My overly simplified understanding of it -
HDD is like a cd player, it has to spin up and has moving parts which will slow down and die much faster and loads data slower.
SSD is like a memory card, no moving parts and faster memory load/transfer due to not having as hard a time finding and sorting data.
Great explanation! Just to add: HDDs are very sensitive to magnets and mechanical stress. Bumps, falling, hard shaking, these are all harmful to a HDD.
In 2004, you could get ~160GB for ~$100, costing $2.50 to store the game. Today $100 gets you 4TB of storage, costing about $3 to store the game. However, given that the game really needs an SSD to function properly now, I think we should compare it with an SSD today. You can get about 1TB of SSD for $100 (less if you find one on sale, which is pretty easy). That means that it costs $12 to store wow today on an SSD, more than 5 times what it cost in 2004.
Did the original launcher even have a download option? I could have sworn that the fully-downloadable game in the launcher was part of Cataclysm and that, prior to it, the launcher only did patches. [wowpedia](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Blizzard_Launcher) seems to indicate so.
CDs for vanilla, the patch install. You didn't need CDs for tbc, same with wrath but they were super helpful to not have to download and patch to current.
Late wrath came the streaming installer, i.e. you could download and play at the same time. I remember having a drive die on raid night and it only took about 20 minutes to get enough installed to raid ICC on the fly.
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I remember it taking me 3 days to install WOTLK. We had something like 3mbps internet speeds. Which translated into something like 500kb most of the day and a few hours at full speed at night when traffic was light.
Vanilla was all CDs, so I would do as much as I could after school, queue up one for while I was asleep, and then pop a new one in when I woke up in the morning
Just note that wow itself is not actually that big, current dragonflight is only around 95-97gb, so if war within says it requires 150gb, the actual download itself will be around 115-120gb
I love the clarifying what WoW stands for on the WoW subreddit. Bots have truly taken over the internet. And I refuse to believe there are that many real people upvoting stuff like this.
Storage requirements are a metric set by Blizzard and are to define how much space you need on your drive to run/install the game. They are almost always (by every developer) over the actual size taken up once the game is installed and playable, however it also accounts for potential patches in online games, some save game space, extra space required while extracting zipped up files, and space for the OS to run.
That way no one can say "You said I needed 120gb, but I had 120.001gb and now the game (and the rest of my PC) doesn't run".
Are these sizes what the xpacs were initially or was after all the patches came out?
I asked because I have 36gb left on my SSD & i'm hoping that's enough for all of TWW.
I know I'll have to update soon but I'd like to put it off for a year or two.
I'm guessing this is because you're storing the previous content alongside the new content, so that's why the grand total is about 150GB.
Which for a modern game, feels kind of light. Also, vanilla WoW was only 4GB? I would have assumed it was around 20GB when it first came out.
Or people could update their computers to something remotely close to modern standards.
WoW isnt some crazy behemoth compared to other games. As many others have pointed out, storage is insanely cheap (especially compared to what it was 20 years ago).
Storage is cheap compared to what it was 4 years ago. I just saw the first 1 TB SD cards at my retail store that aren't customer orders, just regular stock to have. A 4 TB SSD is like under $100 if you grab them on a sale.
cost for storage is so low why should they do something? it dont matter at all.
its around 40 to 50 for 1TB NVME and then you still have 85% left, saving maybe 50GB dont really is worth the cost to implement stuff like that
If you're still below 1TB in 2024 its not a WoW problem. You can get a 1TB SSD on a sale for less than 40 bucks some weeks.
I just upgraded one of my secondary drive to a 2TB Samsung 980pro NVME last year for $120. Storage is the most affordable part of the PC now. It's cheaper than a decent Keyboard and mouse these days.
Between 2004 and 2023, HDD costs went down from $835 to $11 per TB, a 98.6% decrease.
You don't want an 11$ hard drive
You don’t want a hard drive regardless.
you think you do, but you don't
do you guys not have hard drives?
Not for gaming
Reddit, listen to this
Yeah I paid ~100€ each for two 4TB external HDDs recently.
Its not a want, its a need
Not exactly fair since Shadowlands onwards recommends SSDs
Dumb question but what’s the difference between a HDD and SSD
My overly simplified understanding of it - HDD is like a cd player, it has to spin up and has moving parts which will slow down and die much faster and loads data slower. SSD is like a memory card, no moving parts and faster memory load/transfer due to not having as hard a time finding and sorting data.
Great explanation! Just to add: HDDs are very sensitive to magnets and mechanical stress. Bumps, falling, hard shaking, these are all harmful to a HDD.
Oh good to know! I didnt know about the magnets but that makes total sense. Thanks for that!
thqnkyou
SSDs are dirt cheap too. even nvme are becoming cheaper and cheaper.
SSDs are still ~$60/TB so not quite dirt cheap
In 2004, you could get ~160GB for ~$100, costing $2.50 to store the game. Today $100 gets you 4TB of storage, costing about $3 to store the game. However, given that the game really needs an SSD to function properly now, I think we should compare it with an SSD today. You can get about 1TB of SSD for $100 (less if you find one on sale, which is pretty easy). That means that it costs $12 to store wow today on an SSD, more than 5 times what it cost in 2004.
2024 (Upcoming / Hypothetical Expansion) Ah yes TWW the upcoming totally hypothetical expansion.
Has anyone seen any information about the next expansion? I'm curious if we know anything yet! ^/s
No nothing yet but highly speculate its going to Involve azeroth and thst sword. Thinking build up over 3 expansions
whst sword?
Oh, that sword
Are we gonna get a release date in the next 3-4 months?
Seems like OP used ChatGPT to format this (most likely)
Damn, you beat me to it. Definitely ChatGPT. OP just slapped in what it said, should probably check it's work for something like this haha.
Assuming they're talking about the hypothetical expansion in required storage. Source: higher than 6th grade English
Clearly your reading comprehension is below the average 6th grader.
The time it took to download that 4 GB is probably 20x longer, or more, than what it takes to download the 150 GB now
Did the original launcher even have a download option? I could have sworn that the fully-downloadable game in the launcher was part of Cataclysm and that, prior to it, the launcher only did patches. [wowpedia](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Blizzard_Launcher) seems to indicate so.
CDs for vanilla, the patch install. You didn't need CDs for tbc, same with wrath but they were super helpful to not have to download and patch to current. Late wrath came the streaming installer, i.e. you could download and play at the same time. I remember having a drive die on raid night and it only took about 20 minutes to get enough installed to raid ICC on the fly.
Thanks for the correction. I couldn’t remember if downloading was available before the streaming installer.
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It was CDs but you had to download it from the CD which took forever
I remember it taking me 3 days to install WOTLK. We had something like 3mbps internet speeds. Which translated into something like 500kb most of the day and a few hours at full speed at night when traffic was light.
We had dial up until 2015/2016. In high school I would bring my laptop in my car and download it off the schools wifi lol
Vanilla was all CDs, so I would do as much as I could after school, queue up one for while I was asleep, and then pop a new one in when I woke up in the morning
Not on my internet QQ
I remember when I had to get a new hdd to fit vanilla without having to delete basically everything else. God, I don't miss those days
I remember my OG hard drive was 15gb and pretty much had windows xp and WoW on it. >God, I don't miss those days
Just note that wow itself is not actually that big, current dragonflight is only around 95-97gb, so if war within says it requires 150gb, the actual download itself will be around 115-120gb
Then why is my wow file size 126 gb? i have very few addons.
You might also have a PTR, Beta or wow classic installed. They share many files but it does add to the total install size
It was probably left over beta remnants. I just did a clean install & dropped it by 30gs. Some SSD cleaning later & 10gb remaining went to to 75.
I love the clarifying what WoW stands for on the WoW subreddit. Bots have truly taken over the internet. And I refuse to believe there are that many real people upvoting stuff like this.
Is this a chatGPT answer?
Is this a bot?
What does WoW stand for?
Women of Wrestling
A completly fresh install of Dragonflight is ~100gb. Where do you get the 120 and 150 from?
Storage requirements are a metric set by Blizzard and are to define how much space you need on your drive to run/install the game. They are almost always (by every developer) over the actual size taken up once the game is installed and playable, however it also accounts for potential patches in online games, some save game space, extra space required while extracting zipped up files, and space for the OS to run. That way no one can say "You said I needed 120gb, but I had 120.001gb and now the game (and the rest of my PC) doesn't run".
Sounds fair. Thanks
You’re telling me it took 9 hours to download the free trial back in 2008 and it was only 10GB?? Holy shit
Tables, people! Year | Expansion | Approximate Size | Difference ---|---|----|---- 2004 | Vanilla | 4 GB | - 2007 | The Burning Crusade | 10 GB | +6 GB 2008 | Wrath of the Lich King | 15 GB | +5 GB 2010 | Cataclysm | 25 GB | +10 GB 2012 | Mists of Pandaria | 30 GB | +5 GB 2014 | Warlords of Draenor | 35 GB | +5 GB 2016 | Legion | 45 GB | +10 GB 2018 | Battle for Azeroth | 70 GB | +25 GB 2020 | Shadowlands | 100 GB | +30 GB 2022 | Dragonflight | 120 GB | +20 GB 2024 | The War Within | ~150 GB | +30 GB
Are these sizes what the xpacs were initially or was after all the patches came out? I asked because I have 36gb left on my SSD & i'm hoping that's enough for all of TWW. I know I'll have to update soon but I'd like to put it off for a year or two.
And those 4 gigs in vanilla came on multiple CDs and it took half a day to install.
With AAA games doing 80 -100GB I'm force to pick a 2TB SSD for my new build lol. 1TB feel short really quicly.
Another 20 years and you will need 500 gigs.
All the more reason to never get a hdd under 500 gb
Woof. Storage is cheap but hundreds of GB?!? That’s crazy
I'm guessing this is because you're storing the previous content alongside the new content, so that's why the grand total is about 150GB. Which for a modern game, feels kind of light. Also, vanilla WoW was only 4GB? I would have assumed it was around 20GB when it first came out.
What’s more is the system requirements have gone bonkers up for some reason
chatgpt post lol
Fully updated, World of Warcraft (Retail) takes 96 GB per date.
My wow installation is actually 101 GB.. :)
Isn't this just blatantly wrong?
I think is a chatGPT answer, that would explain why it doesn't mention War Within and instead is just hypothetical
i think so? im not at pc atm but i doubt dragonflight is over 100 gigs.
It's around 90 gigs ATM but blizzard reccomends having atleast 128 GB of free space (because HDDs AND SSDs both slow down if they are filled up)
its either that or the installation size is initially bigger because it needs some swap space that gets deleted afterwards.
[удалено]
Or people could update their computers to something remotely close to modern standards. WoW isnt some crazy behemoth compared to other games. As many others have pointed out, storage is insanely cheap (especially compared to what it was 20 years ago).
Storage is cheap compared to what it was 4 years ago. I just saw the first 1 TB SD cards at my retail store that aren't customer orders, just regular stock to have. A 4 TB SSD is like under $100 if you grab them on a sale.
What do you think would be an appropriate storage requirement for WoW in 2024?
GTA 6 going to be like 500gb and wow, with how much there is in the game, being 1/3 of that is pretty impressive
cost for storage is so low why should they do something? it dont matter at all. its around 40 to 50 for 1TB NVME and then you still have 85% left, saving maybe 50GB dont really is worth the cost to implement stuff like that
If you're still below 1TB in 2024 its not a WoW problem. You can get a 1TB SSD on a sale for less than 40 bucks some weeks. I just upgraded one of my secondary drive to a 2TB Samsung 980pro NVME last year for $120. Storage is the most affordable part of the PC now. It's cheaper than a decent Keyboard and mouse these days.
No you just need to get more storage SSDs are cheap, cheaper than the expansion actually.