I finally bought a new PC, and it came with an AMD “raise the game” promo that includes Shadowlands and Godfall. Apparently they email you the codes the day before the games launch.
I’m hoping I‘ll be able to do the Pre-patch event on several characters without Shadowlands applied to my account? I’m also wondering if the pre patch event quests will be required to start Shadowlands?
I don’t recall a time where you couldn’t play prepatch events without the new expansion applied. Even back in the old days where you had to wait in line to purchase the CD’s to install the game on the day of launch.
I don’t see how they could separate people who do and do not have the prepurchase from the prepatch events without phasing everyone considering a lot of it takes place in capital cities, which seems like more trouble than it’s worth when they want to get people hyped for the expansion.
I can’t verify however as the last few expansions I’ve always had it pre-purchased, this one included.
Cool thx Zipster!
Those are almost identical to the specs i’m running on my computer right now, with the only major difference being that I have the 3600x variant, as well as a few extra SSD drives. You’ll be happy to know that on beta i’m getting 60 FPS on full max settings. Though I can’t say how accurate that actually is because the frame rate doesn’t actually change if I move the slider anywhere on the scale… I get 60 fps on 1 or 10 settings no matter what I do with the settings. Perhaps some new limitation? or perhaps just a bug with the 5600 XT they haven’t worked out yet… Who knows? 
I’ve only logged in once since I got the new pc, and it was like 75-95 FPS in Ogrimmar. Haven’t gone to zones or dungeons yet I’m on a break. I ran a random google search at some point while shopping pc and saw a post of someone with the same problem as you maxed at 60 FPS. I think he had to change a windows setting to fix it. Or maybe it was a WoW setting you could change as administrator
I haven’t checked yet, but if my mobo can take a 3700x that would be a nice cheap upgrade in a few years. I have a GIGABYTE B450M DS3H Motherboard.
No. You will only need Shadowlands active for Shadowlands specific things, like creating a DK of any race.
Other optimizations for existing races, level squish, and class changes will be active for everyone regardless of purchase or not.
The last post in this thread someone offered a possible solution to the 60 FPS cap if you want to try.
Found it. Vertical Sync was enabled, which was locking me at 60 FPS as that’s the refresh rate of the TV that I play on.
No need for above 60 FPS of course as that’s all my my monitor can support, but it’s still fun seeing higher numbers. 
K, thx. I wonder if you will still need a 110 (50) Alliance Character before you can make an Allied race Alliance character. I don’t have any Alliance.
I have no idea about that. I hadn’t heard that has changed.
All I know about it is you don’t have to do the rep requirements anymore, just the unlock quests, whatever those are for each race.