Why did performance get so much worse in Legion?

[Deleted]

My computer ran everything up to and including WoD just fine. This system is less than half the game's age. It's not a new computer, but it's not so old that being unable to run WoW makes any sense at all; and it ran the game perfectly up until Legion. Now it's basically unplayable, FPS drops to <15 constantly and the client frequently freezes for seconds. It's not like the graphics are so improved that this makes sense.

[Runedeath1]

Tune down graphics?

[Saphyron]

better graphic and animations requires better performing cards, either upgrade or turn down the settings.

Also try delete all addons and install again. most of them slaughter your fps.

[tyrindor]

The draw distance alone was increased by over 3x. The ground density has been almost doubled, and the shadows are now soft. Just to list a few easy to see improvements. Turn those 3 down for the most bang for your buck.

If your running the lowest possible settings and still getting that performance, they told people the min requirements are going up. You can go buy a brand new entry-level non-gaming computer today that can't play wow, without posting specs then no one here can help you. If you don't know your specs, then chances are it's not a good gaming computer.

[Alcomo]

Even a 5-6 year old computer is considered very outdated. But computer specs aside, every new WoW expansion has updated the graphics in some way. Legion is no exception. There are new settings that will affect your FPS a lot. Just go through your settings and adjust things. That is all you can do.

[Holyshnikies]

As time goes on, game get more superior in graphics and cpu processing. Sounds like you either need to update some computer parts, or buy a new tower in general.

MMO-Champion has Builds of the Month that you can choose from.

[unbound]

Even the mild updates Blizz put into WoW is going to stress out a 5 to 6 year old system. Tune down your graphic settings to see if that helps, but there is a better than fair chance that components on your system may be failing independent of Legion.

And, so you are aware, this is coming from someone highly critical of Blizz...but this is not one of their issues.

[Svisalith]

Disable ALL of your addons. I don't use many and they're all up to date but they still cause massive performance reductions because they are doing silly things and causing tens of thousands of errors; it has resulted in 80% FPS drops for me before

set the three 1-10 sliders to 5 or less as well. These have huge maximum settings now and dramatically impact CPU performance.

[kamuimac]

My computer ran everything up to and including WoD just fine. This system is less than half the game's age. It's not a new computer, but it's not so old that being unable to run WoW makes any sense at all; and it ran the game perfectly up until Legion. Now it's basically unplayable, FPS drops to <15 constantly and the client frequently freezes for seconds. It's not like the graphics are so improved that this makes sense.

its almost like if you want to play computer games on high details you have to change hardware every 4-5 years -_- like it has been for past 20 years -_-

[Mirishka]

My computer ran everything up to and including WoD just fine. This system is less than half the game's age. It's not a new computer, but it's not so old that being unable to run WoW makes any sense at all; and it ran the game perfectly up until Legion. Now it's basically unplayable, FPS drops to <15 constantly and the client frequently freezes for seconds. It's not like the graphics are so improved that this makes sense.

Blizz made it known many months ago that the system requirements would go up for Legion.

A couple of things to keep in mind: outdated addons and old junk in your WTF/Cache folders can impact performance. If you haven't cleared all that out, you should ASAP.

[Deleted]

To put it bluntly you need a new comp. Nothing else will help that much.

[Count Zero]

The relative settings changed. The old maximum setting is what is now the level 7 out of 10 setting. So check to see that your settings are comparable to what they were before.

Also, as others have mentioned - try disabling all your addons and seeing what your performance is like. My performance shot up tremendously after some addons got updated.

[Devlin1991]

Liquid quality is the one I've found that tanks fps even on good cards. Don't put it on the max setting, drop it down one and see if that helps.

[Sturmbringe]

Why don't you post your PC specs? A Sandy Bridge CPU (2011), heavily overclocked, should be able to easily fetch excellent performance on WoW retail, on par with modern CPUs.

From what I recall, half of the users on Overclock.net are still using heavily overclocked Sandy bridge CPU's and they are doing fine.

Try to disable all addons and check again.

[Frandaero]

Tune down Environmental Detail or View Distance.

[Sturmbringe]

I noticed this too, and my PC is quite old.. So now I am wondering what to do.
At the moment I am running:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
8GB of DDR2
Radeon HD9670

As you can see, very old but it still runs the game "okay" most of the time.
Since I don't have the money to buy an entire new pc, I was wondering if it was worth it to only update the graphic card; especially for Legion.
Especially now that the GTX970 seems to be in the range of ca. €200

You need to upgrade your CPU. That means, you need both a new CPU and new MOBO, and new RAM.

I assume that's the Radeon HD6970 you are talking about. Depends what resolution you play on. If you don't play at 1920X1080, you can keep your GPU.

A GTX 970 with the CPU you have got would be waste of money. Alternatively, you can try overclocking the Q9550 to 3.8 GHz+, but you need to know how to do it, you need a good CPU cooler and a good mobo, and you still won't gain much in the way of performance.

So, I recommed you upgrade first CPU+MOBO+RAM and afterwards you can upgrade your GPU if you want.

Ask in the Computer section for more details.

[Djuntas]

And this is why WoW 2 won't happen, or at least wont be as popular.

One of the reasons why WoW got so popular over the years was that it could be played on a toaster. Now they crank up the minimum shit.

I had a gtx 470, I7 860 (thats a 2nd gen) and 4, later 8 gigs ddr3 1300 mhz ram. It started to be rather crappy already in MOP.

I ended up buying the spec's I have now....with, well currently on curse, 95 installed addons I can just barely keep 60-100 FPS on all maxed but the worst things like 3d render and stuff.

[Marc2001]

And this is why WoW 2 won't happen, or at least wont be as popular.

One of the reasons why WoW got so popular over the years was that it could be played on a toaster. Now they crank up the minimum shit.

I had a gtx 470, I7 860 (thats a 2nd gen) and 4, later 8 gigs ddr3 1300 mhz ram. It started to be rather crappy already in MOP.

I ended up buying the spec's I have now....with, well currently on curse, 95 installed addons I can just barely keep 60-100 FPS on all maxed but the worst things like 3d render and stuff.

Thats was purely you're video card i have a 2nd gen I7 as well paired with a Radeon R9 270x in my 2nd PC and it runs Legion @ 45-60fps on medium.

[Bun-Bun]

The Minimum requirements for this game went up with this expansion. They let everyone know about it months ago too

Yes, and yes you can expect the game to improve its graphics and become more taxing with each expansion. However, Legion has introduced a whole slew of performance issues that I have never seen before in a Blizzard title. Micro stuttering galore in open world content. No amount of changing/lowering settings fixes the micro stuttering issues.

[Djuntas]

Thats was purely you're video card i have a 2nd gen I7 as well paired with a Radeon R9 270x in my 2nd PC and it runs Legion @ 45-60fps on medium.

Mmm probably. It was dying the card anyway. Managed to fry the card once (PC shut down), it was always at 85 temp's..Gtx 400 series was always so hoooot. Lucky that shit is history now with even the 700 series. My strix 970 never went above 68...granted no OC, and good case for air flow.