World Of Warcraft System Requirements Have Changed A Lot In Ten Years

We’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of the 2004 release of World of Warcraft, and Blizzard has just released the system requirements for November’s Warlords of Draenor expansion pack. Let’s compare!

In the table below I compare the minimum system requirements for the original release of World of Warcraft to the minimum’s posted last night by Blizzard. What’s fascinating to me is how many terms in the left column I’ve spent years trying to forget. Remember Windows ME? I didn’t, until now. Thanks.

	Original WoW (December 2004)	Warlords Of Draenor (November 2014)
Operating System	Windows 98/ME/2000/XP	Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 (latest Service Pack)
Processor	800 MHz or higher CPU	Intel Core2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X3 8750
Video Card	32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware transform and lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, ATI Radeon HD 4850 or Intel HD Graphics 3000
Hard Drive Space	4 GB or more of available hard drive space	35 GB available HD space
RAM	256 MB or more of RAM	2 GB RAM
Mac OS	MacOS X 10.3.5 or newer	OS X 10.8
Mac Processor	933 MHz or higher G4 or G5 processor	Intel Core 2 Duo
Mac Video Card	ATI or NVIDIA video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more	NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT or ATI Radeon HD 4850
Internet Connection	56k or higher modem with an Internet connection	Broadband Internet connection

Of course no one wants to face a new expansion pack at minimum specs, so here are the recommended specs for Warlords of Draenor, which would prove a real challenge to anyone trapped ten years in the past.

Recommended Specifications

PC/Mac:

4 GB RAM

Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel

PC:

Windows 7/Windows 8 64-bit (latest Service Pack)

Intel Core i5 2400 or AMD FX-4100 or better

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470, ATI Radeon HD 5870 or better

Mac:

OS X 10.9 (or latest version)

Intel Core i5 or better

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M or ATI Radeon HD 6750M or better