Not under the active apps but as a background process and it is unlikely to get noticed near the bottom of the list because the CPU consumption stays low at first. Eventually it will start draining resources and spike up as if the game is up and running, when it is not.
Sometimes the game will launch without an icon on the taskbar and the whole badge will be just blank space. Often after closing this instance of the game the problem I described in the first paragraph tends to occur. Additionally the scroll wheel over the character list might feel unresponsive until I alt-tab out of the game window a couple of times.
Wanted to update the game and bnet just now, no I can’t because wow has been running as a background process for the last hour or more. Didn’t even notice before fans started started being unbearably loud.
I experienced this problem after yesterday’s update (build 11.2.0.62680).
After the update, I started the game but noticed that it wasn’t running smoothly. At the same time, I heard that the computer fans were making more noise than usual. So I looked at Afterburner and saw that the game was consuming a lot of resources, especially CPU resources, causing it to heat up more than usual.
For this reason, I closed the game, but I kept looking at Afterburner and saw that the temperature was still high. That’s when I opened the task manager and saw that the game was still active even though I had closed it. I ended the game task, and the temperature returned to normal. I ran the game again, and this time everything was fine, both in terms of resource usage and temperature. And the game closed properly.
This keeps happening to me now too. I have to close the game and close it in the task manager too. Help would be very much appriciated.
It also seems to be using a lot more memory than before (it will be fine for a while and then just keep going up), and I’ve turned almost all the graphics settings down to the bare minimum but that doesn’t really seem to be helping either.
Do you folks have Battle.net remain open after you launch WoW or do you have it set to close after you launch WoW?
In my case, the sudden constant high CPU usage and WoW.exe process remaining active after I quit the game seem to have stopped since I set Battle.net to close after launching the game.
Could be something else I did tho, as I’ve tried a lot of things…
In case it helps anyone else, here are two threads on the american forums about this topic:
No one really has figured out what is happening it seems.
I’m just sad because I really liked the K’aresh update and I just want to play, but I’m worried about my computer overheating. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but it seems to be getting worse and it was working perfect just a week ago.
I’ll port back to Dornogal either from raid or dungeons and my CPU temp will spike to 68-70 and stay there which isnt normal. Close my game and its showing its still open in the task manager even tho its not open on my screen or task bar.
My normal temps in dornogal hover around 55 and never get hard locked to 68-70 until the bug occurs where WOW doesnt close properly
Chiming in here as well. My CPU hits 80c and fans go to Jet Engine mode, even when I’m tabbed out of the game and have the background FPS set to 30. This ONLY happens while WoW.exe is running.
Troubles launching, fans sounding like jet turbines while you are looking at a wall, and this after a shutdown. The game does not even close down properly. Don’t wait for the technicians go call for the priest.
https://i.imgur.com/9356Hdv.png
It starts out discretely so you don’t even notice it at first and after a while it jumps to 100% CPU while using more RAM it would normally do in center of crowded Dornogal.
Half of the time the game will lack an icon over the tab in the taskbar. Blank space.
Starts by game hogging CPU (25%+) for no reason, even when you’re just idling in character selection screen. Then when you close the game, wow.exe stays on still hogging the CPU till you right-click and kill the process.
All driver’s are up-to-date, except my Windows 11 is still on 23H2.
Sometimes after entering Dornogal, PC fans will go crazy and CPU will fully get utilized for no reason, even in an a low traffic subzone of the city, however every time I shut the game down following this anomaly, the process will stay open in the background.
I reinstalled Windows 11 with 24H2 this time and it’s still happening. The only difference is that CPU usage dropped from 25%ish to 8%ish. Fans still loud as hell tho.