World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Ray Tracing settings spotted

With World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, gamers with RTX graphics cards, or cards capable of brute-forcing the feature, will be able to turn on Ray Tracing.

The World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Ray Tracing options have been spotted in the form of Ray Traced shadows. Don’t worry, this isn’t World of Warcraft Fake News.

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World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Ray Tracing

The World of Warcraft Ray Tracing options were added to the Shadowlands alpha in the latest update, but at the time of writing, players cannot enable the settings just yet.

When these Ray Tracing settings do become available, players with NVIDIA RTX graphics cards will be able to enjoy more realistic shadows, while some other high-end graphics cards might be able to run the options, but expect a significant frame-rate drop, if you attempt such madness.

The World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Ray Tracing shadow options include three levels, namely Fair, Good, and High. WoWHead user Jaydaa provided a screenshot of the settings, which you can check out below.

Ray Tracing settings in WoW: Shadowlands alpha (Picture: WoWHead)

Multiple Global Strings have also been found in the Shadowlands Alpha code, namely:

RT_SHADOW_QUALITY – Ray Traced Shadows
VIDEO_OPTIONS_RT_SHADOW_QUALITY_FAIR – Ray Traced Shadows from directional light sources at reduced resolution.
OPTION_TOOLTIP_RT_SHADOW_QUALITY – Improves shadow quality with ray tracing, which produces shadows with more natural softness, greatly increased precision, and from additional light sources.
VIDEO_OPTIONS_RT_SHADOW_QUALITY_HIGH – Ray Traced Shadows from directional and local light sources at full resolution.
VIDEO_OPTIONS_RT_SHADOW_QUALITY_MEDIUM – Ray Traced Shadows from directional and local light sources at reduced resolution.

It remains to be seen when exactly Blizzard plans to enable these Ray Traced shadow options in World of Warcraft. We can definitely expect it to be released with the Shadowlands expansion.