Good day! With the recent news that WOW is releasing a new classic + version, my nostalgia has brought me here. I’m looking to fall off the wagon and roll back into the WOW universe and wanted opinions on what set up I would need. My budget is around 800-1100 and I read that the steam deck (with a docking station) would be a good option. Does anyone have any advice on this? Are the frame rates and graphics good enough to raid with?
WoW is definitely playable on Deck’s power, though not on the highest settings by any means (probably more medium to low) and probably moreso in the 30fps range rather than 60fps.
I would not recommend trying to raid on a controller though. I have messed around with WoW on controller since they released support for it, and while it is fun, it is too difficult to even have enough keys to bind to much less maneuver and aim what you need to aim imo to be the preferred way to play. Definitely have a docking station and a keyboard, or a bluetooth keyboard. The UI/chatbox will be hard to read on the normal screen if you’re not holding it up to your face, so most likely if docked you’d want a monitor too.
I think for WoW, a laptop or gaming PC would probably get you farther in performance in that price range. I have a laptop I bought in 2012 for $1400 that I can play comfortably on medium to high at 60fps even in new zones. But if there are other things that draw you to the Deck, the Deck itself is a really cool and fun piece of tech (ex. traveling, other controller based games you do enjoy, wanting to practice using Linux, etc).
Wow works on the deck. I played Ascension on it for a bit and it took some work to get everything working, but once I had it set up I was good to go.
With the track pads and Steam Input I was able to map all the abilities and such that you could possibly need as well as using a trackpad for a mouse.