WoTLK System Reqs: I can no longer play WoW

#0 - Oct. 8, 2008, 4:22 a.m.

I play WoW on a mac, which is a reliable computer that gives me fairly good WoW preformance. With the release of WoTLK coming I found the system requirements and I have now learned I can no longer play WoW. This is because of my g4 processor, which is no longer good enough for Blizzard.

The new requirements for macs are:

Mac OS X 10.4.11 (10.3 no longer supported)
PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo. Big change here: G4s are no longer supported.
RAM: 1 GB, up from 512 MB. 2 GB recommended.
Video: Hardware transform and lighting, 64 MB VRAM. On the face of it, this rules out the integrated graphics found on MacBooks and Mac Minis, but there's been no official word on it yet. 128 MB VRAM recommended.

I very much enjoy WoW, but I fear that if this change is implemented my days (and I assume many other players days) of playing WoW may be numbered.

PC reqs for those interested:

Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (Windows 2000 no longer supported)
Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1.5 GHz (up from 800 MHz Intel/AMD). Dual-core recommended.
RAM: 512 MB/1 GB for Vista, same as previous. 1 GB/2 GB recommended.
Video: GPU with hardware transform and lighting and 32 MB VRAM, same as before. Recommended 128 MB VRAM.

Tigerclaw

#91 - Oct. 9, 2008, 12:16 a.m.

At present the Lich King requirements are stated but not enforced. The game will load up and run on 10.3.9 and a G4 system, and we still test on those configs. So if you do choose to install it and find that it runs well enough for you, there's nothing being done presently that would prevent that.

Existing Classic and BC players on such systems shouldn't see noticeable change in performance when 3.0.2 release comes out. The bigger issue with Lich King is that the newer areas are more graphically intensive and this is why we telegraphed a change in specs specifically for the expansion content.

The subject of the thread isn't ( IMO ) strictly accurate. You can absolutely continue to play WoW on the machine you have, and possibly even the LK expansion too, that's all up to you.