Blizzard Entertainment is making an important upgrade to the graphics of "World of Warcraft" in time for an overall shadow-themed expansion: ray tracing. This week, the alpha version of "World of Warcraft" added a "Ray Traced Shadows" option: currently disabled, but users with RTX-capable graphics cards will benefit.

This is obviously a complete option, and it is highly unlikely that WoW will soon be stuck in anything less than a ham sandwich, but there are certainly a significant number of people excited about the graphics update.

This is not the only thing that World of Warcraft will be new in the new expansion. The game will add a number of new faces to the character models that model greater facial diversity, including different face and nose shapes. Raytracing options include three levels of detail, from Fair to High, but we don't know at this time who has an RTX card and lacks the processor to handle the highest settings.

If you are not sure why this is a big deal or what it means, please refer to our guide on ray tracing and RTX, which explains what ray tracing means in various games. If you don't know about Shadowlands, here's everything we know about WoW's big new expansion.

Thanks, Wowhead.