So I'm a long-time WoW player but new to Dalaran and having a serious issue with my fps.

I have a pretty hefty pc (not laptop) and I'm running lowest everything and still getting a max of 14 fps. I haven't even left the starting area because I've been so frustrated trying to fix this issue. Suggestions? Running GeForce 980ti with Windows 10.

1. Check if your internet bandwidth is quite stable & high enough.
2. Check if there is sufficient RAM available for running the game. Windows 10 already consumes a lot of RAM.
3. Make sure you're running only those many addons that your system can handle.
4. Check if anything is touching and or blocking the area near the fans close to CPU. It can drastically reduce FPS if the air is unable to pass outside.

Cheers

Thank you. I'm only using 31% memory with WotLK running so that shouldn't be the problem. I switched to quad core which improved it about 2 fps but no more. Even with fully lowered graphics it's still terrible.

The only addons are the ones that came with the installation and they are all labeled Blizzard. Are there any I should delete?

I am really stumped on this. I never had a problem running the actual game on my old laptop and this pc is much better than that.

It sounds like you should be getting MUCH better performance.

Open the Task Manager (right-click the taskbar) and go to the Performance tab, while the game is running. Check for anything over ~66% on the hardware utilisation meters. It might also help to provide the computer's spec by just clicking every of those utilisation meters and reading the top right label for CPU, Memory, all Disks, and GPU.

You said you had no custom addons to begin with, so leave the Blizzard stuff as it is. I wouldn't worry with msconfig for now, unless you know what you're doing. It's also probably not the network since the issue is FPS and not lag, plus you were playing on a device that worked fine.

Do you have any issues anywhere else than in WoW? Do you play other intensive games, how are they running? Is your computer case strangely hot, are the fans ridiculously noisy?

What do you mean by "I switched to quad-core", by the way?

All of my intensive games run great; I play Fallout, AC Odyssey, and Witcher 3 with ultra graphics and zero issues.

WoW is using 97% of the CPU when running, if that's what you mean. I have a 3.5 ghz processor, 16gb memory.

I read that I should manually change the WTF note to use all cores instead of only 2 so I wrote a line in the script, which marginally improved it.

Are you saying that your total CPU usage is at 97% in the Performance tab? Or that the Wow.exe process is using 97% of the current utilization on the Processes tab?

Either way, the fact that your other games run great kinda remove CPU overwork/overheating as the culprit. Sounds like the issue is specific to WoW.

Try moving the entire WTF folder out of the WoW directory, this will effectively reset all the options. How does it run now? Try checking or unchecking the "Hardware Cursor" options - try both.

I doubt that's the issue but it takes a minute to verify that your videos drivers are up-to-date, from the NVidia Control Panel.

You could browse the Event Viewer and check the "Custom Views -> Administrative Events" for errors, but it usually takes a bit of experience to be able to decipher anything from there. Still, there might be something ~obvious for you to follow-up on.

I've made a quick search and I wouldn't worry about CPU cores usage. It seems unnecessary at best, and a possible source of issues at worst.

If none of this works, I'd consider "reinstalling" WoW.