Step 2 / 5

Step 2 of 5

Working out whether your computer can run it

This is the step that saves the most wasted time. Half an hour spent finding out what is inside your machine means you never download forty gigabytes to discover it will not start.

The five parts that decide the answer

A published requirements list looks intimidating because it is a list of part names. There are only five that matter, and each one does a job you can describe in a sentence.

There is also your internet connection, which no requirements list describes properly. It gets its own section below.

Finding out what you have

Both Windows and macOS will tell you all of this without installing anything. The exact wording of the menus changes between versions, so the procedure below is written in terms of what you are looking for rather than as a click-by-click script.

That list is yours now. It takes ten minutes once and then answers the question permanently, until you change computers.

Reading a requirements list

Publishers usually print two columns: minimum and recommended. They are not two opinions about the same thing. They mean different things and you should read them differently.

Minimum is the publisher's statement of the lowest configuration on which the game is expected to start and run. It is not a promise of a pleasant experience. A machine that exactly meets a minimum specification will typically run the game at low settings with a picture that is noticeably rough, and it will struggle most in exactly the busy moments the game is built around.

Recommended is the publisher's statement of a configuration on which the game is expected to run comfortably at ordinary settings. If your machine meets or exceeds it, you can stop worrying about this step.

Two habits help. First, compare like with like: the model number in a processor name carries more information than the brand, and a part from several years ago with a high number is often slower than a recent part with a low one. Second, check the publication date of the requirements list. An online game changes over years, and requirements published for an early version may have moved since.

Where a publisher has not published a requirements list for your platform, treat that as information rather than as an oversight to work around. The honest reading is that the answer is unknown, and the only authoritative place to resolve it is the vendor's own site.

When your machine sits in between

The common case for an older household computer is that it clears the minimum and falls short of the recommended. That is not a failure. It means the game will probably run and you will probably spend an evening in the settings menu.

Four adjustments do most of the work, in rough order of how much they give back for how little they take away:

1. Resolution. Dropping the picture to a lower resolution is the single largest change you can make. It costs sharpness and nothing else.
2. Shadows and lighting effects. Expensive to draw and easy to turn down without the game becoming hard to read.
3. Anti-aliasing. The setting that smooths jagged edges. Turning it off is very cheap to live with.
4. Everything else open on your computer. Closing a browser with thirty tabs frees more memory than most people expect.

One caution on the other direction: be careful with advice that suggests downloading a utility to clean, optimise or boost your computer in order to run a game. Australian Government guidance on protecting devices is published by the Australian Cyber Security Centre, and the general shape of it is to install software only from sources you have a reason to trust. A game's own installer from the publisher's own site is such a source. An unrelated optimiser offered alongside it is not necessarily one. Nothing here suggests your computer currently has a problem; this is simply where that sort of offer tends to appear.

The one requirement nobody prints: your data allowance

Online games are large, and they stay large. A first download in this category is commonly measured in tens of gigabytes, and updates arrive regularly afterwards for as long as you keep playing. The installed size on disk and the amount of data you will pull down over a year are two different numbers, and only the first one appears on a requirements list.

If your internet plan has a monthly allowance, check it before you start a download rather than after. If several people share the connection, tell them. A download of this size on a shared connection is noticeable to everyone in the house while it runs, and most game launchers let you limit download speed or schedule the download for a quieter time.

The household example

Platform limits, stated plainly

The affiliate arrangement this site takes part in applies to desktop computers running Windows or macOS. It does not cover Linux, and it does not cover phones or tablets. If the computer you are planning around runs Linux, this course's example will not apply to you, and we would rather tell you that at Step 2 than let you find out at Step 4.

For the details of what the vendor supports and requires, read them where the vendor publishes them: visit the World of Warships website.

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