Analysis of the Requirements for a Recent Program or Game

Guild Wars 2 is a stunningly beautiful game that gives us a glimpse into a fantasy world that is awe inspiring beyond words. Whether its terrain, game characters, apparel, or structures the detail used to finely craft every inch of this virtual world is exceptional. If you have no clue what Guild Wars 2 is or what it looks like I would suggest checking out this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hVAW3bcMBQ) posted by IGNentertainment when the game first came out, it is full of wonderful footage that shows the game off. What could I possibly say that could make that sound any better than it already does? The answer; almost anyone with a computer can play it and it looks extremely good when scaled down for lower end PC’s. Allow me to explain why this is. To begin you have to understand that Guild Wars 2 began production almost 10 years ago, and at the time they began developing on cutting edge technology. Fast forward a decade and technology has advanced but the game has its foundations set in older technology (such as directx 9), and because of this older generation machines can handle running the game much easier than you would anticipate. It’s also important to note that due to the type of game it is (MMO or Massively Multiplayer Online) the resources required to run it are larger than that of other types.

So what exactly are the specifications to run this game? According to ArenaNet’s support page these are the minimum requirements to run Guild Wars 2:Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

Let’s take a look at these specs and analyze exactly how old your computer can be and still meet the minimum requirements. The minimum requirement for the OS (Operating System) is Windows XP Service Pack 2. Since Windows XP there has been 3 new OS’s from Microsoft, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Virtually every computer running Microsoft Windows today is using XP or higher. To break the processor down easily we’ll simply say that the game requires at least a dual core processor. Dual core processors are pretty common by today’s standards, in fact most smart phones have dual core processors and just recently there have been a couple of smart phones featuring quad core processors on the market. Graphics cards are a bit trickier to analyze so I’m going to use the brand I’m most familiar with ATI. I actually owned an old ATI X1800 about seven or eight years ago so I decided to do a search quick and see if I could find how much they are going for today, it was a couple hundred dollars back then. What I found when I searched a couple of websites was a placeholder on Newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102655) where they used to sell the graphics card but since have discontinued it. Most modern computers built in the last decade will have about 2gb of RAM and at least 25gb of hard drive space. When you break it down I can probably say that I had exceeded the minimum requirements to run Guild Wars 2 almost a decade ago; however today is a different story.

IGNentertainment (09/12/2012)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hVAW3bcMBQ

ArenaNet, Guild Wars 2 Windows System Requirements (09/09/2012) https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1119/session/L3RpbWUvMTM1MzMyNTY0My9zaWQvSmtRanRGYmw%3D

Newegg.com, ATI Radeon X1800 (11/18/2012)  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102655