World of Warcraft expansion – will you need to upgrade your hardware?

Part of the allure of World of Warcraft expansion Warlords of Draenor is the promise of dramatic character model upgrades to all of the original 8 races as well as various texture improvements.

While this sounds attractive to most gamers, those playing on low-end PCs have wondered if the MMO would still run as smoothly as it had in the past with these improvements.

Players took to the game’s forum to voice their concern, and now Blizzard has responded.

“I’d say that you shouldn’t be worried about any big drop in performance; things will most likely remain very close to what you are experiencing right now. So if you’re satisfied with what you have right now, then there shouldn’t be any need to change anything,” said Blizzard community manager, Taepsilum, adding that whether players would have to buy a new PC was a “hard question to answer”.

For raids specifically, Taepsilum said more detailed character models and expanded surrounding geometry will require more processing power, and the developer is overhauling the way in which on-screen information is presented as a means to boost performance.

“More importantly, we are reducing the amount of visual clutter that currently fills every fight where a lot of players are involved. Less sparkly stuff flying around means better video performance for everyone. It doesn’t matter how well-designed an encounter is: you aren’t going to have fun raiding at 8 FPS,” said Taepsilum.

“We want everyone to be able to enjoy playing with the new models, and our dev team is working hard making sure that WoW is as resource efficient as possible in order for that to happen.”