Official GW and Mac thread

once again I would like to bump this thread. with a update?

Anyone know if you still cant play GW on the new macs? The new emulators are pretty strong and so are the macs.

Can be done?

Hey

I'm playing GW on a MacBook (standard, not pro). It's running alright @ 20-30 FPS.

As for your questions regarding emulators, I have tried Cross-Over and Parallels. The first worked alright, but many problems happened, for instance some times when I would load an area the game would just freeze and I had to Force Quit Crosover & GW. As for Parallels, there were reports of GW running on it; unfortunately when I tried it I experienced insane graphics issue (<1 fps) even when forcing the game to run in DX8.

I did a lot of research about it and I resolved myself to purchase OS 10.5 (Leopard) and install Windows through Bootcamp to run Guild Wars natively. I only had XP SP1 though and Bootcamp REQUIRES SP2 (or Vista) so I did some more research and learned about a technique called slipstreaming where you pretty much copy your Windows XP SP1 CD and patch the files with SP2 files and burn it all/install. I followed a guide (you can easily find one by searching google) and everything went good, and now I play Guild Wars on Windows on my MacBook.

Hope that helped

I also have Leopard, and run Boot Camp - just boot into XP sp2 (I hate Vista with a passion) and there ya go. I'm on a dual core 2.16 2gb MacBook Pro -- I get roughly 30 fps and it works pretty well.

Im just checking that GW works on macs... Is that right?

Ummmm I am pretty sure it doesn't. Cause I had looked into buying a mac but I am pretty sure guild wars wouldn't work with it so I didn't get one. BUT that was awhile back so I don't know 100%

No, as has been complained about numerous times here.

If you want to run it, you have to have a dual-bootable Mac, running Boot Camp or Parallels or something simliar, with Windows installed. And even then it may not work.

I'll see if I can dig up some links. Or you can just look around yourself.

Link. Knew it was around here somewhere.

No. You overpay for a mac to be trendy, not for it to be compatible with 90% of commercial software. Jeez.

Aaaaactually. I play daily. And from the Mac OS.
A wonderful application called CrossOver Games uses a Commercial Wine distribution to bring Guild Wars Functionality in full to the Mac OS.

The "tips" Section on it says to disable shaders, and revert to dx8, but I'm running full graphics, no special options and it runs fine.

I'd recommend downloading the Demo and giving it a try. Your mileage may vary.

If you insisted on running GW on OSX then emulator is the only way but like the guy above me said it's not 100% and you wont get the full effect. Bootcamp is basically running Vista or XP (Sp2-3 only) on your Mac. Therefor you'll get the full bang.

Remember, these days it's not Mac vs PC, it's OSX vs Windows. But on Mac the two can pretty much co-exist on the same HD.

Ah no. What I meant was.. they Recommend turning off options.
I actually get better performance at a higher setting running it off of the Mac OS than running it while booted directly into Windows.

My Guess is that the video card is plagued by less overhead on the Mac Side than in XP.

The only downside to the Mac Side I've found is that you can't truly go Full Screen. Since I never went full screen before anyways, this didn't bother me at all.

Again, I'll mention though, it's running full speed (faster than on Windows), with full graphics settings.

^ I see, I only tried Wine a few times then decided to go with the dual boot option instead. I like to keep OS side for works related only.

Understood. And a good plan.

I was trying to get away from Windows once and for all. I'm close.
I only boot into XP now for 2142. All else, work included, is done through Mac OS.

The OS as a whole is just a more pleasant experience I guess.

See this thread.

Incidentally, I believe that WINE recently got upgraded to version 1.0, so anyone who tried it in the past might want to give it another chance.

Recently, I got a Mac for College, and I am wondering how someone would run Guild Wars on one.

I dug up a VERY (pre-factions) thread that hinted at the possibility that you could, but overall the thread did not sound very promising. It did state that Guild Wars was written with Direct-X, and maybe with the new Mac OS (which had not come out at the time the thread was written) you could make the jump.

If there is any way of playing Guild Wars on a MAC without installing a new OS, I would be greatly interested. Installing a new OS would be a last ditch option (probably on a portable hard drive) because otherwise I would not see the advantages of using a MAC in the first place.

Any Feedback would be most appreciated.

you have to use bootcamp and dual boot windows xp/vista to play GW on a mac. at least, it will give you the best results.

Thank You, I'm going to do that once I get to college.

well said

Is that possible? I searched in internet and I could not fount that it's impossible but on the other hand I did not found that it's possible. m?

Best solution i've seen is using Bootcamp to install wXP (sp2) or vista and then boot up in windows. I can even play it on a +2 year old macbook (though at fps15 max :P). Which means any INTEL based mac should be able to run GW in windows avarage.

Other solution i've heard is using the commercial program 'Crossover', but i don't know what the performance is like.