Loading times in World of Warcraft can be drastically reduced with a simple trick. You just need to disable one feature.
Although World of Warcraft is now a rather old game, it still demands quite a lot from many computers. Those who use various addons may experience long loading times. However, these can be drastically reduced by giving up just one feature – the voice chat.
Voice chat consumes additional resources: The voice chat in World of Warcraft is used by only a few players, but it consumes additional resources for almost all players. This is because the voice chat is an additional process on the computer that starts whenever World of Warcraft is launched.
Only after this process has completed its work and connected to the servers does the loading process of WoW continue. Depending on the computer and internet connection, this can take a few seconds.
How to permanently disable the voice chat: It is not possible to directly disable the voice chat and the associated process in WoW. Instead, you need to activate parental controls in the Battle.net account management, as user cheers_grills on Reddit pointed out. There you can disable the voice chat and the additional process. Here’s how:
- Log in to the Battle.net website
- Select “Account Settings” from the menu, then “Account Details” and click on “To Parental Controls”
- Select “Start Settings” and fill in the details to set up parental controls
- You will receive an email to confirm the setup
- Now select “Voice Chat and Streaming” and choose “Disable Voice Chat”
- Save the settings
After a few minutes, the settings will be applied, and the next time you start World of Warcraft, the voice chat process will no longer be initiated. Players report reduced loading times of between 70% and 80%.
But: Those who also play Overwatch or Heroes of the Storm and use voice chat should be careful. Because these functions will no longer be available then. However, if you only play World of Warcraft and don’t use voice chat anyway, this will be helpful.
Do you use voice chat in World of Warcraft at all? Or do you use other programs like Discord, Skype, or TeamSpeak?
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