World of Warcraft has enthralled fans for close to a decade, but a new update to the character models for the game could change the system requirements for the game and lockout some players from continuing to enjoy the game.

The update is coming in advance to the Warlords of Draenor expansion, and the rise in polygon counts and new animation effects have some fans worried that the system requirements for World of Warcraft could rise beyond their current hardware. The World of Warcraft community manager known as Bashiok attempted to address these concerns in a forum post, but did not confirm or deny if the game's system requirements would change:

"...We tend not to have updated system requirements/recommendations until most content is in, most big changes and engineering are done, and we're looking like there isn't going to be anything else that would greatly affect performance. So we won't really know absolutely until some point through the beta. We're keenly aware of the system requirements the new character models may require, and how that could impact client performance."

The community manager went on to remind fans that Blizzard has kept the game able to support obsolete PC technology and that it is too early to call if the game will see a shift to newer technology in the future:

"...The game still supports processors and graphics cards that were released over 8 years ago. To put that in other terms, modern day systems are in some cases 50x more powerful than the lowest end systems the game still supports. Moving us forward graphically in such a dramatic way with the new models is going to require a lot of testing, tweaking, optimizing, and determination of what we can realistically support going forward, but we just don't know what that will look like yet."

Considering that the World of Warcraft has existed for quite some time and has yet to change the system requirements for the game, it is only a matter of time before the game shifts to newer technology. After all, if the game wants to continue to be relevant as more and more MMO games switch to free to play models and new competition such as The Elder Scrolls Online raise the bar graphically as well as in terms of gameplay Blizzard must do some to evolve the game forward.

Look out for more news about World of Warcraft as the new expansion is prepared for release.