This is just the norm when it comes to Major MMOs, and AAA games as well.

DC Universe Online is 17gb
Star Wars: The Old Republic is 19.5gb

The kind of streamlining you're speaking of would most likely involve compression being used on game files, more-so then is already being implemented, and I can only see that lengthening load times, which would piss even more people off.

Right now, normal SATA Hard Disc Drives are pretty cheap for size.

Considering you can pick up a 320gb drive for under 60 bucks is pretty nice. Keep an eye out for deals at Electronic/Computer shops for prices, you might find a deal, like the 1TB drive I nabbed from Futureshop for 70 bucks.

Well actually the Installation for wow is only 15gb but if you look in the Data folder there's a 2nd Cache folder at 10gigs

SATA hard drives are anything but cheap right now. There was flooding in Thailand which damaged some factories which manufacturer hard drives, and the manufacturers jacked the price to compsensate.

Even manufacturers which didn't suffer losses jacked up their prices to take advantage of it. A 1TB hard drive which went for $70 is now going for $250.

@ Ace
Yes normal SATA drives are cheap, or were before the flooding, but theyre coming back down. I have several terabytes of normal drives.

I said performance drives, SSDs and 10k+ rpm magnetic drives, which are small and expensive, but the preferred option for system and gaming drives for anyone with a high end rig. I have 2 in mine, one is my system drive and has WoW on it, which takes up more space than everything else on the drive combined. And the other is my Steam drive, which has room for 2-3 big titles at a time (and TF2 and a bunch of smaller games).

I only brought it up because they were talking about slimming down the install size along with the 64 bit changes.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/01/03/patch-4-3-2-on-public-test-realms-now/


@Collin
Yeah, but if you delete that folder it will start repopulating as soon as you load the game again.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/975219800

Im guessing the install optimization has to do with caching instead of giving you the option to remove Outlands or Northrend from your install or something. At least i hope...

I think in this case, "small performance drives" means SSDs, which are still a bit pricey--an 80GB SSD is still around $100-120, and I'm holding off buying one myself in hopes the prices on the quality 120GB drives drop below $190-200. WoW and its install size is the chief reason I wanted a bigger one.