FPS stuttering randomly after todays maint

Support Mac Technical Support
1

Ive had zero problems with Shadowlands until whatever happened today recently. No addons and the game is stuttering out randomly. Goes a while and then its like the fps drops to about 4 or 5 for about 5 seconds and then it goes back smooth again. I have not done any updates to my MacBook Pro at all that would have caused this. My first thought was perhaps something with the battle.net update but its happening even if I quit that completely. Nothing is running on my machine at all other than WoW and its not indexing/backing up or anything. Didnt have it happening earlier today or anytime previous. Started after logging in about 7PM EST.

Catalina: 10.15.7
MacBook Pro 16 inch 2019
2.4 ghz 8 core i9
16 GB RAM
AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB

2

Im currently getting 10 fps now constantly…Not one single thing has changed today (or in weeks and weeks) on my computer.

3

Did a scan repair/deleted cache/interface/wtf folders. Still getting terrible fps after todays maintenance. Also have tried adjusting various graphics settings even moving everything to lowest possible settings and still getting about 10 fps. Something changed with the game today?

4

So I think I’ve solved this. I booted into Windows 10 in bootcamp since I couldn’t use Mac OS and was surprised to find the same behaviour. On a whim went back into Mac OS and reset my MacBook Pros SMC. I believe that has fixed whatever this terribly low fps issue was. Im not entirely sure how but I played about 20 mins in Mac OS and was back at the usual 55-60 fps in most areas.

Never seen this issue before or resolved by resetting the SMC but it seems to have worked in this case.

So I hope this helps someone else that might be having the same issue. If you are on a MacBook here is how to reset the SMC:

*How to reset the SMC on Mac notebooks:

  1. Choose Apple menu > Shut Down and wait for your Mac to shut down.
  2. Press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the built-in keyboard, then press the power button at the same time. …
  3. Release all keys.
  4. Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.