCs.
You can log into the Public Test Realm to test out the Pre-Patch. I don’t have an SSD and can still play.
You should be able to check yourself and see what type of hard drive your system has in it.
Right-click on the START MENU button on the bottom left of your taskbar in Windows. Choose FILE EXPLORER from that menu.
That will open up the File Explorer program and should be showing your local disk (named C drive by default). Right-click on it and choose PROPERTIES from that menu.
That will open up the properties menu and you will need to choose HARDWARE in that dialog box. You should then be able to see the brand and type of hard drive you have installed.
All mine said was HGST HTS721010A9E630 and I’m guessing that’s not a SSD.
Correct. It is a standard hard disk drive.
https://www.newegg.com/hgst-travelstar-7k1000-1tb-hts721010a9e630/p/N82E16822145881
Have you considered replacing the hard drive with a SSD? I recently did that on my 2016 Lenovo laptop. Prior to that I was using an external SSD for WoW.
I do not have the money or the know how to do so. I guess I’m just going to have to hope I can play without it or wait a couple years till I saved up enough money.
Well, as Alvraen said earlier – they are able to play on the PTR just fine without a SSD.
You might just want to log into the PTR and test it out for yourself.
Well I downloaded the PTR and so far the only difference I’m seeing is a slightly longer load time so I should be able to play. Had to knock the graphics down by 1 from recommended to cool my pc down to how it is in live. but over all it’s perfectly playable to me. Hopefully I’ll be able to play through all of Shadowlands as I save up for a new pc with an SSD for the next expansion after.
I don’t think it’s technically possible to require that a computer has certain type of storage, so there’s no way WoW won’t work if you have a hard drive.
Well, my small PTR experience is showing me that shadowlands is completely playable without a SSD. Just have loading screens that are slightly longer to load by 5 to 10 seconds which is nowhere near a deal breaker for me.
Besides, I can’t get a SSD anyway. Can’t afford it and it would void my warranty. Still got two years left on it.
PTR is one thing, Shadowlands is another. I have a feeling the zones in Shadowlands are why this requirement is in place. I too don’t have an SSD and with the PS5 around the corner, I am not sure my wife would appreciate me wanting up upgrade my “toy” right now. Really wish this was known at preorder long ago.
The client used on the PTR is the same as the WoW client. It uses the same engine and code. If you can run the PTR, you can run Shadowlands. I’m in the beta and running the PTR, and I can run it fine. The only SSD I have now is the one my OS uses, and all my games and applications are still on a normal hard drive. Albeit load times when changing instances are a little bit slow.
I understand that. But that doesn’t change how more graphically intense, so more data to load that the SL zones use. I am glad to hear you are on beta and doing okay. I am used to kinda long load times now, so slightly longer isn’t a thing I am worried about. Thanks for the reply.
The point is, you really don’t need to upgrade to a SSD unless it’s mission critical. Most of the graphical stuff is handled by the CPU and Graphic Cards.
Now that being said, if Blizzard actually locks you out of the game because it doesn’t detect a SSD, I’d be cheesed.
“Required specifications” in the gaming industry isn’t standardised. Meaning anything from “your game will operate” to “your game will be fun”, Blizzard tend to lean toward the latter. You’ll note also fun is a subjective measure. =)
For these purposes, my CPU is a bit below minimum spec, and my GPU is a tad above, but SL has been running well for me. I do have an SSD, so it’s not an apples to apples comparison.
Thanks for all the replies everyone. You all have been a great help. Just have to cross my fingers and pray I can play cause it will be 2 years before I can get an SSD.
SSD’s are not that expensive. You can get a 128 GB SSD for a little over $15 on newegg if all you’re going to have on it is WoW then you should be fine.
My laptop doesn’t have the SSD. Would an external SSD meet the requirements? Like this one?
https://www.newegg.com/seagate-one-touch-500gb/p/N82E16820248098
I’m not happy to have to buy more equipment to play WoW, but I’ll do what I have to do I guess. The 500GB is $80 and the 1TB is $150. I’ll pay what I need to pay for the game to run correctly. Would there be a difference between the larger and smaller one for WoW? Also, would I have to do a complete uninstall and re-install onto the new SSD?
