Blizzard has announced that the global WoW Classic Pre-launch test will kick off next week on August 8 at 11:00 a.m. PDT.
The test is scheduled to end on August 9 and will be available to all World of Warcraft players with a current subscription or active game time in all regions. The maximum character level will be level 15, according to Blizzard.
Alongside this announcement, Blizzard also announced the minimum PC requirements for its vanilla World of Warcraft server option, which are much lower than the specs required to play Battle for Azeroth. Interesting to note is that Blizzard actually managed to cut down the required hard drive space compared to the original 1.12 version from 2006.
We ask that players please log-in and play as much as possible during the first two hours of the test – 11:00 a.m. PDT to 1:00 p.m. PDT, as that is when we’ll be actively monitoring for issues important to launch.
WoW Classic is now ready for all players to install from the Blizzard Battle.net Desktop App in advance of the test. To install WoW Classic:
- Open the Blizzard netDesktop App and select World of Warcraft in the game selection menu on the left.
- Under the Version dropdown menu, select World of Warcraft Classic. If you have more than one World of Warcraft account, you’ll see a second dropdown for Account. In that column, select the active account to associate with your WoW Classic install.
- Click the Install button. You’ll see an installation progress bar that will show you when the installation is complete.
Minimum Specs
We’ve finalized the minimum specifications required to play WoW Classic on PC or Mac. Please note that these are much lower than the minimum specs required to play Battle for Azeroth. Recommended specs are the same for both.
In our hardware testing, we found that we were able to successfully run WoW Classic on systems manufactured and released in the 2007-2009 timeframe, and thanks to improvements in how we build and distribute game data, the hard drive space requirements are actually smaller than they were in version 1.12 of original WoW.
PC MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
- OPERATING SYSTEM Windows® 7 64-bit (with latest Service Packs)
- PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom™ X3 8750
- VIDEO NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT 512 MB or AMD Radeon™ HD 4850 512 MB or Intel® HD Graphics 4000
- MEMORY 2 GB RAM (4 GB for integrated graphics such as Intel HD Graphics series)
- STORAGE 5 GB available space
- INTERNET Broadband internet connection
- INPUT Keyboard and mouse required. Other input devices are not supported.
- RESOLUTION 1024 x 768 minimum display resolution
MAC MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
- OPERATING SYSTEM MacOS® 10.12 (latest version)
- PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i5, 2.0 GHz or better
- VIDEO Metal capable GPU with 1 GB VRAM
- MEMORY 2 GB RAM (4GB for integrated graphics such as Intel HD Graphics series)
- INTERNET Broadband internet connection
- INPUT Keyboard and mouse required. Other input devices are not supported.
- RESOLUTION 1024 x 768 minimum display resolution
WoW Classic launches on August 26 globally. The game will be based on patch 1.12 'Drums of War' and its content will be rolled out in 6 phases.
