While clicking wow.exe a Command Line Help error message came up with red circle with white X in the middle, and something like the following message:
World of Warcraft usage:
d3d11 legacy Force Gx to use DirectX11 Legacy backend
d3d11 Force Gx to use Direct X 11 backend
d3d12 Force Gx to use Direct X 12 backend
-allow SoftwareRendererer Allow game to run on the Software Renderer (performance will be bad)
-enable MemoryStackTraces0 Enable stack trace capture for memory allocations on startup
-fullscreen Force game to launch in windowed fullscreen mode
-windowed Force game to launch in windowed mode
-nosound Disable sound
-console Enable in-game console (default key -)
-version -v Print version number
(major.minor.patch.build_number)
-help Prints this help output
-gluescript Lua code run at the glue screens
-gamescript Lua code run once in-game
gluescriptFile File containing Lua code run at the glue screens
-gamescriptFile File containing Lua code run once in-game
I hit the OK button and it went away. I don’t know how I brought up the message or what it means. Do you know?
Yeah it’s weird. I especially don’t like the part of it that says (performance will be bad). The thoughts that cross my untechnical mind are…“is this a VIRUS?? Is someone hacking me??”
I’ve had this issue since before the Shadowlands expansion was released. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling but to no end. But as a matter of fact, I remember that it started after I downloaded WoW onto a new laptop. That can’t be the reason. My dad and I are clueless as how to proceed.
Does anyone know if you can directly contact someone from Blizzard and explain this to them?
This type of error message usually means the game is complaining about an invalid command line argument. When you go to launch an exe file like WoW.exe through a shortcut or through the launcher, it will try and execute any launch arguments that are set up.
All of the dash commands that are listed above are command line arguments for WoW. For example if you wanted to force the game to launch in windowed mode (instead of fullscreen) you would use -windowed
There are two places that these arguments can be set up.
In the Battle.net app, click on the Blizzard logo at the top left and go to Settings -> Game Settings -> World of Warcraft
If the option “Additional command line arguments” is checked, simply uncheck it to disable those launch options.
If that option was not already enabled and you are using a WoW icon on your desktop to launch the game, right-click on the WoW shortcut icon on the desktop and go to Properties.
In the Target field look at the end of the line and see if there are any dash commands there. If so, delete them and ensure there’s no extra spaces after the last quotation mark, save it and then try launching the game again.