I’ve been dancing around the idea of getting a SteamDeck and had a couple of questions for anyone running WoW on it. I’m not planning on mythic raiding or anything similar to it, would mostly like to quest, ach hunt, similar “chill” stuff but would definitely like to try and see how playable a dungeon or LFR would be.
It’s hard to judge how smooth the game is by YT videos, but I’m very interested in hearing how smooth the game feels when you, for instance, lock the FPS and refresh rate to 40hz? As it seems, at least from what I’ve seen on YT, that there’s a lot of fluctuation in FPS so my line of thought was that locking the fps/refresh to a bit lower value might make things smoother, but please correct me if my assumption is wrong here.
For classes that have pets, any problems with limited number of buttons on the SD, as in any issues with binding some basic pet commands to buttons available on the SD.
Any issues with device getting possibly too hot to play comfortably? I’ve seen temps reach 70-80C in some of the YT videos.
I’ve seen some random posts that some addons do not work? Is there a way of mass updating addons other than downloading every single one each time there is an update? Curseforge in AUR is no longer maintained unfortunately.
Please feel free to mention any positive / negative experiences you’ve had with playing WoW on the SteamDeck. Thank you!
I’ve not had too many problems jumping on for world quests on the steam deck or levelling some lower levels in dungeons. I mostly stick to my BM hunter or Evoker as they’re just simpler.
Can’t say I’ve had issues with temps being uncomfortable, but I haven’t checked the numbers.
It runs with low/medium settings at 60 for me with a couple of addons.
This is the guide I used to setup wow on my Steamdeck
It works very well. Gameplay is smooth but you’ll need to run lower graphics settings.
I’ve played ranged and melee classes without any issues. Depending on your button mapping/key binding you can get up to nearly 30 buttons for abilities. More that you would need for any retail class, not to mention classic.
I’ve never noticed the device getting hot or even heard the fan run.
In the guide I linked it talks about how to setup curse forge on the steamdeck. I don’t run a lot of addon when I play on the deck (console port, immersion, and dynamic cam) but they run without issue.
Hardest part was getting the buttons set up.
If you have a little extra money or a 3d printer the Deck Mate is awesome. I use the little kick stand to prop up my Steamdeck on the coffee table while I watch TV.
I have played retail World of Warcraft on my steam deck without locking it to 40hz. It was satisfactory while flying around in Valdrakken and in the few quests I did. I was surprised at how well it performed. I can’t say anything about playing a pet class or addons not working, but the controlls with the controller addon worked great and my fps never fell below a threshold that was annoying, and I’m pretty senesitive to fram rate issues in games. It DID get really hot if you touched it in the wrong spots but it does thst for lots of games I play, if you stick to the handles it doesnt get too hot to play.
Thanks for sharing, really appreciate it! Would be lovely to be able to lay back and enjoy some WoW not sitting in front of my laptop, which I do pretty much throughout the whole day due to work.