Quote Originally Posted by 'Sam DeathWalker',index.php?page=Thread&postID=177310#p ost177310
If all character textures are placed sequentually in the data folders then bandwidth is more important. I don't think was a given that the textures need to be loaded on demand from random positions in the wow data folder, but that does seem to be the case.
I am rather curious how you could have ever possibly imagined this being true.
You turn a corner, and there is a player: He could be wearing t4 gear, or t7 gear.
This is an extremely crude mockup, but please. Explain how sequentual loading would work.

[T1----------T2----------T3----------T4----------T5----------T6----------T7] <- Hard Drive section with tier gear on it.

If it was sequentially read and loaded (ie, where bandwitdh is important) than to load t7 gear, you would have to load all the previous tiers as well. So in memory, you would have t1 through t7, just to display the t7 gear. Since that doens't pass the common sense test, they do it exactly how anyone would imagine them to.

They go straight to where the T7 files are located, and load just them.