Guild Wars and OSX: WINE/WineBottler and other solutions

What you need to do:

1) download WineBottler and run the file

2) drag the Wine and WineBottler icons to your Applications folder, same way you install everything

3) click on WineBottler in your Applications folder

4) Go to "Install Predefined Prefixes", find Guild Wars, and then Install

That's it. It'll reside in your Applications folder like a shortcut. Click it and run. If you ever need to access your files, you can find them in <user>/Library/Application Support/Wine/prefixes/Guild Wars.

LIMITATIONS:

* you'll probably want to turn vsync off for performance reasons

* likewise, if you use the default Exposé and Dashboard hotkeys, go to System Preferences/Keyboard and turn those off (by default those use F9-F12 which GW also uses)

* you can't run in true fullscreen mode (at least as far as I've found)

* when adventuring in EOTN areas, and particularly in EOTN dungeons, set your Texture Quality and Terrain Quality to Medium (from within Guild Wars: Menu / Options / Graphics). There's a bug (more here) having to do with a OSX driver workaround that crashes in those areas due to a texture loading thing. I BELIEVE that Terrain Quality is the main culprit but am not sure. Setting EVERYTHING to off/low always seems to work, if nothing else does. You can simply turn these down when you're about to go into an EOTN dungeon, and then turn them back up again once you're out. There may be something to change in the prefix section to work around this, as well.

Other than the above limitations I've run into no issues after a couple three weeks of playing GW this way.

I don't want to promote anything but to play GW on your Mac it's better to use Wineskin instead.Unlike WineBottler it uses its own X11 server and you can run in fullscreen mode with your default screen resolution.Anyway I have been building Guild Wars ports for OS X for some time now and many people already have been using it.So if you just want to play this game without any hassle or configuring stuff and want to have a free solution instead paying for Crossover or anything else at all just visit my site and download the Guild Wars client/port for Mac.

But what the heck if you're fine with Winebottler just stick with it, like I always say if ArenaNet won't bring it to our platform then we will...

Blint: interesting! I went ahead and changed the topic to reflect that. We'll see if anyone else chimes in with OSX solutions. Do your builds have the same crashing problem as WINE and Crossover? Crashing in certain dungeons in EOTN areas if your graphic settings are too high?

The problem when having crashes or graphic issues is not to fully blame on Wine hence the fact that running Wine on GNU/Linux systems to run Guild Wars is almost perfect and in some cases in the past it even runs better then using Windows instead.

In your case when using Winebottler the problem is to point at X11.Apple develops it's own version of X11 to run on OS X and since Winebottler needs it to run any app or in this case Guild Wars.But since Apple develops its own version of it it also creates a new problem with it, it almost never gets updated and Apple does not support Wine to get it working better.But if you want to stick with Winebottler I do recommend using XQuartz since those developers updates X11 more often then Apple does for OS X.So basicly its not Wine to fully blame on when having issues although those devs are making it compatible with OS X every release but it also has to do with (native) X11/XQuartz on OS X.

So this brings me to the fact why I'm using Wineskin to build my Guild Wars Mac client/ports for the public.When building a port with it it includes it's own latest compiled version of X11/XQuartz thus when having problems with it I can contact the dev and see if he also notice any bugs or regressions with a particular build/port.But to make things clear even with my public Mac client for Guild Wars even your Mac system can run into crashes and problems when running the game cause lets face it, even Wine and X11/XQuartz has bugs no matter which port/build from whatever Wine fork your using for the Mac.

P.s. If you are just visiting this topic to get your hands on my GW Mac client/port then visit my site here.Or if many people want me to do, I can create a new topic just for my port instead.If not you can find my stuff also on InsanlyMac or MacRumors as well if thats more easier for you...Anyway just use whatever you want to run this game on your Mac.All is good as long as it works for you

Overall, it would seem, given your list of limitations, that the best thing is still to install Windows XP or 7 using bootcamp. Why would you want to run GW in some half-assed manner?

Also, I'm curious about what sort of performance issues would involve vsync?

First of all running apps and games in Wine is not really half-assed as you say.The trick in this case is more getting Wine compatible with Mac instead of getting Guild Wars compatible with Wine.But like I said devs at Wine already made Wine compatible with OS X and therefore you can run Guild Wars just as fine as other GNU/Linux distro's and it gets better with every new release.And most important using Wine it's a free solution instead using Bootcamp where you have to restart and must be using an legal copy of Windows (officially).

But like I stated in my post above it's more X11/XQuartz to blame when having issues but these days those problems are mostly been solved and running GW with Wine on your Mac is almost as good as running it native, although in my case with my ports.So like a said before if you want to play this game on your Mac with Wine you can sure make a try,just remember to read the requirements of the Wine fork your using and your good to go.

Does textmod work for the mac client if I run it through crossover?

Haven't ever worked with textmod itself by using any Wine fork or even Crossover.Although I do think the graphical changes you make for the game itself will work with Wine/Crossover.But just to say I never tested it or used it.

Just got BlintWave's app running on my Mac. Works great so far, hung out in Kamadan and my GH with no problems!

Thanks for the easy solution!

Have any of you guys used Crossover and find that it's a bit choppy? I'm not sure if it's just me, I downloaded Crossover 9.2 yesterday and installed it, and so far its okay except it's a bit low on frame rates compared to windows (I'm not a computer genius but I'm guessing it has to do with something on the OSX side) Whenever I run around ingame my steps show up as golden cubes on the ground and don't disappear, it's weird.. Would you guys recommend me changing from Crossover to one of those ones you have mentioned above?

EDIT: ** I'm not sure if it makes a difference or not since I'm rather new to MAC, but does it matter if I downloaded Crossover off a website? (I got it for free and it still works idk)

Thanks in advance.

If you got the software from CodeWeavers official website it's ok and you have the right one.Just be sure to get Crossover Games when you want to run GuildWars since that version of Crossover has been tweaked for games in overall.Just to say if you not have payed for it or you are not an Advocate then you can only use it for an limited time.But to answer your other question to change from Crossover to something other for example my port...it's really up to you.I would say just give both options a try and see what solution works the best for you and stick with it

Having issues with getting this to work. I have Wine Bottler installed. I am able to see GW.exe and when I go to open the file it starts a process but GW never starts. The desktop screen just sits there and I am able to operate the computer as normal GW just never opens. I can select the GW application under spotlight and a small pop-up says it is launching and the bar is maybe 3/4 across the screen. The normal GW icon is not showing up for me in the wine application files. I then go into wine and click on the GW.exe file and select run from the menu and the actual GW screen pops up with the red message saying that GW is unable to start because another file of it is already running.

Can anyone help me out? The little popup menu with the blue meter on the bottom has not had any progress in that last hour. I have uninstalled and tried to re-install wine from a different website and I am having the same issues.


Nevermind. Got it to work with wineskin.