What parts of my WoW folder can I delete?

#1 - Nov. 5, 2011, 4:36 p.m.

On my iMac I purchased in 2008, I use a 40 gigabyte solid-state drive to run World of Warcraft. I also have all of my system files along with a few small programs (chrome, firefox, quicktime, itunes, etc.). I end up with only 908 megabytes of space left.

I also have a 500 gigabyte external harddrive I use for documents, lesser programs, and storing music. Mac doesn't let me install the program files/startup files into the external drive and wow takes so much longer to start up or to load new areas when launched from the external drive.

I was wondering if there are some files I could delete to free up some space so I could use my SSD for other programs (ultimately, I want to be able to put Starcraft II into my SSD as well, but it's 10 gigabytes so I'm not totally sure it's possible).

I was poking through the wow folder and found that the biggest file of them all was the "Data" file. My guess is that most of the information here is very valuable in order to run the game properly, but are any of these files deletable? Here are some examples of the files:

Expansion1.mpq
Expansion2.mpq
Expansion3.mpq
wow-update-13164.mpq
wow-update-13205.mpq
wow-update-13287.mpq
wow-update-13329.mpq
wow-update-base-13914.mpq
wow-update-base-14007.mpq

Thanks in advance.

TonyM

Support Forum Agent

#2 - Nov. 5, 2011, 8:34 p.m.

Hi Aurieieeein,

I'd honestly stay away from deleting anything in those folders, as the game might not work as expected. Here is a simple list of what you shouldn't delete. This may help you in your quest.

Probably easier to list what NOT to delete

Blizzard Downloader.app

Blizzard Updater.app

Data

Patch.html

Logs

World of Warcraft Launcher.app

World of Warcraft Repair.app

World of Warcraft.app

WoW.mfil <--This is safe to delete but don't delete for sake of space

WoW.tfil <--This is safe to delete but don't delete for sake of space

Cache <--This is safe to delete but don't delete for sake of space

Interface <--This is safe to delete but don't delete for sake of space

WTF <--This is safe to delete but don't delete for sake of space

Now, you can delete the WTF, Cache and Interface folders, but you will lose your add-ons and data for it, causing you to re-do everything for your add-ons. If you like, you can go into /Applications/World of Warcraft/Data and delete your Cache folder in there. This will rebuild your cache to a smaller cache. Thing is, after you delete that, run your Launcher, and wait until the launcher applies "non-critical updates", and states "World of Warcraft is up to date". If you press play before that, you will have lower performance, as it is trying to rebuild that data while you are playing.

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TonyM

Support Forum Agent

#4 - Nov. 5, 2011, 9:39 p.m.

True :) And in case you delete other files accidentally, you can always run the repair tool from the WoW folder to get back that file. Though, if you delete the WoW.app file, you will need to uninstall, as that is the only file it does not replace :(
________________________________________________
Mac Tech Support for Baaaaahlizzard Entertainment || Fri-Tue 1:45 pm - 10:45 pm CST
http://www.surveymk.com/s/RF8K3KG ---- Rate my Baaaaalue Posts. How's this sheep doing?
Dedciated to making your Mac/Blizzard Experience an awesome one!
Alea iacta est. What will you do now?