Is there anyone else here that struggles with slow loading assets in the game world?
Have you located what is causing it? Checking through my computer now, to try figure out what parts I need to upgrade. Graphics card is one of the things I have to upgrade, but even when changing this, the assets are still loading very slow, so there seems to be more triggering issues.
I had some issues with one of the earlier BfA patche but some patch later fixed whatever the issue was.
I doubt anyone can give you reasonable suggestions other than “get SSD if you don’t have one” without knowing exact specs of your computer.
Hey Aylish,
If WoW is loading slowly for you that can be caused by several factors, you can use our guide on long loading here.
That has steps which should help you with this. 
The bigges issue for me is the game world. It takes about 5 minutes until my UI is done loaded, and until all assets around my character gets their textures. I’m seeing an “incomplete” world and interface for a very long time after done with an already slow loading screen.
I am pretty sure it’s my computer that is in need of new parts, but swapping the graphics card(borrowed a better one to test), only fixed my ability to play with high settings. It seemingly did not fix the pace of the world loading(tho my pretty much all default UI, loaded quicker), so I’m curious what other parts could be at fault.
Just quoting myself:
“I doubt anyone can give you reasonable suggestions other than “get SSD if you don’t have one” without knowing exact specs of your computer.”
Yeah thanks, trying that. Ordered both graphics card and SSD now. Heard from a few other sources that SSD might fix it.
SSD’s are useful, for many many tasks, not just WoW. However I don’t believe them to be a fix for this issue, they just mask the problem with faster read/write speeds, rather than fixing it.
I can’t help but feel that if everyone decides to mask the problem with an SSD, rather than require Blizzard to fix it properly, then an SSD will become part of the official minimum spec to play the game. Which really should not be allowed to happen.
SSDs do actually solve mostly one kind of problem - if the amount of time it takes to move data from the harddrive to memory is too high they can reduce that to more palatable levels. They’re also quieter and more robust (due to the lack of moving parts inside) than classic harddrive stacks, but that is more of a bonus in most cases.
Depending on how much data we’re talking about the degree of the problem of course varies, but WoW is a fairly massive game - after all, it contains over a decade and a half of content, with ever-increasing complexity and visual fidelity on data assets over the years.
For that reason SSDs have for a while already been listed as officially recommended for the game, and while they are indeed not yet considered to be the “minimum” (that’d currently be a 7200RPM regular harddrive) quite a few other games have already gone that route and it would be fairly safe to say that the industry as a whole is trending towards that too (outside cloud-based gaming, which is an entirely different jar of pickles).
In a way this development does mimic the way disc drives evolved over the years… going from 5.25" discs to 3.5" discs, from there to CD-ROM and eventually DVD (Blue-ray never really made it for PC gaming, since bandwidth availability on internet connections outpaced its need) - in all cases the newer/better storage medium did eventually become the industry standard, since the amount of data that was involved in making software only kept getting bigger.
TL;DR: SSDs are a pretty good investment, and while there is no such thing as actually “future-proofing” hardware… they do have an impact in the right here and now already.
no it does not solve anything… like Trovlak is mentioning… suggesting ssd crap is only maskering the problem cuz of its faster writing and reading thats it… you guys at blizzard are to lazy to solve the problems… you guys only say the same old crap like deleting cache and reset UI but many people have done that and the problem is still there… even when they have… like me… SSD and also still have problems… so stop talking that it helps… NO ITS NOT.
Well, it did solve all my issues. Everything is loading quickly for me now, including loading screens.
I got a SSD and a new grahics card.
it masks the real problem tho… ofcourse it works better but doesnt resolve the real problem…
Hello,
a little bump here to bring at least a partial solution.
Had the same problem of very slow loading at firtst, then slow loading assets in game. Here what i done to have better results overall IF YOU USE HDD (like me).
1 - Launch the game and enter "/console worldPreloadNonCritical 0 " to resolve slow loading screen. Quit the game.
2 - Clean up the cache.
3 - Verify and Repair the game with the launcher tool.
4 - Get some space on the drive, a HDD needs average 15% free space to work at full speed.
5 - Download “Defraggler” and run it.
6 - Use the “File list” tab to first defrag all the Blizzard/WoW files. (You should already see some improvement)
7 - Use the Quick Defrag for the whole drive.
8 - Use the Defrag for the whole drive.
9 - Play smoother than before.
I had a 47% fragmented drive and get it more coherent improved overall loading time.
You don’t need to download “Defraggler”, Windows has a defrag tool built in.
However, it is really not recommended to defrag modern SSD or Hybrid SSD/Hard drives.
It is helplfull on the contrary. You can try the Windows tool and Defraggler, you will see a huge difference in analyzing drives and defrag them.
By the way i know it is not recommanded on SSD and Hybrid. That’s exactly why i mentionned in capital letters “if you use a HDD like me”… Thanks anyway …
This is slowly getting worse and worse over time. Now I have slow asset loading per character, not just when starting the game. My SSD is not making any difference, my memory is nowhere near fully utilized etc.
All I can say is that it wasn’t like it before one of the recent patches. My son’s computer started saying it didn’t support his GPU, and at the same time, mine started loading assets VERY slowly.
Blizzard have changed something, obviously. I’m not sure if it’s the process of loading the assets, the assets themselves, but something has changed… My hard drive and GPU are exactly the same as they were when BfA was released, and it used to play just fine.
I’ve done a massive clean up, defrag, etc, my hard drive is still good but for some reason WoW assets load very slowly lately. I was hoping to find out that it was a bug with the new patch. Even when I put the graphics down to 1, same issue. I used to play this on 10 (bit laggy, but assets still loaded immediately). It’s so frustrating, especially when you go into a dungeon and they’ve already started.
SSDs are not the answer. Blizzard need to consider this as a serious bug. I bet there’s lots of people that are just putting up with it, or worse, think it’s their system and go rushing out to spend fortunes on a new one just to run WoW. I’m absolutely convinced that something has changed in the loading process with the game. It’s affecting multiple players - we can’t all have failing GPUs and/or sudden hard drive failure at the same time!
i have a High end pc , literally a monster machine. I can play heavily moded games at 80+ FPS. Even wow when its loaded fully has minimum 70+ fps. So its not PC its game issues and bad optimization of game.
I have 1G internet that has download speed 200 Mb/s, and upload 60 Mb/s at average, can’t remember ever that speed drooped below that.
I’m running clean game without any addons and still loading times are insane, but when it loads (when i log in usually i can make my self coffee ) it runs like fine. This is 100% game issue and blizzard needs to fix this asap
No it doesn’t.
Srry to open this thread but only fix to slow loading times is to delete the game and re-download it or re-install it. Which means game downloads something that causes slow loading times. What? you guys should know that, but its easier to say same thing that its popular since classic " delete or rename folders and start the game"
Game keeps some files or downloads that causes slower loading textures. I have game installed on SSD, on a monster of a machine, but over time game starts to slow down. FPS is the same its just loading the world. I check my internet to see if there is any problems , nope.
This problem is caused 100% by game itself. This is where you guys need to find solutions
Actually gotten this issue myself also on a monster machine and 500/500 mbits connection started last week>,< delete and reinstall all that helps…for 1 day, cba to do that and re-do addons every single time
we all know its blizzard but they always have the same crappy answer… it is your pc and you need to clean and delete this and that blah blah but its never their fault.