So starting yesterday, both npcs and objects like benches, plants, rocks ect just kind of appear from thin air when i get close to them (fences and lightposts too. I can see the light from the lightposts before the actual post shows up.) It happens no matter what the Environment, ground cover and the View Distance slider are set to. I’ve tried dropping Shadows to nothing, tried re-installing the game, tried dropping all the other settings to Good. None of it helped the materializing problem.
This wasn’t happening a day ago. I did get a different graphics card recently but that was almost four days ago. The only thing I haven’t tried is driver updates but i’ve heard not great things about recent nvidia drivers so I’m not sure i want to try that.
(tried updating the driver since post, still a problem)
I’ve found a few other threads with a similar issue that suggested this might be a change to the game’s engine somehow, but none of them were helpful in terms of solutions. Especially since they’re all from 2024 or older.
Is there any solution to this or is it just how it is? it’s pretty immersion breaking for stuff to just appear like this.
(more info + a reply that i can’t post yet because of error 'other users must reply first)
Task manager shows neither CPU or GPU at hundred percent while the game is running. It’s only ever peaked that high for a second or so when launching the game. Highest cpu usage when playing is 60-70% and that’s in lfr. the gpu is usually 30%, less outside lfr. they’ve def never reached 100% load in open world.
I also tried restoring nvidia control panel settings to default to no change.
Processor’s a i5-9400f, 2.90. gpu is a GeForce RTX 4060 8GB GDDR6. it replaced an older nvidia card with weaker specs (6gb gddr 5) because i decided i should start upgrading things. including cpu.
i’m aware that wow is cpu intensive.
the ram has been 32 gigs for a long time, and the game was on an external SSD when this problem began.
Nonetheless, even with the older i5 and weaker GPU, things rendering at such a distractingly close range wasn’t a problem i was having until a day ago. I only got desperate enough to make a forum post because i’ve tried everything i can think of to no avail.
at this point the only thing i haven’t tried is putting the old graphics card back in.
i did order a new processor ( i7-9700K 3.6 GHz) before this issue cropped up.
They changed a lot of how assets are streamed in the DF prepatch, so that the engine could handle dragonriding. Low priority props and doodads just pop in, rather than using something fancier like a dithered fade transition, and seem to do so from a closer distance in some zones(newer zones mostly). As far as I know, there is no fix, since Blizzard doesn’t expose any settings or cvars that control those aspects of asset streaming.
Some zones make it almost obnoxiously obvious though, like Ardenweald. I want to say it mostly affects content newer than and including SL, since the DF prepatch happened at the end of SL.
this is in TWW, not DF, and it’s only just now become a noticeable issue overnight.
I wouldn’t mind this if it just applied to while dragonriding, i’d get that, and i did notice it a bit in DF when flying around. But now it’s happening when just riding around on a ground mount or running mountless, and it’s kind of ridiculous.
This is pretty hard to answer without knowing more about your hardware. What GPU are you running? Resolution of your screen?
At 1440p the game chews through a little less than 8GB of video ram to load assets.
If you are running the game on a card with less than 8GB (Like an RTX 4050) the games engine will pick what gets loaded first and at what distance to stick to the memory constraints. Important game functionality always goes first, little doodads, clutter, and those types of visuals always go last.
Another limitation could be your CPU/RAM combination, WoW is a CPU bound game. Pop open the game and take a look at your task manager. Check your usage of CPU, RAM, and Video memory. Then also check the the activity of your storage, nothing should be pegged at 100% activity.
yeah, the game was installed on a SSD with around 130 free gbs. Been that way for a long time, at least three years pretter much. This draw distance thing only just now started to become a detrimental thing.
I tried reinstalling it on a HDD with a lot more space just to see if the direct connection (not by usb like the SDD) would matter, but since it hasn’t i’ll be putting it on the SDD again.
Although it doesn’t seem like reinstalling is the solution, so idk.
i’d get this fading thing if it happened while dragonriding, but it’s super distracting to just be running around mountless and have fences and stuff only appear when you get close.
Yeah, I said content newer than and including SL, TWW is included in that. (not limited to those, but those expansions have highly detailed environments with tons of props and assets where you’d likely notice it more often)
And you’re 100% positive that you just didn’t notice it before? You said you upgraded video cards, so your eyes are probably still in a “can I see a difference” comparison mode where you’re paying more attention to things than normal.
It will happen everywhere. If you could sprint as fast as you dragonride, you’d still see it. They aren’t going to branch asset streaming code and material shaders for dragonriding vs non-dragonriding traversal.
Don’t play open world games from USB, it adds a ton of latency to the loading of assets.
Task manager shows neither CPU or GPU at hundred percent while the game is running. It’s only ever peaked that high for a second or so when launching the game. Highest cpu usage when playing is 60-70% and that’s in lfr. the gpu is usually 30%, less outside lfr. they’ve def never reached 100% load in open world.
I also tried restoring nvidia control panel settings to default to no change.
Processor’s a i5-9400f, 2.90. gpu is a GeForce RTX 4060 8GB GDDR6. it replaced an older nvidia card with weaker specs (6gb gddr 5) because i decided i should start upgrading things. including cpu.
i’m aware that wow is cpu intensive.
the ram has been 32 gigs for a long time, and the game was on an external SSD when this problem began.
Nonetheless, even with the older i5 and weaker GPU, things rendering at such a distractingly close range wasn’t a problem i was having until a day ago. I only got desperate enough to make a forum post because i’ve tried everything i can think of to no avail.
at this point the only thing i haven’t tried is putting the old graphics card back in.
i did order a new processor ( i7-9700K 3.6 GHz) before this issue cropped up.
Likely it’s because of graphic’s card ram as other post said the game picks what it loads because of limited ram, I’m reading and seeing mention that most games have some sort of problem when using 8gig’s ram, in systems including Micro stutters and other problems and even similar to what you’re experiencing.
maybe, idk though. cause the older card only had 6 and it wasn’t happening to such a noticible extent then.
I guess it’s possible but it would be kind of weird that the older GPU didn’t have this problem with its weaker specs.
Ironically gw2 hasn’t given me nearly as many performance headaches as WoW (there’s no super obvious fade ins there) and I would have thought that game would be more demanding.
I suppose if this doesn’t resolve I’ll just have to try asking for new hardware next time the holidays roll around.
No, they do not, so long as the game’s demand for VRAM isn’t higher than what the card has. WoW barely uses 5gb in Valdrakken(still one of the mostly highly demanding areas in the game) on fully maxed out settings with raytracing on high…
Can you record a short clip of it happening and post it to imgur.com or something? I think the clips have to be under 60 seconds and under some file size(probablly <100-300mb). This would help rule a lot of things out.