Hello, everyone! I’ve been struggling with the following issue for quite a while and have yet to find a way to resolve it.
Ever since the BfA pre-patch hit, the colors in my client have been off - they are way too dark and muddy. I am 100% sure it’s not my monitor, because it’s a high-end calibrated IPS. It’s also not a software/GPU issue, because I have not seen this problem in any other game.
I have tried to correct the colors by playing around with the Contrast/Brightness/Gamma sliders and although I have achieved a playable state, some places still look washed out, whereas shadows are way too dark. I just can’t get it right. Shadowlands looks absolutely gorgeous in the demos and I really want to experience it the way it’s meant to be played, so if anyone can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.
I see 3 possible solutions to this, but I don’t know how to implement them myself:
- Forcing the WoW Client to use Desktop gamma - it seems to me that my client is ignoring the calibrated settings and going for its own. Is there any way I could force it to use desktop colors/gamma?
- Using the client contrast/brightness/gamma settings along with a hardware calibration tool - I could use my calibrator to help me out in getting the settings right, but I need to somehow display a RGB / black / white square in-game. An AddOn maybe?
- The easy way out - if someone with a calibrated monitor, who has managed to get the colors right, could share their contrast / gamma / brightness settings with me, that would be great.
Obviously, I would prefer solution 1, but beggars can’t be choosers.
To sum up, I know it’s a nitpicker’s problem, but I also know the game can look stunning, if I can just get it right. I would really appreciate your input on this.
Thank you in advance and have a great day!
Hello Crissea! o/
So the issue you have could have quite alot of causes and will require alot of tinkering. I know you mentioned you already checked if it was happening in other games however do make sure your graphics card driver is up to date all the same. It’s a great first step as it can cause a number of issues if its out of date.
Secondly, washed out colours may be caused by a simple setting on the monitor. Some newer monitors can come with alot of different “settings” such as Movie mode or Gaming mode and they have pre-determined gamma and colour settings. Make sure the setting is on default and is not getting automatically adjusted when you launch World of Warcraft.
If you have that checked off, the next step is to double check the advanced system settings ingame. From there you can adjust the brightness, contrast and gamma and while you can’t force it to desktop settings via a checkbox, you can adjust the sliders to see if it has any impact. Generally though if you are running it in Windowed mode, it will inherit the settings that you have set in Windows.
I could keep going with more solutions but I think the basics should cover it. If not, do take a picture of what you are seeing and that way we can maybe get a better idea of what’s going on. I would also in the response include some system files. To show them better in your forum thread response, you can use a website like Pastebin and then copy the link into your response.
Hello, Jingoraitin, and thank you so much for replying! Considering how niche the issue is and, as you said, the amount of tinkering it would require to fix, I really do appreciate your help!
I have updated my GPU driver as requested. I also double checked, if a specific color/gamma profile gets loaded by my monitor when I launch WoW, but that is not the case. I also tried Windowed mode instead of Windowed (Fullscreen) - still no change.
Under advanced system settings, I have been trying to tinker with the Contrast/Brightness/Gamma sliders, but I can’t get it right. I am just offsetting the problem by fixing colors, but making shadows worse. Then fixing shadows and breaking colors again etc. This is the core of the issue.
I have taken some screenshots for you using the default Contrast 50, Brightness 50 and Gamma 1.0 settings, as requested. I think these 3 showcase what I am seeing best. I took two of them inside an instance to control for the time of day influencing the lighting. I apologize for the crude link formatting, but I am not allowed to post links for some reason.
- HoV muddy colors: imgur. com/a/QCr87Jc
- SoO shadows: imgur. com/a/QcJ2K3a
- Mage Class Hall: imgur. com/a/Mu9pjO9
Here are my MsInfo and DxDiag files:
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MsInfo: pastebin. com/1LCUBP3P (I have cut out the Windows Error Reporting section to fit into Pastebin’s 512 KB guest limit. I looked through it - it’s mostly my Corsair keyboard software flooding it with junk reports. Nothing unusual, as far as I can see.)
-
DxDiag: pastebin. com/08h3fmbq
I believe this is everything. Thank you once again for your time and help! I am looking forward to your reply!
Thanks so much for the extensive reply!
So out of the three pictures, the last one is the one im going with as it gives a good representation of things looking darker than they should. The first two are kinda hard because thats how they generally look, particularly the second one which is supposed to be a dark tunnel 
The third image as I say does show things looking darker than they should but the texture is not lost meaning luckily its not so much a driver or hard drive issue with the texture not being rendered or loaded. Likely this is being caused by a setting that’s overriding something or “optimizing” something for gameplay.
In your system files I noticed you have several programs aimed at optimizing or otherwise affecting games in general and I do recommend disabling those. The programs are:
- MSI Command Center (often used to overclock hardware and change settings)
- RivaTuner Statics (sometimes has a knock on performance affect)
- MSI Nahimic (specifically has a sound overlay that is known to cause display issues)
- Corsair Utility Engine (has the ability to modify power settings which could affect performance by reducing power to hardware such as the graphics card)
- Nvidia Overlay (can be disabled via the Geforce Experience program)
- Razer Game Manager (will optimise settings for games regardless of how they are launched)
Speaking on the last one, I would recommend disabling or uninstalling the Razer suite of programs for troubleshooting as they have been found to cause a few random issues in certain hardware setups.
It’s a long list but hopefully that helps narrow things down and fingers crossed it has some improvement for you! 
Hello again, Jingoraitin! Many thanks for the prompt and detailed reply! Looking through all of that information must not have been easy.
When I have time in the next few days, I will troubleshoot my client by disabling the programs you have listed. I really do hope that brings the improvement I am expecting.
However, if disabling the above programs does not bring an improvement, I might have to go back to tinkering with the Contrast/Brightness/Gamma sliders in the advanced graphics settings. I know this may be too much to ask, but could you provide me with 4-5 reference screenshots from the game to help me adjust the sliders? People have their graphics settings all over the place, so simply looking through YouTube for reference doesn’t help all that much. I believe the issue can be considered resolved after that.
In any case, thank you so much for the great customer service! If there is a survey I can fill out, please don’t hesitate to send me a link!