World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Relaxes SSD Requirements!

Around a month ago Blizzard confirmed the official PC requirements for its latest World of Warcraft: Shadowlands expansion and while they didn’t, generally speaking, throw up too many surprises, there was an inclusion that certainly raised more than a few eyebrows. Specifically, that an SSD was listed, solely, within the games minimum storage requirements.

The clear assumption by this was that the game would no longer be suitable for operating on standard HDDs. Arguably, and I stand to be corrected, the first time we had ever seen this officially confirmed for a game. Well, if this did concern you, then there is some good news. Yes, it may have taken a few weeks, but Blizzard has updated their specifications (both minimum and recommended) to now include both SSD and HDDs. With a caveat for the latter!

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

In the latest revision of their PC requirements, while Blizzard does now confirm that standard HDDs will be acceptable, they do throw in a pretty hefty caveat when it comes to performance. Specifically, “depending on the performance of the drive, player experience may be impacted on HDD”.

So, while we at least have confirmation that a HDD will be alright, it does still raise more than a few questions for those planning to play this latest World of Warcraft expansion on those drives.

What Do We Think?

Games load a lot faster on SSDs and, by proxy, make the overall experience a lot more enjoyable. Particularly games such as World of Warcraft which have a lot of assets in wide and open terrains. So, World of Warcraft has always run better when installed on SSDs, but you could the same for 99% of all PC titles.

Through these recommendations, however, it seems pretty clear that Blizzard believes this to be far more integral when it comes to Shadowlands. As such, with the game requiring (I would say at least) 100GB of storage, you might want to get your storage house in order because while it will likely still be ‘ok’ on standard HDDs, seeing Blizzard list SSDs in ‘minimum’ is certainly, at least in our view, very indicative that it will make a significantly huge difference to your experience!

You can check out the official World of Warcraft: Shadowlands specifications website via the link here!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!