New SDXC cards to allow for greater MMO portability

by James Egan Jan 10th 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Events, real-world, Opinion

Massively multiplayer online games tend to take up less space on your hard drive than your standard PC game, as the bulk of the data is stored on farms of servers that power your MMO of choice. However, despite the fact that most of the underlying magic is happening far away from your own screen, MMO clients still take up a number of gigs of space, as laptop users who regularly play different titles know all too well. But since an MMO client is really just an access point then, there's no reason why it has to be tied to any one machine or location, particularly if you're on the go for much of the time.

While the typical solution for some MMO gamers with a preference for portability is to keep their game clients on a portable drive (myself included), even these small drives are beginning to look downright clunky compared to some of the other options available, or soon-to-be available.

Some of the much smaller memory cards on the market -- namely SD cards -- have served the purpose of allowing for an MMO client or two to be kept there and run directly from it on any machine with a compatible reader. But some of the newer SD cards announced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show boast higher capacities than what we've seen before.

Adam Holisky at our sister site WoW Insider looks at how the forthcoming SDXC cards will give MMO gamers the ability to hold multiple MMO clients on one tiny card (although he clearly had World of Warcraft in mind when writing his post). Have a look at his "Playing WoW off an SD card" and let him know what you think of the idea. Sure, losing that small and expensive card would hurt, but isn't that always the trade off with portability?

One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

Tags: adam-holisky, capacity, ces, client, clients, consumer-electronics-show, engadget, fantasy, on-the-go, opinion, portability, portable, sd, sdxc, technology, world-of-warcraft, wow, wow-insider

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ReijMan said on 8:00PM 1-10-2009

And don't forget, LOTRO has:
http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/LOTRO_FlashBoost

already :-)

Boerewors said on 10:10PM 1-10-2009

"Massively multiplayer online games tend to take up less space on your hard drive than your standard PC game"

Fundamental flaw in your reasoning there.

Fallout 3 = 3gb
WAR = 9gb
AOC = 15gb