Castle Nathria Raid Testing Schedule, Shadowlands System Requirements Updated

[Lumy]

Castle Nathria Raid Testing Schedule - September 4th - September 7th

On Friday, September 4th we will be continuing our raid tests in Castle Nathria by opening the third wing of LFR, Blood from Stone, for the weekend.

Friday, September 4th

Blood from Stone - LFR Castle Nathria
14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a test environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

To facilitate testing, players who have not committed themselves to a Covenant can speak with Acquirer Ta’est inside Castle Nathria to temporarily bind themselves to one of the four factions.

Q: How do I get into the raid zone?

A: In Oribos, Dalaran, Orgrimmar, or Stormwind, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade IV in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.)

Q: What character should I use to test the raid?

A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players’ effective level to 60 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested.

Q: How long does testing last?

A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we’re satisfied that we’ve received that information for a given boss, we’ll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.

We appreciate you taking the time to test our content and look forward to reading your feedback.

Shadowlands System Requirements Updated

The text of the Systems Specifications for Shadowlands was updated a few minutes ago on our Support Site: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/256565

The minimum requirements section for Storage now reads:
Solid State Drive (SSD)
100GB available space
Or
Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
100GB available space (depending on the performance of the drive, player experience may be impacted on HDD)

Please note: the System Requirements for this game may change over time.

[Djaye]

they really need to make a new engine and code for WoW. that the current game recommends SSd with 100GB of space is insane for the actual ascetics of the game. it looks and plays 15 years old still, there are just better shadows now...

[SniperCT]

they really need to make a new engine and code for WoW. that the current game recommends SSd with 100GB of space is insane for the actual ascetics of the game. it looks and plays 15 years old still, there are just better shadows now...

The game is very harddrive dependent and always has been, the performance between SSD and HDD is a huge difference.

I've been running it on an SSD for like 8 years now. (currently it's on an external and that's still a massive performance increase over an internal HDD).

MMOs in general should be played on an SSD if at all possible, and most new computers ship with one.

[Portlandia]

they really need to make a new engine and code for WoW. that the current game recommends SSd with 100GB of space is insane for the actual ascetics of the game. it looks and plays 15 years old still, there are just better shadows now...

play classic then play bfa you will know you are wrong in 30 seconds.

[Djaye]

play classic then play bfa you will know you are wrong in 30 seconds.

lol, i do. honestly classic graphics are much cleaner and brighter than BFA. the gameplay and graphics are much smoother as well. they have oversaturated the game with updates that just bog the whole dinosaur down. BFA is not an improvement on graphics or gameplay over classic, just more shadows and spell affect bling. what have they done to actually improve performance? beside upgrade their server tech ever 10 years or so?
graphics are NOT performance btw.

[Varolyn]

GTX 1080 as the recommended GPU... my RTX 2070 that I got that over a year ago just beats that out and I thought it was gonna last a long time but it looks like I may need to get a new GPU following SL lol.

[Jastall]

they really need to make a new engine and code for WoW. that the current game recommends SSd with 100GB of space is insane for the actual ascetics of the game. it looks and plays 15 years old still, there are just better shadows now...

Considering the sheer amount of models, landmasses, cutscenes and such amassed over 15 years of game? Na, close to 100 GB isn't THAT surprising. As someone said, load up Classic and then compare it to retail, the difference is extremely noticeable.

Plus I'd say that anyone who doesn't have their OS and at least some of their games on an SSD in 2020 is doing PC gaming wrong. It's such a massive difference over an HDD that it's now the very first upgrade I recommend to anyone with a PC regardless of what they do with it.

[exsanguinate]

the recommended specifications are a joke.

[Laqweeta]

I laughed so fucking hard at the 1080 ������������������.

My 1070 runs a 4k 900+ mod Skyrim at 50 FPS lmao

[Velerios]

The game is very harddrive dependent and always has been, the performance between SSD and HDD is a huge difference.

I've been running it on an SSD for like 8 years now. (currently it's on an external and that's still a massive performance increase over an internal HDD).

MMOs in general should be played on an SSD if at all possible, and most new computers ship with one.

I've played 15 years on hard drive and for a short time on ssd (moved it to my hdd because of space issues), because beside the loading times there's absolutely no issue with it. If you want to play on 4k with 4k textures, then yes, SSD is an requirement, but with enough RAM and a little bit more waiting time HDD is not an issue, especially for wow.

So no, beside on loading times there's nothing that require it to be played on SSD. (except you run a drive with SMR, then you can even run it faster from any other device)

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Considering the sheer amount of models, landmasses, cutscenes and such amassed over 15 years of game? Na, close to 100 GB isn't THAT surprising. As someone said, load up Classic and then compare it to retail, the difference is extremely noticeable.

Plus I'd say that anyone who doesn't have their OS and at least some of their games on an SSD in 2020 is doing PC gaming wrong. It's such a massive difference over an HDD that it's now the very first upgrade I recommend to anyone with a PC regardless of what they do with it.

I do, simply because i have both, and the SSD is far smaller in usable size. SSD yes, but for WoW it's not necessary. The only difference was and is the loading screen on full HD. But beside of this, i rather wait a minute more. SSD is definitively an improvement in all ways, but not really for wow, as long as you don't care about some loading screens.

[Yizu]

I've played 15 years on hard drive and for a short time on ssd (moved it to my hdd because of space issues), because beside the loading times there's absolutely no issue with it. If you want to play on 4k with 4k textures, then yes, SSD is an requirement, but with enough RAM and a little bit more waiting time HDD is not an issue, especially for wow.

So no, beside on loading times there's nothing that require it to be played on SSD. (except you run a drive with SMR, then you can even run it faster from any other device)

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I do, simply because i have both, and the SSD is far smaller in usable size. SSD yes, but for WoW it's not necessary. The only difference was and is the loading screen on full HD. But beside of this, i rather wait a minute more. SSD is definitively an improvement in all ways, but not really for wow, as long as you don't care about some loading screens.

Just load screens? I guess you are not very sensitive to stutters and texture popins while flying.

[Velerios]

I laughed so fucking hard at the 1080 ������������������.

My 1070 runs a 4k 900+ mod Skyrim at 50 FPS lmao

These might even change to a RTX 3090 because of raytracing ^^

These specifications are a joke: recommended ingame is 7 and this is possible even on smaller specs. and 1 runs on every potato

[TheFirstOnes]

they really need to make a new engine and code for WoW. that the current game recommends SSd with 100GB of space is insane for the actual ascetics of the game. it looks and plays 15 years old still, there are just better shadows now...

Aha...AHAHA...

AHAHAHAHAHA no

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GTX 1080 as the recommended GPU... my RTX 2070 that I got that over a year ago just beats that out and I thought it was gonna last a long time but it looks like I may need to get a new GPU following SL lol.

It'll still last. Honestly, the recommended GPU is just overkill lol.

[Velerios]

Just load screens? I guess you are not very sensitive to stutters and texture popins while flying.

Stutter and texture popins are issues i only have when i fly directly after the game loaded, and are still loading things even after the game already started, after this no, i don't have any of these issues. My personal oppinion here is that many games does not preload things early enough, don't use the RAM correctly and then simly point with the finger on the hardware. And otherwise: nah, since i play long enough, i might really be not very sensitive to pop-ins; because it was always happening, especially on bad programmed open world games (looking to skyrim)

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It'll still last. Honestly, the recommended GPU is just overkill lol.

The new trend is raytracing, so that more GPUs get sold. Also new consoles are coming out, when your recommended specs are not overkill, then you are so last gen ^^

[TheFirstOnes]

Trust me...

I wouldn't recommend getting a new GPU for WoW Raytracing. It doesn't even look that good.

[Miyagie]

GTX 1080 as the recommended GPU... my RTX 2070 that I got that over a year ago just beats that out and I thought it was gonna last a long time but it looks like I may need to get a new GPU following SL lol.

You get with a bit of luck a used 1080 for under 200€ so its not that bad but also the recommended parts are most of time wrong.

[Yizu]

I hope they take advantage of RTX I/O. I guess WoW would still be bottlenecked by server hopping. I get that some of you are fine with load screens, but as a mage i cant help but get excited by the idea of seamlessly teleporting from one place to another.

[MatthewOU2015]

I have 87 gb free does that mean I cant run wow?

[Gurg]

GTX 1080 as the recommended GPU... my RTX 2070 that I got that over a year ago just beats that out and I thought it was gonna last a long time but it looks like I may need to get a new GPU following SL lol.

Well. You dont need to do an GPU upgrade just for one game. The thing is that 1080 and 2070 are similar in performance, 2070 just has "native" RTX and its slightly faster.
My guess is that GPU requirements went that much up since they added support for RTX.

With recent DirectX12.2 update and latest Nvidia drivers pseudo RTX was added to older cards, 1080 included.
Tho the thing is that while both cards support RTX now, 2070 will have clear advantage and higher fps.
If you opt out of RTX usage, 2070 should be just fine.
Also, theres really no need to play game on ULTRA settings, tons of visual bloat.
On some particle/spell heavy events my fps plumits on 2080ti. So i play it on HIGH with Draw distance on 7 and everything else on 8-9

EDIT: Just remembered. Both 2070 and 2080 ti and Super versions are discontinued about a week ago. So your upgrade window is closing.
My guess is that prices will go up for discontinued cards while stocks last since 30x0 series is starting around 1.4k when its out.

[Terminatrix]

beside on loading times there's nothing that require it to be played on SSD. (except you run a drive with SMR, then you can even run it faster from any other device)

kinda got tierd waiting 5-10 min waiting every time i start the game or zone/gate/portal/stone .if that rocks your world keep on waiting