Blizzard Reveals WoW: Cataclysm System Specs

If you have only the minimum system specs, you better have your viewing distance (and most other video effects) turned way down. Otherwise, you would be standing in Dalaran and think your system locked up (you'd be getting about 1 FPS).

They forgot the razor blade to slit your wrists because you no longer have a life.

Yikes, why does Mac take twice the memory? And why does a "mobile" mac need so much more graphics processing power than a "desktop" mac? Doesn't really affect me, but those reqs seem odd.

mac needs more power to play the game because OSX uses more system resources than Windows typically.

As always you don't need much to play wow. But hey thats a good thing.

Also the unemployment benefits application paperwork because you got fired for skipping work.

I ran all settings on mininum, 640x480 with a Nvidia 7500LE (OEM bargain bin card) and a Pentium D 820 2.8GHz with 1GB of DDR2 533. In GPU intensive area, it was unplayable. I love when the minimum settings list something that makes the game unplayable, because, honestly, is 5-10FPS worth it?
My i7 and 5770 both OC'd lol at those recommendations however. TOo bad I quit 3 years ago.

Edit: I'm curious, what kind of GPU will these have? I have a Cowon S9 with a dual core 500MHz ARM, but since it has no GPU, effects are all quite slow.

wow is GAY

The system specs provided by Blizzard are worthless. No screen resolution = no spec.

What about the rest of us who got downsized or the company went belly up?
I HATE not having a job and the dead end jobs are hard to find and getting worse.

Maybe if Blizzard were to release more CPU & GPU demanding games, it would force most users to upgrade their PCs so they're able to play other demanding games. We'd end up with less MMORPG players and maybe more FPS gamers.

I know it can be fun to ridicule things people end up doing while waiting for death, but unless you're working on a cure for cancer or figuring out how to replace fossil fuels, most don't have a leg to stand on. Fantasy football, hiking, blowing money at the club/bar, and watching TV are all equally as pointless as WoW.

This is kind of funny... notice how on Windows (or WINE, I bet!) you can play with a 1.3ghz processor, half the memory, and less graphics power - whereas Mac users will need a minimum of 2 cores.

The mobile spec doesn't require more power,its just that a 9600m is so gimped by the power/heat requirements its about as fast as a 7600 desktop part.

"Hitting the MMORPG on December 7, the expansion will introduce gamers to two new races, revamped zones, new game mechanics and more."

...of the same. This is still WoW. It's long past its prime.

WOW kinda a bit of an upgrade for many mac users. Its good to know that my 5 yr old PC can still handle the game, but my 4 yr old mac won't be able to handle it.

Its a shame to because the Mac WOW version has lots of great in game video recording features for Machinima makers.

If you plan on downloading the patch, you're gonna need much more than 25gb of free hard drive space. The game couldn't upgrade to the new patch on my 40gb ssd, I had to move it to my 128gb ssd. After the install it trims down to 26gb.

The only thing wrong with WOW is the players who don't know when to turn it off. I have been playing for 4+ years and only once in that time have I found myself not taking care of things outside the game.

On the other hand, if you want to be in the top 100 toons on your realm you have no choice but to be hand cuffed to it. I raided for 18 Months and I got bored of doing the same thing week after week.

All in all the game is still worth the 15 bucks they soak us for every month.

Kevin. You let the end of the video specs start the audio specs.

There, FTFY.

Interesting that they still require DirectX-compatible audio for Windows. You'd think they'd add OpenAL support for all the Vista/7 users who lack a proper DirectSound3D implementation.

Probably because of OSX and OpenGL. Open GL hasn't been as massivley used for games as DX nor has OSX compared to Windows.

So the ones that have had games the longest have had optimizations and time to find tweaks that the others haven't.

lol, 25 gb of free HDD space. WoW takes up so much space.

Is this game working offline?
I'd love if they create a game like Sony's Phantasy Star Universe, where you have an offline story mode, and can go online, for online playing with a subscription.

world of warcraft is the only game from blizzard i can say i actually hate. . . .

I like PC games not WOW.

Kind of, but not really.

Mac uses Open GL, which is not NEARLY as optimized as DirectX.
Furthermore, video card vendors optimize their drivers as much as they can on Windows, as they know many Windows users play games. On Mac OS X, they don't care as much, as a VERY small percentage of the Mac user-base uses 3d applications on a daily basis.

So it actually really isn't Apple's fault on this one. Except for the fact that they could probably help OpenGL development a TON if they really wanted to (which would help the lonely Linux people like me :-D).

More optimized drivers for Mac will come from the video card vendors once Apple and the Mac user base needs it. Which--considering Steam is now on Mac--will probably happen sooner rather then later. Only a matter of time.

MAYBE someday OpenGL will be the golden standard for games instead of DirectX. Which will be fantastic for those who prefer to not use Windows, as cross platform games will become more of a reality.

Ummm... No.

I don't see OpenGL taking the forefront of game graphics standards again. The reason OpenGL lost in the first place was because it was difficult to write in, you were limited in performance and some functionality was unattainable. That is not to say that OpenGL is bad, it does say that OpenGL was not written for making video games. It was designed for CAD style 3d work. The format I'm looking forward to since it could, if implemented properly sit across most devices for programming and certain aspects of rendering is OpenCL. This could make cross-platform porting much much easier, allowing for games in Windows, Linux, and Mac to only be limited by the quality of the drivers for the devices, if I understand OpenCL correctly.

It doesn't need that much more graphics power perse ... its just that there is little between an Intel chip and those mentioned above in mac notebooks. The same goes for the dual core requirement, the only macs that have a single core x86 CPU use Intel grfx chips and where shipped with 512meg of ram. Apple style minimum and recommended system requirements would be something like,

Minimum: 20" imac or black ibook or newer
Recommended: unibody macbook or imac

A few years back when they ran PPC it was not uncommon for the requirements to be even more cryptic for non mac users like imac snowy or newer. This might seem weird but since apple only upgrades each line roughly once every two years and the components of the mac's sold are pretty much unchanged during the run of a model its an easy way for not so tech savy users to know if they can run the software.

I may be wrong on this, but from what I understand, Unix-based operating systems like Mac OSX (and Linux too, I think) never run the original programs themselves. It makes a copy of it and runs that. It's more stable that way, but it does use more memory.

Actually OpenGl lost the battle a long time ago read here http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/open [...] 330-6.html

Also DX11 goes to Linux read here
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/wind [...] 475-2.html

dont forget the possible devorse if you had a life prior to wow