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System requirements posted for WotLK

Eliah Hecht
Updated ·2 min read

Blizzard has been putting off posting system requirements for Wrath of the Lich King for a while, but they've finally made a commitment, posted on the official forums. As one might expect, they're fairly forgiving given modern hardware, but they are significantly bumped from the BC requirements (which were not updated from classic WoW, aside from nominally requiring a broadband connection). Here are the minimum and recommended requirements for Wrath:

  • PC:

    • Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1 (Windows 2000 no longer supported)

    • Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1.5 GHz (up from 800 MHz Intel/AMD). Dual-core recommended.

    • RAM: 512 MB/1 GB for Vista, doubled from same as previous. 1 GB/2 GB recommended.

    • Video: GPU with hardware transform and lighting and 32 MB VRAM, same as before. Recommended 128 MB VRAM.

  • Mac:

    • Mac OS X 10.4.11 (10.3 no longer supported)

    • PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo. Big change here: G4s are no longer supported. This one actually affects me, since I do have some G4 machines hanging around the house. Intel 1.8 GHz recommended.

    • RAM: 1 GB, up from 512 MB. 2 GB recommended.

    • Video: Hardware transform and lighting, 64 MB VRAM. On the face of it, this rules out the integrated graphics found on MacBooks and Mac Minis, but there's been no official word on it yet. 128 MB VRAM recommended.

For those of you who don't meet these requirements (of whom there should be a lot more than there are now with the BC requirements), don't despair too much. The prevailing opinion is that these are more suggested minimums than actual enforced limits. If you don't have quite a fast enough processor or a proper video card, Wrath will probably still run, although your frame rates might not be very high. If you manage to find a computer that doesn't meet the BC requirements now and install WoW on it, it will still run, albeit probably not very well; there's no reason to think that will change in Wrath.

Anyway, here's hoping the updated requirements will let them put more prettiness in LK, although we know at this point there will not be a full graphical revamp.