I was wondering if anyone had a fix for the very slow loading of assets that I have been experiencing, especially in areas of high user population (cities, chamber of heart etc.)
When I load into these areas the basic buildings and structures show up, but character models aren’t immediately shown, nor are NPCS, usable assets such as tables, vendors and pretty much everything else. It also effects parts of the UI, so when I click on my bags, the frame for the UI on that part of the screen shows up, but none of the item icons are invisible.
All of these things eventually load-in anywhere between 5 and 20 seconds after I first enter the area.
It is becoming quite distracting and also a bit of a hindrance when you are standing there waiting for assets to load so that they can be used.
I’ve seen various people make mention of this problem in the last year or two but I haven’t seen any fix for it.
I’m having the same problem, it’s really annoying.
On top of that, I’ve had texture flickering issues for some time now.
Today I bought a new Graphics Card, RTX 2060…and flickering is still there. Idk what’s wrong, but it’s ONLY happening in WoW.
All my other games work just fine.
Slow loading of assets has been present for a few patches now, it’s like it gets worse with each patch.
Has the game fully downloaded? If it has a yellow bar on the PLAY screen, please allow it to complete, otherwise it will try to load assets on the fly while you play.
I’ve tried some of these already. Like Gertha said above this has been a long standing problem for me over multiple patches.
I don’t run any background programs or stream while I’m playing. I’ve tried the scan and repair tool already and my graphics card has the latest drivers. My hard drive is regularly defragged and there are no system errors.
The steps you skipped may very well solve your issue, so while tiresome to go through, they are important, sorry. Especially if it’s been over a period of time.
If the problem is still present after checking the above, please obtain your MSINFO
The thing that fixed it for people was to reinstall the whole game and start fresh.
However, nothing guarantees that this issue won’t return; as with each new WoW patch, the slow loading of assets and texture issues has been quite common and only worsening with each new release.
Reinstalling the game each time this happens is really not the best solution as download/installation itself takes a while depending on our internet speed.
Meanwhile, I’ve done system health check, scannow commands, new Graphics Drivers, new Graphics Card.
I also run WoW on SSD.
What people also reported is that this issue could specifically be tied to the SSD users for some unknown reason.
A lot of threads about this have popped without any other solution than reinstalling the game and starting fresh, sadly.
Well I’ll be dammed… x_x
What’s important is that we’re not the only ones who have this issue. A lot of people are reporting it on US forums too, including black flickering of textures.
I really hope that they introduce a fix to this.
Ok, cos windows defrags solid states with it on, contrary to popular belief. Since it’s not your windows drive it won’t be active on the drive with your games on it. It could be that your files are getting fragmented each time you patch and the locations it’s been fragmented to are less optimal. You shouldn’t really need to defrag an SSD but maybe that’s the prob, especially if it’s old.
For The dude saying they are using mechanical drive they should try defragging.
I had no idea about this!
I have just turned off my scheduled defrag on my SSD, it appears that it had something like a weekly schedule which did it automatically. Now it’s off.
Will see if that fixes anything.
I bought another SSD just to have more space for games n stuff, and I’ve decided to copy/paste WoW to a new SSD.
After running WoW from a new SSD, the game has NO ISSUES with slow loading of assets/textures. It basically flies.
Now that brings some of my concerns up. Is defragmentation really bad for SSD? Considering that my ‘old’ SSD ran WoW textures/assets so sluggishly and it had automatic defrag on.
I won’t run defrag anymore, as right now on my new SSD WoW flies!
Thank you for all the information about this @Terazarak.
And to quote this, my SSD is not particularly old, I got my PC on August…but I imagine all the ‘defragmentation’ and whatnot made it run a bit sluggish.
There is no need to defrag a SSD, it just reduces it’s lifetime for no benefit at all.
File access on a mechanical drive slows down when the files are spread out all over the platters.
On a SSD it makes no difference since there are no moving parts and the access is instant no matter which blocks the data is stored in.
The only thing you can check is if your SSD hat the TRIM feature enabled.
Thanks for the tips. I seriously had no idea about this. The defrag was set on automatic without my knowledge either, so I imagine that’s what made WoW run sluggishly on SSD too.
Fortunately new SSD is untouched and not defragmented, and it’s gonna stay that way
I’m 90% sure everyone who plays the game from an HDD and not an SSD has this issue. It started with 8.1 or 8.1.5, before that the game was fine. I think the main change Blizzard did is to make the game focus more on procedural loading, and not on preloading everything while you’re in the loading screen.
Man, I just bought an SSD few weeks ago and installed WoW on it. The difference is outworldly…
Dump that HDD to the trash and buy an SSD, much better.
For example: Used Dalaran hearthstone and the loading screen was like 6-8 seconds on SSD. On HDD it was like at least a minute but actually more.
