wow Shadowlands Pre-patch Black Character Screen Has Returned

[Starym 3,800]

 

Update: this is also now happening on Shadowlands launch, but everything below is still valid, just wait!

Many players were having issues on patch day with login queues, only to fight through them all to finally reach their precious character screen. Except that wasn't what they found. The "Shadow" part of Shadowlands pre-patch came in with force and has now returned, as many more players are experiencing the sort-of-black-screen-of-death! This screen originally made its appearance back on the beta a while back, so it's been a known bug for quite some time, and hopefully it gets fixed soon.

Some players are reporting they got a game update after exiting and that fixed some of the issues, but some did not. This is also connected to the characters being gone from the server list, which you can see if you switch realms from the black screen. So if you're faced with the shadowscreen at least you know it's not just you!

The best solution we can suggest is one that worked for us, and that's simply staying on the character screen and waiting (while obviously tabbing out and doing something else for a while). Our characters popped back after about 15 minutes.

This seems to be a bigger issue than initially expected, as it's now persisted for 2+ days, and while we're sure Blizzard are on it, it might remain present for a while still. Here are just a few of the reddit posts on the matter:

• Black screens when logging in
• the game worked yesterday and today i'm stuck on this...
• All my characters are gone?

[Starym 3,800]

Funny story, after I got my char screen back i logged into Druid, loading screen AAAND stuck forever at 80% ? Back to the 15 min wait!

[Starym 3,800]

Here's another method a player mentioned over on twitter:

For us a simple PC restart fixed it.
I would also suggest updating your graphics driver while you are at it.

— Mandus (@valar_mandus) October 15, 2020

[Antimagic 26]

1 hour ago, Starym said:

Funny story, after I got my char screen back i logged into Druid, loading screen AAAND stuck forever at 80% ? Back to the 15 min wait!

I can confirm logging on to a druid fucks up u`r game. 

I manage to pass the black screen by adjusting some graphic settings but not sure what i did.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Antimagic

[D3monaz 3]

Why the hell did I just log out for a sec.... ? It worked fine until that.

[D3monaz 3]

14 minutes ago, Antimagic said:

I can confirm logging on to a druid fucks up u`r game. 

I manage to pass the black screen by adjusting some graphic settings but not sure what i did.

Well for me a restart and graphic driver update solved the problem...for now

[Zimzane 0]

 Hello 🙂 I have not been able to log in to WOW since the launch of Shadowlands. I wished to share the solution that I found regarding my own  inability to connect. I logged in to the game after the launch to a black screen with music playing, able to move the cursor but with nothing to click. I had updated every everything to no avail, reinstalled the game, deleted and removed programs like Overwatch, to remove a potential overlay issue, etc, etc.

   I was unable to change Directx settings from the log in screen as there was nothing to click to access the menu function. I had been advised to change Directx settings as a possible solution but had no idea as to how without being able to do so in game. I finally found a way to do so from the desktop. I am sure that such an approach is laughably obvious to you, but was unknown to me. 

   If WOW is using DirectX 12, try switching to DirectX 11. If WoW is using DirectX 11, try switching to DirectX 11 Legacy. Go to your World of Warcraft Folder > WTF > open config.wtf with notepad and find the line that says (SET gxAPI “d3d11”) and change it to (SET gxAPI “d3d12”) if it says (SET gxAPI “d3d12”) then change it to (SET gxAPI “d3d11”).

  From my admittedly limited understanding, this simply allowed the game to open in Directx 11, instead of Directx 12. Understanding that I could use the dropdown menu to select Notepad as the option to open the config.wtf file also was a simple step I overlooked initially, thinking I had to download an app to open the config.wtf file. As it seems quite a few people with older and at times cranky systems were experiencing this issue still, I thought that this approach that finally worked for me might prove of use for others.