World of Warcraft

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World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. World of Warcraft takes place within the Warcraft world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous Warcraft release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001. The game was released on November 23, 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.

Increase performance

Force DirectX 11 mode

Making World of Warcraft run in DirectX 11 mode will increase performance on compatible cards around 20-30%.

Options

1. Edit the target of your WoW shortcut to the Launcher.exe with the parameter:

-d3d11

2. Edit the Config.wtf located:

\World of Warcraft\WTF\

Add the line:

SET gxApi "d3d11"

SSD

If World of Warcraft is installed on an SSD, this will dramatically increase the load times for zoning.

WoW Cache filling up your SSD?

The cache folder is needed for data hotfix pushes and a place to hold less or uncompressed files.

It does waste a bit of hard drive space but it saves on CPU cycles on just decompressing. If you want to, you can just mklink the Cache folder somewhere else.

Example from datth, Blizzard Support Forum Agent.

My C:\ drive is two Intel SSDs in RAID 0, and my D:\ drive has a little container folder in D:\Games\Blizzard Stuff\

I moved my Data\Cache folder there so it looks something like D:\Games\Blizzard Stuff\World of Warcraft\Data\Cache\

open the command prompt

mklink /j "C:\Games\World of Warcraft\Data\Cache" "D:\Games\Blizzard Stuff\World of Warcraft\Data\Cache\"

C:\Games\World of Warcraft\Data\Cache now links to D:\Games\Blizzard Stuff\World of Warcraft\Data\Cache\

your SSD will now be free of roughly 10GB of cache files, load times should not be much longer than before.

Windowed fullscreen

Native: yes - this is an option under Display -> Display Mode -> Windowed (Fullscreen).

On a multi-mintor display, depending on which monitor the window is initially launched in before setting Windowed (Fullscreen) mode, it is possible to run two or more windowed fullscreen instances of World of Warcraft (or other compatible games, like Starcraft II) on the other monitor(s).

Config

Config location

\World of Warcraft\WTF\[ACCOUNTNAME]\

Config cloud sync

Dropbox: yes Live Mesh 2011: yes, but Dropbox is faster and more reliable in this instance

World of Warcraft config cloud sync guide available on Shiny Hacks.

Where to buy

World of Warcraft is available in "brick and mortar" retailers and by digital copy through Blizzard's Battle.net service. World of Warcraft is subscription based at the cost of $14.99 USD monthly (60 Day Time Cards are available for $29.99 USD).

The basic version includes vanilla and the The Burning Crusade expansion $19.99 USD Wrath of the Lich King expansion is $29.99 USD. Cataclysm Expansion is $39.99 USD.

Various online stores sell cd-key only versions of the game and expansions for discounted prices, such as Offgamers and HotCDKey. Take in mind you will be required to download the entire game rather than use a CD, if you are on a monthly download limited ISP this may not be a good option.