WoW Shadowlands Lists 100GB SSD as Minimum Requirement

(Image credit: Blizzard)

UPDATE 9/3/20 11:00am PT: Blizzard has updated their minimum required spec to include 100GB storage space for both SSDs and hard drives. However, they warn players that performance of your hard drive might impact Shadowland’s gaming experience.

Original Article:

In a surprising turn of events, Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft Shadowlands now requires a 100GB SSD as a minimum requirement, but does this mean you can't run the game with a regular spinning hard drive? A couple of Shadowlands beta testers have reported that running the game on an HDD has not affected their gameplay or performance in any significant way. However, as this expansion is still in beta, this is subject to change.

However, it is probably a good idea to run this game on an SSD anyway (here's our list of Best SSDs). If you look at games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare that don't require an SSD but have very large storage requirements, the game is playable but you will encounter painfully long loading times. You can also possibly encounter "hitching" where the HDD is not fast enough to stream assets in real time.

Buying an SSD shouldn't be a big problem for most users – nearly all new PCs and laptops come with solid state storage. Plus, with the price of SSDs dropping exponentially over the past few years, grabbing a shiny new SSD just for Shadowlands won't break the bank for most budget gamers.

Overall, Shadowlands is looking to be the most demanding World of Warcraft expansion yet, with new Ray Tracing features already in the beta, a new graphics recommendation of GTX 1080 or RX Vega 64, and now a 100GB SSD requirement. I'm sure lots of WoW diehards will be upgrading their PCs to run this new expansion.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • Olivier_00
    is it for the complete World of Warcraft game (with all extensions) or only for the shadowland extension part ?
    Reply
  • TechyInAZ
    Olivier_00 said:
    is it for the complete World of Warcraft game (with all extensions) or only for the shadowland extension part ?

    From what I can gather, it's only for the shadowland extension. But there's little info on your specific question so I am not 100% sure.
    Reply
  • logainofhades
    Olivier_00 said:
    is it for the complete World of Warcraft game (with all extensions) or only for the shadowland extension part ?

    That would be for the whole game, with Shadowlands. The system requirements are always for the full game, so all previous expansions, plus the current. WoW is roughly 70gb ish now, iirc.


    100GB is a massive SSD? :LOL: I would hate to think what you would call my 1tb Intel 660p. Given how old the game is, and how many expansions there have been, 100gb requirement isn't exactly surprising.
    Reply
  • Olivier_00
    Yes, 30gb ish for an extension makes more sense.
    Reply
  • logainofhades
    Blizzard has reclarified the SSD requirement.

    https://www.wowhead.com/news=317755/updated-shadowlands-system-requirements-ssd-no-longer-mandatory
    The recommended reqirements are inflated, in my opinion, after playing the beta, on my laptop last night. My 9750h with a 1660ti, would be slower than a 6700k, with a GTX 1080.
    Reply
  • Conahl
    my whole WoW directory is a total of 82 gigs, but that includes 250 megs for retail, 182 megs for classic, and 200 megs for SL beta, then the 81 gig data directory :-)
    Reply
  • logainofhades
    Conahl said:
    my whole WoW directory is a total of 82 gigs, but that includes 250 megs for retail, 182 megs for classic, and 200 megs for SL beta, then the 81 gig data directory :)

    I have Beta, Classic, PTR, and Retail, on my system. Not sure how much storage, that takes up, in total.
    Reply