I have my main running on "pretty" mode
and my slaves on "ugly" mode, check it out:
(i know i posted this as a reply to another thread, but this deserves its own thread imho)

shamelessly stolen from another forum:
Make WoW nicer with a few console commands
As surprising as it sounds, some people found a way to make WoW look nicer just by typing a few console commands. The best way to do that would be to create a macro with the following commands.

/console groundEffectDensity 256
/console groundEffectDist 140
/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console farclip 777
/console characterAmbient 0
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 3



Obviously, it will probably lower your framerate a little and you can revert the changes by typing the following :

/console groundEffectDensity 16
/console groundEffectDist 1
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console farclip 177
/console characterAmbient 1
/console smallcull 1
/console skycloudlod 1
/console detailDoodadAlpha 1


Here's a bit of description about what each setting do.

/console groundEffectDensity 256
This controls how densely natural terrain is covered with small details like grass or small rocks. 64 seems to be the max value you can set for this in video options

/console groundEffectDist 140
This controls how far around you those details are rendered. 140 also seems to be the max value you can set in video options

/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
Not sure about the exact effect this have yet

/console horizonfarclip 2112
This controls how far away that terrain is rendered. Setting it past the value here can make the game try to render terrain that has not yet been loaded into memory, causing it to appear suddenly out of nowhere as you move closer. Note that this only really affects how your horizon line will look since most of the stuff out there will be covered in fog.


/console farclip 777
This controls how far away from you that the fog will be drawn. Max value in video options seem to be 750. You may want to increase this a bit more than 777. I use 1000.

/console characterAmbient 0
When set to 1, all sides of a character will be lightened up using the same value for color and brightness. When 0, it looks more naturally lightened by light coming from the relevant directions.

/console smallcull 0
When set to 0, some small models (but not all) will still be drawn even when you're not close to them, rather than fading out.

/console skycloudlod 3
This only really have an effect in areas that don't use a skybox model (all outland zones do, as well as some instances in Azeroth like Stratholme and Dire Maul).


there you go, enjoy