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World of Warcraft (WoW), Fallout 3 and more on Windows 7 -- defrag game time

Lewis Allard, from Colorado Springs, is a 25-year old programmer for a major defense contractor. While at his job he gets programming performance boosts from PerfectDisk, I'm writing today about the performance improvements his systems get while playing video games. Lewis plays a wide variety of games, with World of Warcraft probably being his favorite.

WoW is big -- it takes up 15GB for the game and another 1.5GB for patches, which Lewis keeps on hand in case he needs to reinstall and repatch. As he says, "even by today's standards, it is a HUGE game." Another of Lewis' favorites, Fallout 3, takes up another 6GB. Lewis originally purchased PerfectDisk to increase his framerate in WoW's most populous areas, such as major cities and player versus player battlegrounds. Not only did PerfectDisk help improve his game's frames per second (FPS), it also improved the time it takes to load World of Warcraft (and other games). Lewis points out that "obviously some factors of loading into the game are out of control of the computer due to the games online connectivity, but the overall time was significantly lower than previous logins without PerfectDisk.                   

When Lewis moved to the Windows 7 Beta, he knew he would need the same firepower he had previously to keep on top of his games. He found that "on Windows 7, logged into WoW sitting in Dalaran (the game's most populous city), I could get roughly 20-45 FPS, depending on the time of day. Those aren't bad frames on a game that runs 11 million-plus people worldwide, but I felt I could do better with PerfectDisk." Sure enough, he got to 35-50 FPS in the same situations.

Just ask Lewis...if you're going to take on the world, you better have the best tools.

                          

Related posts:

• Beyond WoW to Club Penguin -- MMORPG for the family
• Win the WoW war on MPQ files
• Is PC gaming dying? 10 million WoW users say no
• Selected files -- a new way to boost World of Warcraft performance
• World of Warcraft -- defrag your MPQ files
• World of Warcraft -- Beef up your game

 

From WoW to Club Penguin -- MMORPG for the family

                        

Move over World of Warcraft (WoW) players with your big MPQ files. The massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) market is getting more crowded with kid- and family-friendly games rather than evil characters. Hello Legos!

Yukari Iwatani Kane, writing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, writes that "a wave of new multiplayer games targeted at families and children is about to hit the market." Defeat evil? How about speeding around a race track or becoming a master chef. Good bye World of Warcraft, hello Lightening McQueen and the World of Cars Online from Disney (debuting late summer). Kane writes that "by broadening audiences to children and younger teens, the industry hopes to more than double the market for online multiplayer games over the next 5 years." With Sony and Disney going into this big time, don't bet against it.

                      

Along with these games come big files, big updated files, deleted files, and heavily fragmented drives.

Defrag WoW and your MPQ files? Of course -- many of the 11.5 million players do that today.

Defrag your Pirates of the Caribbean and Club Penguin files for better performance? Yes, those too.

                  

Win the WoW war on MPQ files

                            

The Dow may hit 10,000 again someday and World of Warcraft (WoW) interest may wane someday, but for now, both seem a long way off. Blizzard Entertainment's wildly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) now boasts over 11.5 million monthly subscribers. And many of these subscribers are PerfectDIsk users, who we hear from all the time.                         

Gamers such as WoW players are always looking for ways to boost their system's performance and do whatever tweaking they can to get an advantage. So naturally, defragmenting files is an aspect of that, along with total free space consolidation. 

But time after time, day after day, two things in particular for WoW players stand out with PerfectDisk -- AutoPilot Scheduling and Selected Files defrag. A nasty problem for WoW players is WoW's MPQ files, which include data, graphics, sound and more. MPQs can get large and they can get badly fragmented. And the result is lost performance.

So lots of WoW users use PerfectDisk to completely defragment their drives, including the MPQ files, to boost their performance. Because of PerfectDisk's free space consolidation, they will fragment more slowly anyway. Many users will use Selected Files Defrag to clean up the MPQ files. And WoW players also will use AutoPilot Scheduling to ensure a complete defrag after receiving a WoW patch from Blizzard.

                                       

Winning the WoW fragmentation war one drive -- or one file -- at a time. Automatically.

Is PC Gaming Dying? 10 million WoW users say no

With all the cool new consoles out there now, console makers are raking it in, as that is where the trend seems to be for the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. There are several analysts and gaming pundits that debate the issue, pointing out there there are still millions and millions of PC gamers around the world. But with the continuing advancements in consoles, there is clearly a movement in that direction. As Kristin Kalning points out in an interesting MSNBC article entitled Is PC gaming dying? Or thriving?, the big exception to the trend is World of Warcraft, which boasts 9 - 10 million active subscribers. We hear from a lot of them every day, as PerfectDisk 2008 goes a long way to ensuring they have an optimal system.

For the good ol' fashioned PC, optimizing your World of Warcraft game and your MPQ files with some solid defragmenting and free space consolidation can make all the difference.

Up your game.

    

      

Selected files -- a new way to boost World of Warcraft performance

Most World of Warcraft (and other) gamers know all about the importance of defragmenting their drives to keep their systems and games running as fast as possible. MPQs are large files used in Blizzard Entertainment's games that contain a game's data files, including graphics, sounds and more. Many World of Warcraft users want (need?) to aggressively address file issues regularly, usually once a week. We often run into WoWers that have discovered PerfectDisk because they needed a better way to do this. Even those that have regularly used Windows' built-in defragmenters very often eventually run into trouble because of insuffient consolidated free space. At that point, they run into problems defragmenting selected large files in their WoW folder. With PerfectDisk, these gamers have always been able to benefit from PerfectDisk's aggressive free space consolidation -- consolidate the free space and defragment the big MPQ. Now, with PerfectDisk 2008's Selected Files Defrag, they can easily defragment all their biggest and baddest large files on a regular basis.

Game on.

      

Boost your games like Jason

Jason Spencer is a 31-year old guy who is a long-time gamer. He started playing at age 4, fell in love with them, and eventually became a game developer himself. Jason contacted me recently, and rather than try to extrapolate all he was trying to convey, I'll let his words do the talking:

"Playing video games on a computer for the past decade or so has meant having your machines running in tip-top shape. One factor in a tip-top machine is the hard drive's performance. Video games have to pull so much data off of the hard drive and store it into memory that it's actually kind of scary these days. One of the issues with this, though, is that most people have no interest in dealing with maintenance. That’s almost another job for us. We just want to play our games, cruise our internet. Like dealing with a television, we don’t want to “have” to make sure it works good. It should just either work good or bad. With PerfectDisk, it takes me one step closer to that. I have scheduled with the scheduling wizard included to have all my drives defrag twice a week at around 3am. Continue reading

             

WoW -- Single file defrag for MPQ files -- and some wild costumes

Awhile back I wrote about the fact that many World of Warcraft players use PerfectDisk to automatically defragment their drives and get their big MPQ files in top shape. They get their regular updates, have their drive automatically defragmented and free space consolidated with Space Restoration Technology, and get on with playing. I had one WoW player contact me to tell me that there is also a large community of players who do use PerfectDIsk to regularly and automatically defragment their entire drive, but also use PerfectDisk's single file defrag to quickly defragment the large MPQ file only, and then get on with playing. Either way, if you play WoW, you know they MPQ files are big and have the potential for slowing you down, unless you take care of them.

By the way, for all you WoW fans, in case you haven't seen them, I came across this TechRepublic gallery of pictures from last month's semi-annual BlizzCon 2007 event in Anaheim, California. Besides getting to see and play some upcoming Blizzard games and compete in tournaments, they got to participate in a costume party - crazy stuff! For all you non-WoW players -- beware.

PerfectDisk and defragging -- mostly boring. PerfectDisk in the hands of World of Warcraft gamers -- wacky.

                  

Are you ready for some football? Ready for Madden NFL 08? Get your best game performance

Here in the United States, summer is winding down, and that means (American) football season is gearing up. While baseball has long been romanticized as this country's national pastime, it is now pretty much recognized that football is the most popular sport here. And one of the most popular video games ever is Madden NFL 08. The 18th installment of this wildly successful game was released earlier this month.

For those playing Madden NFL 08 on the Windows platform, one of the keys to maximizing performance and enjoyment of the game is to get the most out of your PC. With 2GB of hard drive space required, there is plenty of opportunity for systems to become fragmented and bogged down. With PerfectDisk's single-pass defrag, SMARTPlacement optimization, and complete free space consolidation through Space Restoration Technology, PerfectDisk can put the zip back into your game. As self-described "NFL Madden freak" Dan Rothberg told us, "I installed Madden 08, then defragmented my drive with PerfectDisk, then got playing - fast as can be with my system humming!"

Get to the end zone, put up your goal line stand -- make sure your files and free space are in the best shape possible. Maximize your Madden NFL 08 performance.

                               

The trouble with...

Just when you thought you've seen all the Vista bashing there is, eWeek comes out this week with "The Trouble with Vista" slideshow, outlining 12 reasons why Vista is struggling, along with 5 fixes to address its current state. While it was all interesting to me, a couple of reasons in particular caught my eye, because they parallel the world of enterprise and power user defragmentation.

#6 Cost. "Microsoft went for what consumers would buy rather than what they needed." We believe in a fair value, which is why PerfectDisk Pro and Server give what we believe is the best value. Not only a better price, but not hidden costs or nickel and diming for particular features. So nothing extra for things like large drive support, Space Restoration Technology, customizable scheduling, and more...and even a free management console. 

#7. Slow performance even on high-end systems. eWeek points out that "gamers are disabling many features on Vista in order to improve the game performance." Well, one thing we do know is that whether running XP or Vista, gamers playing World of Warcraft, Half Life 2, and others are using PerfectDisk to improve their games' performance, as are enterprises to improve server, desktop and laptop performance.

And one fix in particular caught my eye:

Fix #2 Package all features for one reasonable price. See Reason #6 above. No extra charges for features. Here's the price, here are all the features - no games on the price.

Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch is quoted as saying that "no amount of marketing is going to fix" the Vista issues.

"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."  -- Warren Buffett

                     

                  

World of Warcraft -- defrag your MPQ files

A couple of weeks ago, on July 27th, Blizzard Entertainment announced that the user base for World of Warcraft (WoW) had reached 9 million players worldwide. These 9 million players are always on the lookout for ways to tweak their games and improve performance, whether through hardware or software.

One particularly messy problem is WoW's MPQ files, which include data, graphics, sound and more. These MPQ files are very large and get updated regularly. And when they get updated, they often fragment, which causes lagging and hangs during interactive game play. A common solution for WoW players is to use PerfectDisk to defragment the entire drive, including those nasty MPQ files. The MPQ files are also less likely to fragment in the first place because of PerfectDisk's Space Restoration Technology which consolidates the free space.

So, the typical scenario for a WoW player:

1. Receive patch from Blizzard
2. PerfectDisk's AutoPilot schedule kicks in to completely defragment the drive and free space
3. Play faster