Hi, I have a 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 MacBook Pro 16", 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4,AMD Radeon Pro 5600M 8 GB. Before Big Sur update (yesterday) I could play BETA and Retails at graphic settings 10. Since the upgrade, I can’t go above setting 5. Higher settings make the game very choppy and almost unplayable.
Please help
I have this issue too, can’t believe there’s not more of an outcry. I’m playing on a 2016 MacBook as I got rid of an older iMac I was playing on.
Before Big Sur came out, I was getting 60fps with a medium/low mix of settings. Now that I’ve upgraded to Big Sur, the game is unplayable on even the lowest settings.
There’s a horrible stutter every time I try to move. I’m not sure whether to blame Blizzard or Apple for this one… I’ll probably cancel until I’ve got a chance to buy a new M1 Mac. I heard there were some changes to Metal API so maybe Blizzard just needs to update WoW to fix the issues?
Other threads have discussed this.
After 1 day it fixed itself. Running smooth in graphic setting 8-10
I’ve had FPS issues at anything above 4 since Shadowlands was released. I haven’t upgraded to Big Sur yet. Playing on a 15" 2019 MacBook Pro. I used to get between 30-60 fps and now it rarely goes above 15-20 fps unless I turn the graphics settings down to 4 (and then I can only get 20-40 at best). Did not have this issue before 9.0
Shadowlands zone specifically are FAR more demanding do to an effect called volumetric fog, game labels it volumeFog
Currently it has no independant graphis sliders and is tied to particle density instead. This means whatever particle denisty you ran prior to shadowlands zones is not even remotely equiv in shadowlands zones, it’s like 100x more demanding. you can turn that setting down as much as possible to see if it helps.
Turning particle density way down improves my FPS to 20 at most.
I’ve tried adjusting each setting individually and can’t find what’s causing these FPS issues. I only see improvement when I use the general slider to turn everything down. Then I can get 60 fps again. But adjusting individual sliders/settings either doesn’t help at all or barely helps.
Also when I turn my settings way down I start having a different issue: sudden freezes where all my UI disappears/turns pixelated. This only happens when my graphics settings are lowered. So I have to choose between that or terrible FPS. 
Edit: Ok today I’m not getting the weird freezing on low settings (so far, was getting it last night) but now even with everything set to 4 or lower, I’m not getting more than 20 fps.
I know Shadowlands has better graphics than past expacs, but this is a fairly new, high performance MacBook that ran the game beautifully before Shadowlands even on high settings. Is it really expected that it would struggle even on low settings in Shadowlands? That doesn’t seem right…
volumeFogLevel “1” is listed in the Config.wtf file. Would setting it to 0 turn it off?
I’m told the particle density setting also changes volumeFog level/settings, which is less than ideal. So i guess answer is to turn down particle denisty (or off entirely) to control the fog.