With the forthcoming Cataclysm, the landscape of Azeroth will change forever. Places you know and love (or know and loath) will be transformed by the events.
Ashenvale will live up to its name, and looks like it will now be a Vale…full of ash, on the flip side the barren areas of Desolace will become the purple and green that signifies a night elf territory. Stranglethorn will be lovely – as it should be, but may well have a live volcano in the middle. These things happen.
Looking at the videos that have been released so far, one thing is clear. The new Azeroth seems a lot more detailed than even Northrend introduced with Wrath of the Lich King. This extra detail comes with a price. That is almost definitely the minimum spec will rise. Something to be wary off if you run a low end machine.
If you are a multi boxer this will of course stack up. You’ll need to keep a careful aye on the detail levels you set four your slave clients. Reduce the frames-per-second and perhaps change the settings on your keymapping software a little if they have the options.
The videos on Youtube, and on Blizzards own teaser sites show a lot more detail than we are used to. Movement and animation is everywhere. Water effects are vastly improved, flags flutter, clouds drift, and volcanoes belch smoke. Then factor in the great new detailed player models and textures and you have a lot for a low end PC to cope with.
To be fair, Warcraft has never been a particularly resource intensive game, but because of that many still play the game on mid to low end PC’s. This is where the problems may arise. It might just be a case of lowering the detail to get by. But then, the new graphics are that good – wouldn’t you rather see them in all their glory?
The Cataclysm expansion for Warcraft is still many months away. If you have a low end PC, then maybe take the time between now and the release date to see if you can upgrade your GFX card, Processor and memory. Cataclysm looks like a site worth seeing.
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