I made a thread on this in the beta forum: Shadow Settings Remove New Lighting+Fog Effects
Adding here for more visibility as many others are likely experiencing this bug without realizing it.
TLDR: If you are using Shadow Quality set to anything above “Low” you might not be seeing the new Light+Fog Effects.
The bug is how it literally turns off those Light+Fog Effects as if a switch was turned off if you increase the Shadow Quality setting. It sometimes works on Fair or higher, but for example on Ultra High it completely turns off the lighting. It’s the difference from playing Elwynn Forest in at night in the dark vs playing during a bright sunset illuminating everything for you, it’s a massive game changing difference.
If you haven’t seen it yet, try changing your Shadow Quality down to Low, then to High. See if this turned off the Light+Fog effects for you.
It’s a huge graphic bug that needs attention and fixing before full release, as those effects are one of the primary new features in WoW Forever.
For context I am using an RTX 5090 Astral GPU, AMD9950x cpu. It’s not a me problem, it’s entirely a bug with the new game and how it is handling the lighting+fog system.
Also side note, there are major memory leaks that happen that cause frame rates to plummet. If you randomly go from 150 FPS down to 30, it’s happening and you need to log out and back in. That’s what fixes that issue for me. It especially happened in Stormwind where it’s super crowded
3 Likes
Agreed - I was sent a screenshot form Tirisfal Glades from someone on a low end machine saying “This game looks great, even on setting 2.” I thought “Wow, that looks even cooler than mine at setting 8” - so I toyed around with it and found Shadow Quality Fair or Low looked better than anything higher.
This was most noticable at 5:00 PM Server time, when the sun starts setting around the tree line in Brill.
Good to know. I turned it down so I didn’t have to see it and wondered why I still saw it 
did they fix this recently? I just heard about it and tried it only to find my shadows get worse and not be able to notice anything else
It seems to get fixed then break some hours later. Maybe they’re working on it
yup this issue is very dissapointing, i really hope its fixed. It comes and goes, which gives me the suspicious to believe its due to the weather linked to ingame time. Specifically when its night time i have this problem nearly 100% of the time. i hope its not on purpose because it looks terrible! on the other hand, when it “works” with the shadows on anything other than higher it looks great.
We need more eyes on this or some type of communication
my assumption on why it fixes itself sometimes is due to the ingame time. For me at night i notice it everday of the beta. but during the day its fine sometimes.
Please fix this before launch, 5070 ti able to run everything on ultra and I do not see any light/rays anywhere ever. Played around with shadow settings still no luck getting the light rays to appear.
Update:
with shadows at ultra, contrast to 60 and gamma at 0.9 between 7-9am server time in the hills north west or Brill I was able to get the sun rays to appear today!
Shadows at fair or lower I couldn’t see them.
it seems like its being worked on ive noticed improvements too