Just out of curiosity, to see what all the seething hate is about, i downloaded the wow free trial of WoW through b.net. Once installed I put the settings on Ultra (bc everyone here rags on how awful the graphics are and you can max it on crap gpus etc)

...

12 fps.

AMD RADEON HD 7650M
6 GB RAM
i5 cpu

The closest thing to playable fps I could get was 30-35 fps with medium settings with textures on high, view distance in the middle, and the rest middle. Had to turn off anti aliasing and SSAO.

I think you guys miiiiiight be exaggerating a bit lol. The Mist of Pandaria zones are brutal too. My buddy let me play his account on my rig. Flying in Pandaria was EXTREMELY taxing on my rig. Was getting sub 20 fps on high settings.

Im convinced that a fairly beefy rig is required to run this game on Ultra at 1920x1080 with all the bells and whistles on highest. And let me just say, it is a bloody beautiful game.

Blizzard has been steadily updating their graphics for years. The new zones, and the improved meshes and textures in the old zones, are noticeably more demanding on computers than they were five or ten years ago.

WoW has come leaps and bounds from it's original point when it comes to graphics. It is a beautiful world on the highest settings. Still, on low settings the game can still be played on a computer without a dedicated graphics card.

I have never seen such diversity in textures and scenery quality in regards to low and then Ultra. Its literally a different game.

The engine is still fairly limited, so you cannot compare it to a modern engine.

The 7650M is not a powerful card, so medium or medium-high is pushing that chipset. It is a solid Class 3 chipset (Class 1 is the top).

Overall WoW should run well (ie 60+ fps) on gaming graphics cards, but it is known to bog down occasionally. It isn't a good benchmark for modern graphics cards.

WoW is designed to run on the maximum number of computers with the maximum possible quality. So, because a great deal of the community runs it on 70s mainframes, they make low look like absolute ass while those with sweet rigs can get a really pretty game. It also helps a lot once you get into raiding. Unless you've got a serious, serious machine, never raid 25-man on Ultra if you want more than 15fps.

But yeah, that's pretty much it. It's easy on your machine because you're supposed to run it on low. And as others have said, WoW is prettier than it's ever been. The old world got a massive overhaul in Cata, Pandaria's even prettier (Too bad it's got nothing else to offer), and in Warlords all of the character models will be overhauled. It's not the same game that it was at launch, no sirree.

Also, while Blizz has put a lot of work into optimization, they're stretching an ancient engine about as far as it can go. There's gonna be issues.