@@StefanIvanov188 😂 What are you 12 years old? I remember when little kids used to call everyone gay when they got mad (like 25 years ago). Grow up boi! No wonder you're an Asmon-fan like everyone else mentally challenged or too young to know better. Also I've been in a relationship with a woman (something you incels probably only dream about) for 15 years. 🤘🏻
This is like if Linus and Asmon had baby but he cares more about wow instead of computers, Ty for the videos man probs the most valuable channel to come round in long time
Few notes. This actually affects ALL blizzard games. They all use CASC. Also, I forgot to use my favorite metaphor for this. Basically clean install is like a ton of lego bins that are all organized by color. Over time, casc is likea. 4 year old that never puts the legs back in right color bins and eventually they are a complete mess. Reinstall just replaces all lego bins already organized because they are beyond saving. 🤣
Exactly what I wanted to know. Diablo 4's data file on my PC is just as huge as my WoW folder, no wonder I had to uninstall Heroes the last time a major patch dropped. My wife is in the process of replacing the data now, it was 155 GBs alone, now it'll be 100. A nice 50 GB savings. Thank you very much.
Subscribed to you because of your FPS tips that helped a lot, and literally was thinking yesterday "damn, my fps is better but I wish I could reduce loading times" open UA-cam, and this is the first thing I see, what a hero you are, thank you for all these videos, genuinely appreciate them so much, of the the best Subs I've ever given out.
Such a simple fix and it works soooo well. I’ve been playing since vanilla and didn’t do a clean install until around 2012, then again in 2015. I CE raid, use a ton of adding and WA’s. I have a top end gaming machine I built. Coming into TWW and all of the lag issues, I would literally go to bare bone addons to help with the lag (much of which caused by blizz) and bare boned graphics on a top end computer... But, my load in/ reload times were painfully slow. I did this the day you released this vid and it’s absolutely cut my load/reload by more than half. I know big addons affect this too but wow!!! Absolutely earned my sub off this vid!😊
Dude, thank you for posting these videos. You do an excellent job explaining all the steps necessary to run WoW smoother. Really appreciate you and your work!
Recently discovered your channel. This is my second watch-through of this video (saw it at work and finally made it to my PC to complete this process). Keep up the great work!
Just followed your advice tonight and my loading screens are much better. I see you've got a few FPS improvement videos so gonna check them out next. Liked and subscribed. Thanks!
Bro, your videos have been popping up for me lately and every time I worry the title will be clickbait but low and behold, useful WoW content! This is something I didn't know and a cursory look over my game it has shrunk by 30GB just cleaning this up.
I knew they stored the data there, but had no idea how CASC actually worked. Loading screens and stuttering was getting kinda annoying since my installation was like 6 years old so this tip was insanely beneficial for me. Keep these videos coming, loving it!
Always amazing gettin to see your vids, its great watching something where the person actually knows what they are talkin about and can explain why that method will work! Great channel and video man, keep it up!
One of the reasons i had to switch off ElvUI (Which im a big fan of) was due to the added loading times. And i think out of all the addons i have, it was the biggest hit to my load times. Now i run a more stock UI, i kinda hate it, but it still loads faster. I tend to reload a lot, and change characters a lot, so it was important to me. Thanks for the neat explanations, gonna redownload the data folder while im out later! Cheers! EDIT: Damn! The download speed is abysmally low! :O
it starts slow and speeds up. casc downloads (basically all blizz games) first download the indices file map and construct the file referenced before speeding up. basically first phase is computational so it’s actually stalled til that part is done. you’ll notice this on all blizz games.
@@mysticalos I Don't know if it is placebo or not, but it does seem to be quicker to load now :D Not that noticable while logging in and out, but between areas (like portal from Dornogal to Orgrimmar) it did feel like 30% faster. Cheers for the tip again!
Amazing info! I haven’t re-installed since BFA and was always scared to mess with folders because I will straight up quit if I lose my addons, weak aura settings, and binds lol
Thank you, fantastic explanation. I will try later. Mine must be all over the place... For years I have been backing up the entire game folder to another drive and copying it back whenever I'm on a clean OS install.
Man, I was so looking forward to this. I love the explanation and tbf it's a very simple fix. Did this and my loading screen ... was actually 30 secs longer. Fuck me. Edit: Although this actually happened to me, it seems to be a problem on my end - the instructions in this video are correct and working but it looks like I messed something up on the way. I didn't mean to say that this does not work.
you didn't hit play before it was done did you? it should definitely not be longer. This sounds like you may have deleted data, then hit play right away or only a short time into download. I think a few kinda skipped part in video that you have to redownload like 100GB and that might take a while.
@@mysticalos Hey, thank you for answering directly! I actually watched the whole video (because I like that you explain the background of why this "problem" exists.) And to be clear I didn't mean to criticize your content or imply that this method does not work. I deleted the folder, without the starter or the game running. Then I opened the starter and used the repair function. I then downloaded 103 GB (139 GB prior) which you said in the video will also happen. Then I closed everything, restarted my PC, fired up the launcher and started the game. Starting the game took a while and the following loading screens were insanely long. I found later that a few dungeons loaded quicker than before, and that is I think because of the extraction system the engine uses ( you also mention that a few times throughout the video). But to be clear again, I was more making fun of my system or myself, not your content. It was funny to me that I thought "All right, insta dungeon here we go!!" and then sat in a giga loading screen. I like your videos a lot.
The restart might be what caused initial loading screen. happens on macOS at least. what happens is when I reboot my mac, any precompiled shaders are dumped and then first launch of wow is slower cause it has to precomp the shaders again first run. then on it's faster. but that's just way metal drivers work. I don't know how dx handles precompiled shader caching, but just one possible theory. The reboot was an unessesary step and it coulda been that or any other number of background tasks occupying cpu or gpu on a fresh boot.
This actually makes a lot of sense, considering the game took a big hit on load times after a few updates. I also think my m.2 is also not performing well as it's always seemed a bit slow. And yes, I checked bios to make sure proper settings... think it's just a bad bin.
both are extremely negligible. using dynamic loading and not having meaningful impact on cpus or loading screens. loading screens specifically mostly affected by addon with large variables files like large weak auras collections or databases such as quest helpers or raider io.
Holy crap, I have over 4k indices! 😂 I have been getting so annoyed at the load in time, I'm like WHY!!! My hubs loads in way before I do, he reinstalled just before this expac. We have great systems too, but I haven't installed in... 4 years maybe? Trying this right now. Thank you. I bet this file system made a lot more sense in Warcraft days.
they didn’t start using casc til prob legion ish? i forget when. it was a downgrade in performance but upgrade in convenience in terms of ability to on fly patch
obsolete files it failed to clean up. casc is a weird beast. it basically keeps loading new files and mapping old ones out but often leaving them behind. it’s cleanup is still inadequate. that’s why this manual cleanup helps
You mentioned Addons affect loading times. Have you tried Simple Addon Manager? I'm looking for an addon that will for example only load Weak Auras and DBM if I enter in instance. If i"m not in an instance then load say World Quest Tracker and Rarescanner.
So this is how i am understanding this. What's happening is basically fragmentation of the game files & it gets worse with each change they make to the game files. Not just with every patch but every change itself adds to the problem & compounds it. So doing a clean install every so often is like de-fragmenting an HDD. It cleans up the file structure to where they're sequential again which fixes the long loading, texture pop in's & stuttering. I wounder if addon's are like this as well since they rely on these game files for their functions & also changes to those addon's i would think would operate in a similar way. Also is there no way for them when they make these changes to make sure new altered files replace the old ones in the same corresponding places? Or does the sequential method of the data being installed prevent this?
uncompressed files shouldn't be affected on an SSD, like addons. it's just diff for casc cause files are in compressed containers that have to be unpacked.
@@mysticalos is there a way to unpack these files so they're permanently in an unpacked state, like extracting a .zip folder? Yes i know it will take a lot more space, but that's fine. Or maybe patch the .exe with x64dbg to tell it how to load the unpacked files? Would require lots of skill tho and would prob fail the sha256 check if theres one. Then again people cheat all the time in games with anticheat so i doubt this cant be circumvented.
@@mysticalos Ok so it only effects the compressed data files? There isn't a way for them to make the system correctly replace the changed files in their original place in the data so it stays sequential? If not that seems like a major flaw for a system that sounds like it was made to combat this problem to begin with. Though this isn't effecting me much it's an issue that could effect me at some point. My main concern has been the random disconnects. The game of course gives me a error code but it's a generic one so i still don't know the cause (maybe something on their end)
The button doesn't change to "Update" but you can instead do "Verify and repair". Just did it on my PC, this changed barely nothing to loading screens :(
Haven't re-installed since Legion at the very least, possibly as far back as Cataclysm. My load time is about 40 seconds from launcher to in-game. Nothing special about my system, just an i5-11400 with 32GB of RAM. Plenty of spare memory to cache all recently used data between WoW re-launches.
This gave me ~70gb less data, nice. Great explanation! 👌 Also an investigation into nameplate addons would be nice, as they seem to nuke fps (I have an old pc though) Neatplates, Plater, Threat Plates.
for most part any nameplate mod will nuke fps if any kind of universal aura tracking is enabled. full aura scans are SUPER expensive. turning unused features and aura tracking off can help a lot, or reducing update rates.
@@mysticalos Now as a follow up I have an interesting thing for us all: I looked through the wow folders and found MANY!! old .lua and Bak files from old addons within the SavedVariables folders of all the different characters, because I always copied the Interface + WTF folders. Deleted all the ones from old addons I now longer use anyways and it came to 1210 files but they are "only" 48mb together. (just searched for them while in the *accountname* folder, so they show up from every character on every realm) I assume they weren't loaded at any point in the last 5-10+ years, but I guess it won't hurt to get rid of that junk. :D:D There were literally some from 2011 up to 2020... 👀💀 Found some funny old addon names whilst deleting stuff, it was kinda entertaining. Bet there are many veteran players who have the same """issue""" and Blizzard definitely never had this on their radar to check if it would do anything or not. 🤷♂
for most part bak and old files aren't loaded unless non bak/old file is missing then it'll clone the backup as the new primary file. I don't go through effort to spring clean this really cause it'd be annoying. 🤣
For anyone who wants to try this, i have to download 102 GB so it takes a lot of time depending on your internet. Don't do this if you wanna play WoW right after. My download speed is around 50-60 MB/s and it takes a while.
Hey I tried this cuz I have been having trouble with stutter and crazy loading screens. Does this effect when you load into ”new” content again? Cuz I tried a dungeon after and I could barely play it because it wouldnt stop lagging and stuttering. Maybe just my crappy computer or should I just reinstall…?
i mean if you tried the data delete and redownload, you effectively already have reinstalled. i hope you let it FINISH downloading before hitting play?
Okay Soooo is there a CASC defrag out there? Would be neat if it is doable (pre-NTFS nostalgia)! The other thing I really want to mention regarding load times is addons which load up a lot of info as soon as you log in. Common ones are Altholic, Bagnon and pretty much all account-wide data addons. The reason being is that they will spam the server with all sorts of retrieval requests as soon as you spawn which is BEFORE the loading screen finishing. It seems like this will freeze the loading progress until most of the requests pass through and then allow UI to load. There was an addon (Speedy Load) back in the day that held those requests until the UI was loaded and allowed all those housekeeping requests to be loaded then. I wish someone would update it's code and allow it to at least throttle the most offending addons. Getting a DC and waiting for a load in the middile of the action is bad REALLY BAD.
i don’t do it that often. really i just kinda do it every prepatch and maybe after a major patch if it changed a lot of files. i sort of have a feel for it though. for me its if i notice the loading screens getting longer or the seamless ones being less seamless such as transition from dragon isles to caverns hitting a wall because it didn’t load other zone fast enough
Addons play a big part. Cell is massive offender and will double your load screen times. Same with ElvUI. Weakauras CAN cause issues depending on how many you are running. Other addons have very little to no impact like Details and Shadowed Unit Frames.
for sure. i even say in video that loading screen is sum of weakest link. so if you have a ton of addons impacting loading then optimizing files is least of worries.
How does an addon like Warmup reflect this? I find that when I check warmup times it is significantly less than my real load times. Will try this overnight tonight and see if it helps, I’m always 10s slower than team mates with a faster pc and ssd. All my tmog addons and tsm and stuff slow me down a lot I think and if that’s the bottle neck I’m fine with it, but if it’s data files then I’ll gladly fix it lol
Does Files in WTF/Saved variables or old addon settings impact performance? I have saved variables from addons that I have long since stopped using (2016) should i do some spring cleaning here or not risk breaking anything?
i don’t think old dave’s variables even get loaded if respective mod isn’t present. same if mod disabled. turning weak auras off doesn’t load huge wa variables. so i think its mostly harmless.
i havent reinstalled my game since 2004. Every expansion it basicly does a clean install so xpac release is the date of my oldest file in the data folder. Doing this regardless as the indi. folder is a mess and i have issues when pressin my heartstone with a 5 second freeze every time. if this doesnt fix it i may have to cull addons one by one and see which causes the problem and replace or elimiate it. Edit : its done now and my wow data folder is 44 GB smaller... issues remain tho so addon culling commencing.
Many years ago I had an install going back to August 2005 and over the years WoW had installed in several locations including the Windows “game” folder. Eventually I uninstalled the game and then reinstalled it and it was all in one place. At the time it was on hard disks, in later years I built a new machine entirely of SSDs which made things faster. I think a few years ago Blizz said not to use hard disks beyond a certain patch.
casc sloes over time even on ssd btw want to know why they started requiring ssd! because they knew how slow casc is. it literally couldn’t perform on hdd at all it is way slower than old mpq format.
@@mysticalos game developers are in a bind, they want to make it faster but don’t want to break it for most of their customers on cheap hardware. Interesting thing that Steam does is a sort of a poll on user hardware, CPU, RAM and graphics cards and actually see what people use. Blizz probably do this behind the scenes.
Pretty true, patch files can't go to old containers they go to end... over time patching can create issues wheree you need to fresh install. This expansion has good example how many updates, class reworks and so on has be done. Patching over patching over patching...
So, basically, I delete the Data folder (mine is 140 gb btw :P) and it re-downloads and re-installs it all again. Sounds quite logical indeed, worth a try.
probably. i’d say at very least a good time is beginning of new expansion start fresh. but if you notice slow down even mid expect do it again. no harm in doing more often but there is a dr to doing too often. you won’t see big gains if its not even a mess yet.
@@mysticalos My Macbook Pro is 7 years old hehe. Thanks for the tips! I reinstalled TWW and gained 39gb of space on the PC. Also used your FPS tips and finally am getting 100-200 fps. Been at 20-50 for a while with a 4070TI on my Alienware PC.
Doesn't this mostly have to do with the File System though? Like, NTFS for example of Windows, even on flash based drives (SSD and NVME, like my WD SN850X 4TB which i have the game installed on) files will still get fragmented, and while the seek time to find them will be virtually the same for any of them, unlike HDDs, fragmentation still occurs, which, still affects both type of drives but flash-based ones to a lesser degree because of that BUT.... I have personally defragmented flash-based drives on purpose(and then hard TRIM them), since i don't care about their specific total write times being reduced (jsut for testing), and when they now read a file sequentially, what you get back as a result from these drives, is reading a file at sequential speeds which are way higher than random 4k read speeds which is what happens when parts of files are fragmented. So, regardless of WoW's container's file issues specifically, doesn't their system keep meta data files to know where things are to reduce this issue to a major degree to the point that it become basically nearly irrelevant? I bet the OS's file system has more issues because of fragmentation in that regard compared to the CASC (different type of fragmentation of course, especially when its layered on top of the OS's file system) even though NTFS also uses meta data for the same purpose. Because even if you delete the Data folder, regardless if you get back any speed increase from that, won't you still be at the same scenario when you back to the game and then you enter an area which you previously had in your Data folder but now if you delete it, you don't, so it has to be redownloaded, and this recreating the issue from the begging especially since each update basically causes the same thing within the container itself? Like, you would think Blizzard is not that dumb to have not improved their container over 10 years after it's introduction, especially to account for this issue even partially? Cause i am pretty sure that even if they didn't, NTFS's fragmentation issue, for Windows at least (even the latest version of this which is quite better at not fragmenting files as much), is gonna cause more penalty in loading times and assets downloaded in real time compared to when you know have to redownload assets than CASC's file ordering method, right?
as i explain with casc. having to search through and unpack more files at once for same resources had an impact. in fact even if you ran a genuine defrag tool it wouldn’t help because that tool would defrag the archives not the files packed there in. that have become unsorted and scattered but also yes if you enter game before a full redownload it won’t install data efficiently at all. i specifically say don’t hit play til it’s done. otherwise it’ll download data that’s needed asap over sequential data writing. but then oviously over time it gets worse again from game patches. but existing patches are also sorted in a clean install. which is why this works. it doesn’t use static meta data from server but instead is always dynamic. in fact rarely are two installs alike unless they both reinstalled same day
@@mysticalos Apparently, i gave this a try (i did not enter the game before it finishes 100% i waited until it was 100% and done) and the load time was so fast, i didn't even get to look at the loading screen xD Like wtf!!! Cause this happed consistently, man, i did not expect the impact to be so insane, it used to take from 2-15 secs depending on what it had to load but like, this is insane at this point.
video is time stamped. mouse over timeline. i even clearly label it like “over explaining stuff” and “this is info you came for” lol. i’m starting to realize people don’t see the youtube timestamp feature. it is kinda subtle
Blizz should just make a defrag tool that aggregates all of the data into fresh files, updates index files and deletes the old data. Spare itself people re-downloading 100+GB of game files just to refresh their data folder. Shouldn't take more than a few hours to do for people who already know how the file and data structures work. I haven't re-installed WoW in ~10 years but it has been moved between HDDs and now to SSD a few times along the way. My load-screens are still plenty fast since all recently used data stays in memory with 32GB of RAM.
Down from 7500 indices files to 1200 with the same amount of different wow installations. But same loading times. Guess because its a hyper fast nvme anyway
mostly preference. windows will still usually be best platform for just gaming. but inside my mac for development too and it’s a beast at both while being ridiculously efficient. apple silicon is pretty good. but it won’t compete either a 4090 pc that has access to better game libraries so i still would never tell a user who’s primary focus is gaming to get a mac.
Yeah windows has access to directx 12 which has flip model presentation. Linux has vulkan which only has fifo or mailbox mode, no flip model. And then mac has metal which also lacks a lot of things, even basic graphic options like raytracing shadows are unsupported. Basically using anything other than windows for games is heavily handicapping urself. Just cuz u can use Wine and Proton doesnt mean u should. Gaming on linus/mac is still 15 years behind windows technology-wise. Edit: seems like they added immediate mode to dxvk which is still not as good as flip "For example for d3d11 games: DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.syncInterval = 0" is equivalent to MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=immediate DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.syncInterval = 1" is equivalent to MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=fifo DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.syncInterval = 0; dxvk.tearFree = True" is equivalent to MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=mailbox and those don't suffer from the problem of being overwritten with VK_EXT_swapchain_maintenance1 dynamic present mode switching. "
incorrect about metal, it basically has parity now. in fact only issue on any platform really is just market share. windows has most so it gets most games. Metal is capable and so are many macs, but companies don't care if tie have to hire devs, QA, marketing, and support staff for a platform that might sell only a few dozen copies for them.
yeah. i remember. while that’s relic of past for ssd. this kinda same thing but needed purely because casc leaves old files behind and makes a mess of things. i think of it like a bunch of lego bins. at start reds in one and blues in another etc and casc is like a 4 year old mixing all the bins up over time. 🤣
Make sure you install the game on an internal drive. This may seem like common sense but if you have WoW on an external drive you are killing your loading times.
Yes and no. In some cases the external drive is faster. such as older PCs with plater based drives and external SSD. also some enclosures are super fast such as thunderbolt nvme enclosures. but yes conventional drive wisdom important cause the wrong drive definitely impedes things
I just tried and renamed my Data folder. And the launcher is downloading it again, that much looks promising. But wow, it downloads 107GB and at the only (cough) 7MB/s download I am seeing now this takes over 4 hours. And then the data has to come from some server, obviously, imagine if a larger number of players starts re-downloading the Data folder. I would prefer a method that is less disruptive to the general infrastructure and if it would optimize local data it should be much faster as well.
@@dyyylllaannn Doing it overnight does not change that this is a huge load on the servers. Not your load, no, all of it combined from all those following this advice.
@@dyyylllaannn Because we all need to care more for our planet and this is something that returns very little for a lot of otherwise wasted bandwidth and eletricity. Think bigger, imagine 10k of players are doing this, or 100k. And for what? 100ms of loading time less, 1s? 2s? Yeah, I am also old enough to hate it when someone sends me a 2MB+ .jpg that could have been
the download stats of casc patches are misleading. they recently made a change that makes it start slow but finish fast. i think the slow part is it creating indices for all data ahead of time. so its computational lag at start. it’ll speed up
The Asmon we actually need.
💀💀💀 fr
no one force you to watch the og, so speak for yourself
@@StefanIvanov188An Asmonboi spotted
@@ShadowsOfThePast gay couple spotted
@@StefanIvanov188 😂 What are you 12 years old? I remember when little kids used to call everyone gay when they got mad (like 25 years ago). Grow up boi! No wonder you're an Asmon-fan like everyone else mentally challenged or too young to know better. Also I've been in a relationship with a woman (something you incels probably only dream about) for 15 years. 🤘🏻
Loadingscreen went from 28.9 seconds to 10,2 seconds - thanks for the tip
When was last time u installed wow before this one?
This is like if Linus and Asmon had baby but he cares more about wow instead of computers, Ty for the videos man probs the most valuable channel to come round in long time
Few notes. This actually affects ALL blizzard games. They all use CASC. Also, I forgot to use my favorite metaphor for this. Basically clean install is like a ton of lego bins that are all organized by color. Over time, casc is likea. 4 year old that never puts the legs back in right color bins and eventually they are a complete mess. Reinstall just replaces all lego bins already organized because they are beyond saving. 🤣
Exactly what I wanted to know. Diablo 4's data file on my PC is just as huge as my WoW folder, no wonder I had to uninstall Heroes the last time a major patch dropped. My wife is in the process of replacing the data now, it was 155 GBs alone, now it'll be 100. A nice 50 GB savings. Thank you very much.
lets go another video from the legend himself
Tried it on my 2+ year old install and the Data folder went from 146 GB to 99 GB. Great tip, thank you!
Thanks for explaining it in a simplified way for a computer laymen like me
Subscribed to you because of your FPS tips that helped a lot, and literally was thinking yesterday "damn, my fps is better but I wish I could reduce loading times" open UA-cam, and this is the first thing I see, what a hero you are, thank you for all these videos, genuinely appreciate them so much, of the the best Subs I've ever given out.
Holy sh*t !! I had no idea about this. This is OMEGA helpful! I wish the WoW community would be full with people as helpful as you. 👍🏻
Such a simple fix and it works soooo well. I’ve been playing since vanilla and didn’t do a clean install until around 2012, then again in 2015. I CE raid, use a ton of adding and WA’s. I have a top end gaming machine I built. Coming into TWW and all of the lag issues, I would literally go to bare bone addons to help with the lag (much of which caused by blizz) and bare boned graphics on a top end computer... But, my load in/ reload times were painfully slow. I did this the day you released this vid and it’s absolutely cut my load/reload by more than half. I know big addons affect this too but wow!!! Absolutely earned my sub off this vid!😊
Dude, thank you for posting these videos. You do an excellent job explaining all the steps necessary to run WoW smoother. Really appreciate you and your work!
Recently discovered your channel. This is my second watch-through of this video (saw it at work and finally made it to my PC to complete this process). Keep up the great work!
I'm not a tech savvy person so I really appreciate content like this. Keep up the great work!
Just followed your advice tonight and my loading screens are much better. I see you've got a few FPS improvement videos so gonna check them out next. Liked and subscribed. Thanks!
Bro, your videos have been popping up for me lately and every time I worry the title will be clickbait but low and behold, useful WoW content! This is something I didn't know and a cursory look over my game it has shrunk by 30GB just cleaning this up.
dude this technical videos are amazing keep it up
Im new here, but i checked few of your vids, and already get like 30 more fps in game, thanks for that Goblin Prince
You explain it so well. Keep it up, love these videos! You will blow up for sure
I knew they stored the data there, but had no idea how CASC actually worked. Loading screens and stuttering was getting kinda annoying since my installation was like 6 years old so this tip was insanely beneficial for me. Keep these videos coming, loving it!
Always amazing gettin to see your vids, its great watching something where the person actually knows what they are talkin about and can explain why that method will work!
Great channel and video man, keep it up!
Great videos man, helped my fps. Especially the render video.
This method freed up 40gb space on my drive, thanks.
One of the reasons i had to switch off ElvUI (Which im a big fan of) was due to the added loading times. And i think out of all the addons i have, it was the biggest hit to my load times. Now i run a more stock UI, i kinda hate it, but it still loads faster. I tend to reload a lot, and change characters a lot, so it was important to me.
Thanks for the neat explanations, gonna redownload the data folder while im out later! Cheers!
EDIT: Damn! The download speed is abysmally low! :O
it starts slow and speeds up. casc downloads (basically all blizz games) first download the indices file map and construct the file referenced before speeding up. basically first phase is computational so it’s actually stalled til that part is done. you’ll notice this on all blizz games.
@@mysticalos I Don't know if it is placebo or not, but it does seem to be quicker to load now :D Not that noticable while logging in and out, but between areas (like portal from Dornogal to Orgrimmar) it did feel like 30% faster. Cheers for the tip again!
Amazing info! I haven’t re-installed since BFA and was always scared to mess with folders because I will straight up quit if I lose my addons, weak aura settings, and binds lol
Thank you, fantastic explanation.
I will try later.
Mine must be all over the place... For years I have been backing up the entire game folder to another drive and copying it back whenever I'm on a clean OS install.
My man, you are becoming the Tony Stark of WoW. Keep it going!
Man, your videos are amazing and you look like a genuinely nice dude. Thank you so much for the uploads!
dont forget that this guy is the creator of Deadly boss Mods addon
I'll definitely have to try this. Haven't done a clean install of the retail game in maybe 10 or more years.
Love these vids. Always looking to optimize so when i get to learn something new like this it makes my day. Ty!
Very useful and loving these WoW tech videos! Going to re-download my Data folder overnight tonight. Thanks.
i gotta set aside an hour for this fix
hopefully works
thanks bro
Amazing video sped up my load screens by heaps! Thank you
This video actually saved me, holy thank you.
Great advice! Last time I had long loading times I completely uninstalled WoW. Good to know I can simply delete one folder.
Man, I was so looking forward to this. I love the explanation and tbf it's a very simple fix. Did this and my loading screen ... was actually 30 secs longer. Fuck me.
Edit: Although this actually happened to me, it seems to be a problem on my end - the instructions in this video are correct and working but it looks like I messed something up on the way. I didn't mean to say that this does not work.
you didn't hit play before it was done did you? it should definitely not be longer. This sounds like you may have deleted data, then hit play right away or only a short time into download. I think a few kinda skipped part in video that you have to redownload like 100GB and that might take a while.
@@mysticalos Hey, thank you for answering directly! I actually watched the whole video (because I like that you explain the background of why this "problem" exists.)
And to be clear I didn't mean to criticize your content or imply that this method does not work. I deleted the folder, without the starter or the game running. Then I opened the starter and used the repair function. I then downloaded 103 GB (139 GB prior) which you said in the video will also happen. Then I closed everything, restarted my PC, fired up the launcher and started the game. Starting the game took a while and the following loading screens were insanely long. I found later that a few dungeons loaded quicker than before, and that is I think because of the extraction system the engine uses ( you also mention that a few times throughout the video).
But to be clear again, I was more making fun of my system or myself, not your content. It was funny to me that I thought "All right, insta dungeon here we go!!" and then sat in a giga loading screen. I like your videos a lot.
The restart might be what caused initial loading screen. happens on macOS at least. what happens is when I reboot my mac, any precompiled shaders are dumped and then first launch of wow is slower cause it has to precomp the shaders again first run. then on it's faster. but that's just way metal drivers work. I don't know how dx handles precompiled shader caching, but just one possible theory. The reboot was an unessesary step and it coulda been that or any other number of background tasks occupying cpu or gpu on a fresh boot.
This actually makes a lot of sense, considering the game took a big hit on load times after a few updates. I also think my m.2 is also not performing well as it's always seemed a bit slow. And yes, I checked bios to make sure proper settings... think it's just a bad bin.
Nice! Gonna try this now and report after!
Love the vids man, keep em coming
thank you asmondev
Incredible tip! I cant wait to try this
I love these series, please keep them coming
I was wondering if i should use DBM or Bigwigs/Littlewigs. Is DBM faster?
both are extremely negligible. using dynamic loading and not having meaningful impact on cpus or loading screens. loading screens specifically mostly affected by addon with large variables files like large weak auras collections or databases such as quest helpers or raider io.
Thank you for this advice! 🖖
My install is years old so this is going to be really helpful, thanks!
Thank you, right my problem atm. Will try it this weekend!
getting a decent nvme 2.0 or 4.0 is a life changer
What’s that
@@Raziaeilssd fam
@@Raziaeil fastest SSD's u can get for ur pc
@@Raziaeilit's flash storage, basically a specific type of ssd that reads/writes data exponentially faster than a standard hard drive disk
He refers to a certain type of SSD's that make use of PCI express instead of the old SATA bus, making them (usually) a lot faster
Thanks! This helped me a lot, has some lags for example when i was walking in dornogal. Now there is like none!
Holy crap, I have over 4k indices! 😂 I have been getting so annoyed at the load in time, I'm like WHY!!! My hubs loads in way before I do, he reinstalled just before this expac. We have great systems too, but I haven't installed in... 4 years maybe? Trying this right now. Thank you. I bet this file system made a lot more sense in Warcraft days.
they didn’t start using casc til prob legion ish? i forget when. it was a downgrade in performance but upgrade in convenience in terms of ability to on fly patch
I didn't re-install since Legion, when I did last week my WoW folder (only retail) went from 260 GB to 100 GB. What was there? :D
obsolete files it failed to clean up. casc is a weird beast. it basically keeps loading new files and mapping old ones out but often leaving them behind. it’s cleanup is still inadequate. that’s why this manual cleanup helps
You mentioned Addons affect loading times. Have you tried Simple Addon Manager? I'm looking for an addon that will for example only load Weak Auras and DBM if I enter in instance. If i"m not in an instance then load say World Quest Tracker and Rarescanner.
So this is how i am understanding this.
What's happening is basically fragmentation of the game files & it gets worse with each change they make to the game files. Not just with every patch but every change itself adds to the problem & compounds it. So doing a clean install every so often is like de-fragmenting an HDD. It cleans up the file structure to where they're sequential again which fixes the long loading, texture pop in's & stuttering.
I wounder if addon's are like this as well since they rely on these game files for their functions & also changes to those addon's i would think would operate in a similar way. Also is there no way for them when they make these changes to make sure new altered files replace the old ones in the same corresponding places? Or does the sequential method of the data being installed prevent this?
uncompressed files shouldn't be affected on an SSD, like addons. it's just diff for casc cause files are in compressed containers that have to be unpacked.
@@mysticalos is there a way to unpack these files so they're permanently in an unpacked state, like extracting a .zip folder? Yes i know it will take a lot more space, but that's fine. Or maybe patch the .exe with x64dbg to tell it how to load the unpacked files? Would require lots of skill tho and would prob fail the sha256 check if theres one. Then again people cheat all the time in games with anticheat so i doubt this cant be circumvented.
sadly no.
@@mysticalos Ok so it only effects the compressed data files? There isn't a way for them to make the system correctly replace the changed files in their original place in the data so it stays sequential? If not that seems like a major flaw for a system that sounds like it was made to combat this problem to begin with.
Though this isn't effecting me much it's an issue that could effect me at some point. My main concern has been the random disconnects. The game of course gives me a error code but it's a generic one so i still don't know the cause (maybe something on their end)
The button doesn't change to "Update" but you can instead do "Verify and repair".
Just did it on my PC, this changed barely nothing to loading screens :(
theres multiple variables to that, its a "workaround" that will mostly work for people who has the same game folder installation for years
if addons are leading cause of your loading screens, then you'll see little change. since asset loading wasn't your slowdown.
@@mysticalos Thx for your answer. My proc and RAM will be replaced next week, that''ll help too 😁
do i need to back up all my profile setting such a elvui /detail or plater?
as long as you leave wtf and the like alone. no. not doing a full uninstall just basically tossing data files then letting it repair itself.
Asmondev with more godly knowledge for us mere mortals
Last installed 2022 so figured I'd give it a try. went from 1:17 from Play to movement in Dornogal down to 0:55, pretty good!
Haven't re-installed since Legion at the very least, possibly as far back as Cataclysm. My load time is about 40 seconds from launcher to in-game. Nothing special about my system, just an i5-11400 with 32GB of RAM. Plenty of spare memory to cache all recently used data between WoW re-launches.
SMART and clever I hate replacing my wtf files and im sure this will help along with cutting some of my million addons at 600mb ;p
Thank you so much!!! Was wondering why performance seemed to have gone down.
This gave me ~70gb less data, nice. Great explanation! 👌
Also an investigation into nameplate addons would be nice, as they seem to nuke fps (I have an old pc though) Neatplates, Plater, Threat Plates.
for most part any nameplate mod will nuke fps if any kind of universal aura tracking is enabled. full aura scans are SUPER expensive. turning unused features and aura tracking off can help a lot, or reducing update rates.
@@mysticalos Now as a follow up I have an interesting thing for us all:
I looked through the wow folders and found MANY!! old .lua and Bak files from old addons within the SavedVariables folders of all the different characters, because I always copied the Interface + WTF folders.
Deleted all the ones from old addons I now longer use anyways and it came to 1210 files but they are "only" 48mb together. (just searched for them while in the *accountname* folder, so they show up from every character on every realm) I assume they weren't loaded at any point in the last 5-10+ years, but I guess it won't hurt to get rid of that junk. :D:D
There were literally some from 2011 up to 2020... 👀💀
Found some funny old addon names whilst deleting stuff, it was kinda entertaining.
Bet there are many veteran players who have the same """issue""" and Blizzard definitely never had this on their radar to check if it would do anything or not. 🤷♂
for most part bak and old files aren't loaded unless non bak/old file is missing then it'll clone the backup as the new primary file. I don't go through effort to spring clean this really cause it'd be annoying. 🤣
For anyone who wants to try this, i have to download 102 GB so it takes a lot of time depending on your internet. Don't do this if you wanna play WoW right after. My download speed is around 50-60 MB/s and it takes a while.
Where I live, my best download speed is 1.3MB / sec, so I would take your 50-60 MB/s in a blink of an eye.
Would you recommend doing this same action (deleting and redownloading the data file) for Call of Duty? Or would that not be as beneficial?
don't know about that one. it helps overwatch diablo and any other blizz game though
Hey I tried this cuz I have been having trouble with stutter and crazy loading screens. Does this effect when you load into ”new” content again? Cuz I tried a dungeon after and I could barely play it because it wouldnt stop lagging and stuttering. Maybe just my crappy computer or should I just reinstall…?
i mean if you tried the data delete and redownload, you effectively already have reinstalled. i hope you let it FINISH downloading before hitting play?
Realized now that it might have been that I played while all the data was downloading…
@@mysticalosThank you for this. Im an idiot. Great content!
Okay Soooo is there a CASC defrag out there? Would be neat if it is doable (pre-NTFS nostalgia)!
The other thing I really want to mention regarding load times is addons which load up a lot of info as soon as you log in. Common ones are Altholic, Bagnon and pretty much all account-wide data addons. The reason being is that they will spam the server with all sorts of retrieval requests as soon as you spawn which is BEFORE the loading screen finishing. It seems like this will freeze the loading progress until most of the requests pass through and then allow UI to load.
There was an addon (Speedy Load) back in the day that held those requests until the UI was loaded and allowed all those housekeeping requests to be loaded then. I wish someone would update it's code and allow it to at least throttle the most offending addons. Getting a DC and waiting for a load in the middile of the action is bad REALLY BAD.
oh yeah, i even say if you have a lot of slow loading addons then optimizing data might not even be noticed, since speed will be sum of weakest link
Great video, thanks for the tip. How often should something like this be done? Every couple of months?
i don’t do it that often. really i just kinda do it every prepatch and maybe after a major patch if it changed a lot of files. i sort of have a feel for it though. for me its if i notice the loading screens getting longer or the seamless ones being less seamless such as transition from dragon isles to caverns hitting a wall because it didn’t load other zone fast enough
11.0.5 seems like a good time to do it with all the anniversary and shit
Addons play a big part. Cell is massive offender and will double your load screen times. Same with ElvUI. Weakauras CAN cause issues depending on how many you are running. Other addons have very little to no impact like Details and Shadowed Unit Frames.
for sure. i even say in video that loading screen is sum of weakest link. so if you have a ton of addons impacting loading then optimizing files is least of worries.
Cell is amazeballs though. One of the few things that are worth it
How does an addon like Warmup reflect this? I find that when I check warmup times it is significantly less than my real load times. Will try this overnight tonight and see if it helps, I’m always 10s slower than team mates with a faster pc and ssd. All my tmog addons and tsm and stuff slow me down a lot I think and if that’s the bottle neck I’m fine with it, but if it’s data files then I’ll gladly fix it lol
Mystical, you’re the best 🎉
Does Files in WTF/Saved variables or old addon settings impact performance? I have saved variables from addons that I have long since stopped using (2016) should i do some spring cleaning here or not risk breaking anything?
i don’t think old dave’s variables even get loaded if respective mod isn’t present. same if mod disabled. turning weak auras off doesn’t load huge wa variables. so i think its mostly harmless.
If i delete data folder do i have to redo all add ons gain from the start ?
nope. i carefully go over a method that basically soft reinstalls game without losing settings or addons or logs or screenshots.
thanks for video like this, its help !
Interesting. I may not have reinstalled since wod. Will check.
But I have noticed the game loading slower over the last year despite having a fast ssd
i havent reinstalled my game since 2004. Every expansion it basicly does a clean install so xpac release is the date of my oldest file in the data folder.
Doing this regardless as the indi. folder is a mess and i have issues when pressin my heartstone with a 5 second freeze every time. if this doesnt fix it i may have to cull addons one by one and see which causes the problem and replace or elimiate it.
Edit : its done now and my wow data folder is 44 GB smaller... issues remain tho so addon culling commencing.
The hero Azeroth truly needed
Many years ago I had an install going back to August 2005 and over the years WoW had installed in several locations including the Windows “game” folder. Eventually I uninstalled the game and then reinstalled it and it was all in one place. At the time it was on hard disks, in later years I built a new machine entirely of SSDs which made things faster. I think a few years ago Blizz said not to use hard disks beyond a certain patch.
casc sloes over time even on ssd
btw want to know why they started requiring ssd! because they knew how slow casc is. it literally couldn’t perform on hdd at all it is way slower than old mpq format.
@@mysticalos game developers are in a bind, they want to make it faster but don’t want to break it for most of their customers on cheap hardware. Interesting thing that Steam does is a sort of a poll on user hardware, CPU, RAM and graphics cards and actually see what people use. Blizz probably do this behind the scenes.
BTW I install on larger E drive rather than install on C drive. It remembers the drive in later updates.
thank you sir!!
Pretty true, patch files can't go to old containers they go to end... over time patching can create issues wheree you need to fresh install. This expansion has good example how many updates, class reworks and so on has be done. Patching over patching over patching...
Honestly, knowing the reason it works is even better than knowing it works...
So, basically, I delete the Data folder (mine is 140 gb btw :P) and it re-downloads and re-installs it all again. Sounds quite logical indeed, worth a try.
how often we need to do this ? i have my wow folder since SL
is once per year enough ?
yeah, i'd say time your load screen after doing this and if you notice it creeping up then do it again
probably. i’d say at very least a good time is beginning of new expansion start fresh. but if you notice slow down even mid expect do it again. no harm in doing more often but there is a dr to doing too often. you won’t see big gains if its not even a mess yet.
Great video. Thank you.
bro what UI is that for windows looks sick!
That’s called Mac OS 😂
@@RyanZNO hell yea! ima get me that extension!
This must be why my old Macbook opens wow much faster then my fancy Alienware PC. Macs keep everything sequential as far as I know.
macs have higher end SSD tech generlaly cause it's non upgradable soldiered memory. it still benefits from a clean install from time to time
@@mysticalos My Macbook Pro is 7 years old hehe. Thanks for the tips! I reinstalled TWW and gained 39gb of space on the PC. Also used your FPS tips and finally am getting 100-200 fps. Been at 20-50 for a while with a 4070TI on my Alienware PC.
BRO GAMES ON MAC
Doesn't this mostly have to do with the File System though?
Like, NTFS for example of Windows, even on flash based drives (SSD and NVME, like my WD SN850X 4TB which i have the game installed on) files will still get fragmented, and while the seek time to find them will be virtually the same for any of them, unlike HDDs, fragmentation still occurs, which, still affects both type of drives but flash-based ones to a lesser degree because of that BUT....
I have personally defragmented flash-based drives on purpose(and then hard TRIM them), since i don't care about their specific total write times being reduced (jsut for testing), and when they now read a file sequentially, what you get back as a result from these drives, is reading a file at sequential speeds which are way higher than random 4k read speeds which is what happens when parts of files are fragmented.
So, regardless of WoW's container's file issues specifically, doesn't their system keep meta data files to know where things are to reduce this issue to a major degree to the point that it become basically nearly irrelevant?
I bet the OS's file system has more issues because of fragmentation in that regard compared to the CASC (different type of fragmentation of course, especially when its layered on top of the OS's file system) even though NTFS also uses meta data for the same purpose.
Because even if you delete the Data folder, regardless if you get back any speed increase from that, won't you still be at the same scenario when you back to the game and then you enter an area which you previously had in your Data folder but now if you delete it, you don't, so it has to be redownloaded, and this recreating the issue from the begging especially since each update basically causes the same thing within the container itself?
Like, you would think Blizzard is not that dumb to have not improved their container over 10 years after it's introduction, especially to account for this issue even partially?
Cause i am pretty sure that even if they didn't, NTFS's fragmentation issue, for Windows at least (even the latest version of this which is quite better at not fragmenting files as much), is gonna cause more penalty in loading times and assets downloaded in real time compared to when you know have to redownload assets than CASC's file ordering method, right?
as i explain with casc. having to search through and unpack more files at once for same resources had an impact. in fact even if you ran a genuine defrag tool it wouldn’t help because that tool would defrag the archives not the files packed there in. that have become unsorted and scattered
but also yes if you enter game before a full redownload it won’t install data efficiently at all. i specifically say don’t hit play til it’s done. otherwise it’ll download data that’s needed asap over sequential data writing.
but then oviously over time it gets worse again from game patches. but existing patches are also sorted in a clean install. which is why this works. it doesn’t use static meta data from server but instead is always dynamic. in fact rarely are two installs alike unless they both reinstalled same day
@@mysticalos Apparently, i gave this a try (i did not enter the game before it finishes 100% i waited until it was 100% and done) and the load time was so fast, i didn't even get to look at the loading screen xD
Like wtf!!! Cause this happed consistently, man, i did not expect the impact to be so insane, it used to take from 2-15 secs depending on what it had to load but like, this is insane at this point.
12:00 Only thing it does is you have top re-download the game.
video is time stamped. mouse over timeline. i even clearly label it like “over explaining stuff” and “this is info you came for” lol. i’m starting to realize people don’t see the youtube timestamp feature. it is kinda subtle
Blizz should just make a defrag tool that aggregates all of the data into fresh files, updates index files and deletes the old data. Spare itself people re-downloading 100+GB of game files just to refresh their data folder. Shouldn't take more than a few hours to do for people who already know how the file and data structures work.
I haven't re-installed WoW in ~10 years but it has been moved between HDDs and now to SSD a few times along the way. My load-screens are still plenty fast since all recently used data stays in memory with 32GB of RAM.
Yeah but this would require blizz to put effort in
Oh my install is about 15 years old. Trying that. When moving to new SSDs or Nvme I always moved the whole wow instead of reinstalling
Down from 7500 indices files to 1200 with the same amount of different wow installations. But same loading times. Guess because its a hyper fast nvme anyway
The legendary asmonsilver strikes again!
Also a side question, is there a reason why you use Mac instead of Windows? Does it perform better or?
mostly preference. windows will still usually be best platform for just gaming. but inside my mac for development too and it’s a beast at both while being ridiculously efficient. apple silicon is pretty good. but it won’t compete either a 4090 pc that has access to better game libraries so i still would never tell a user who’s primary focus is gaming to get a mac.
Yeah windows has access to directx 12 which has flip model presentation. Linux has vulkan which only has fifo or mailbox mode, no flip model. And then mac has metal which also lacks a lot of things, even basic graphic options like raytracing shadows are unsupported. Basically using anything other than windows for games is heavily handicapping urself. Just cuz u can use Wine and Proton doesnt mean u should. Gaming on linus/mac is still 15 years behind windows technology-wise.
Edit: seems like they added immediate mode to dxvk which is still not as good as flip
"For example for d3d11 games:
DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.syncInterval = 0" is equivalent to MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=immediate
DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.syncInterval = 1" is equivalent to MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=fifo
DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.syncInterval = 0; dxvk.tearFree = True" is equivalent to MESA_VK_WSI_PRESENT_MODE=mailbox
and those don't suffer from the problem of being overwritten with VK_EXT_swapchain_maintenance1 dynamic present mode switching. "
incorrect about metal, it basically has parity now. in fact only issue on any platform really is just market share. windows has most so it gets most games. Metal is capable and so are many macs, but companies don't care if tie have to hire devs, QA, marketing, and support staff for a platform that might sell only a few dozen copies for them.
In years gone by we used to defrag
yeah. i remember. while that’s relic of past for ssd. this kinda same thing but needed purely because casc leaves old files behind and makes a mess of things. i think of it like a bunch of lego bins. at start reds in one and blues in another etc and casc is like a 4 year old mixing all the bins up over time. 🤣
Make sure you install the game on an internal drive. This may seem like common sense but if you have WoW on an external drive you are killing your loading times.
Yes and no. In some cases the external drive is faster. such as older PCs with plater based drives and external SSD. also some enclosures are super fast such as thunderbolt nvme enclosures. but yes conventional drive wisdom important cause the wrong drive definitely impedes things
blizzard already says to do that
I haven't re-installed since 2005 I don't think. Hmmm....
king
wait he doesnt use windows?
not since pc died a while back. just the mac now
Reinstall ? maybe 10 years ago.... Well I know what I'm doing tomorrow.
lol so if I havent reinstaled since 2018 there is no wonder I have problems? :p
Thanks for the tips fpsAsmon
FPaSmon?
linus wow tips
I just tried and renamed my Data folder. And the launcher is downloading it again, that much looks promising.
But wow, it downloads 107GB and at the only (cough) 7MB/s download I am seeing now this takes over 4 hours.
And then the data has to come from some server, obviously, imagine if a larger number of players starts re-downloading the Data folder.
I would prefer a method that is less disruptive to the general infrastructure and if it would optimize local data it should be much faster as well.
or just do it overnight, or better yet don't do it at all!
@@dyyylllaannn Doing it overnight does not change that this is a huge load on the servers. Not your load, no, all of it combined from all those following this advice.
@@rudolphriedel541 why is this a concern, not talking shit, just honestly wondering
@@dyyylllaannn Because we all need to care more for our planet and this is something that returns very little for a lot of otherwise wasted bandwidth and eletricity.
Think bigger, imagine 10k of players are doing this, or 100k.
And for what? 100ms of loading time less, 1s? 2s?
Yeah, I am also old enough to hate it when someone sends me a 2MB+ .jpg that could have been
the download stats of casc patches are misleading. they recently made a change that makes it start slow but finish fast. i think the slow part is it creating indices for all data ahead of time. so its computational lag at start. it’ll speed up
❤
Asmon but with more hair
so much more hair
he has more hair than me lol. he grew it out and it looks pretty good. trust me i’m balding too but i got a worse cam. he has 4k crisp cam.
@@mysticalos in all seriousness tho good tips my guy I’ve told a few people I know who have potato PC’s to give this a ago