Project Lore

Blizzard Entertainment announced the official System Requirements for their second expansion to World of Warcraft. Wrath of the Lich King sports higher requirements in a few areas that will likely force some users to upgrade their computers, or go nuts and get new ones. The announcement comes by way of Bornakk and the official forums. If you are interested in the full run down, then click that link. I will simply highlight and discuss the major changes. We learned shortly after Wrath's official release date was announced that the title would only be available on DVD. According to a poll run by WoWInsider, this means that some 7.5% of WoW users will need to upgrade their CD-ROM or CD-RW drive to a DVD-ROM or DVD+-RW. Thankfully, that cost is only about $30-$50, if you have the know how to install it yourself. Of course, there are some tricks around this, such as loading the game off an ISO image by way of an external harddrive. The rest of the upgrades are likely caused by Wrath's bump in graphics capabilities, like real-time shadows. The upgrades fragment a bit for the different platforms, PC or Mac. First off, PC users must have Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1, but both service packs are free upgrades (for legal owners). This means that users of Windows 2000 will finally have to make the jump to Vista. Those who are scared of Vista should start searching for copies of XP now. Then comes the most drastic change for PC users. PC machines are required to have a faster processor than before, a 1.3GHz processor (or equivalent) instead of that old 800MHz dog. That is almost a 40% boost and will cause people on the low end to upgrade.  If you have the know-how this can be cheap, but most people will probably just opt for a new machine.  Ram and video card requirements remain the same, although Vista users need double the Ram than XP players, since that OS is a hog. Mac gamers are an entirely different story though. I will start it off with the worse news, all G4 machines will be unable to play Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard states that the minimum processor requirement for Mac machines is a Power PC G5 1.6GHz processor.  This kills G4s across the board, PowerMac and PowerBooks. As for the OS, 10.3.x is being dropped in favor of 10.4.11 or higher. Look on the bright side , at least your OS doesn't cost hundreds of dollars.  Mac players will also need double the Ram at 1GB required, another low-cost upgrade. Lastly and most costly, Mac Minis and most MacBooks have been dropped due to their on-board video cards being a bit behind. MacBooks released almost three years after World of Warcraft can not play Wrath due to Apple's poor choice in graphics processors. Models from Late 2007 were finally updated with the Intel GMA X3100 on-board graphics solution, which can do the needed Lighting and Hardware Transform.  However, as of press time Blizzard has not confirmed them as suitable for Wrath, but it meets the announcement's listed requirements. It seems that many Apple supporters got the short end of the stick on this deal. This isn't to say that all year old PC laptops will be able to play Wrath.  Many OEM manufacturers (Dell, HP, Sony, etc) cut costs on the low- and mid-range machines the same way. Rule of thumb for those PC gamers, if you have an Intel on-board solution, there is cause for concern.  Lucky for me, my third gaming machine (I have a problem) squeaks by the requirements with a Radeon 9700 Pro. How do your machines hold up?

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