Guild Wars 2

Dear Ascalonians,

I’m trying to recruit my girlfriend into playing GW2 with me, but we have some hurdles to jump here.

The largest is that she only owns a mac laptop. It’s a macbook pro (2.3 GHz duo processor, 2 gigs of RAM, video card is an ATI with 256MB VRAM (Can’t find a name for it sadly)) with the snow leopard OS on it. We do have the WinOnX program as well, but we have some concerns with it as the previous version had issues with GW2. It’s been updated since, but there’s no documentation on its performance of GW2.

So, my questions are thus –
Will GW2 even run on her system?
If it can, what program would best emulate windows on her mac? We have WinOnX, which sounds like it has worked, but is there another? We wouldn’t object to spending a little money if needed.
With that program, are there any technical things we should know about before jumping into this? Such as do we need a separate partition for it? Should we have some background programs running to improve performance? And more…

@Tobias.2397

The lowest level of MacBook Pro I could find with a 2.3 GHz CPU and an ATI with 256 MB of RAM would meet the minimum requirements. However, just barely. So keep in mind that while you should be able to install and run the game, performance may not be too good.

So here’s the scoop: there’s no official support for GW2 on a Mac. There’s many ways to do it, but the only way Anet will officially support you is Bootcamp. Using Bootcamp, you can actually install Windows on a Mac. Once you run Windows, it’s as simple an install as for every other Windows based computer.

To learn more about Bootcamp, head on over to Apple’s site: http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

I’m going to make it easy on you and just say no, it won’t run. Normally if you are gaming on a mac with a game that is windows only you should boot camp your mac to run windows. Your girlfriends mac is perfectly capable of performing this portion of the task, but running GW2 on a 2009 macbook pro is highly unlikely.

It would lag like no other, and even if you did feel it was running “ok” it would heat up like hell and possibly damage her laptop in the long haul.

My suggestion would be not to do it.

Not quite the answers we wanted to hear, but at least they are honest! It sounds more like we need to get her a new system then, instead of trying to work with the laptop, but if there are any other suggestions, I’d be glad to hear them!

Thank you all for your time.

I may be biased here, but you know everything in a mac is the same components in a PC? So realistically you are paying more than double for a logo and an OS. That’s it. 80% of new games aren’t even compatible with macs, so if you two are gamers, I would suggest using your mac for media/browsing and invest in a gaming machine, because macs are not that.

My solution: Spend 500 bucks and get a decent lap top / pc that can run it on med settings. You can even rent decent gaming lap tops from like ezhome or a leasing place for 100 bucks a month or less. Leasing sucks and is a rip off long term, but if you get a “no hassle return” store, you can pay 100 bucks and play GW2 on med/high for a month while you save for a better rig.

@Tobias.2397

I’m not sure it is indeed a 2009 MacBook. If you want to post the serial number some of us can do a quick lookup to see your specs better, we’re left relatively in the dark here.

However, a new computer is a fun toy and will make her happy too

Im playing on my mac book pro and I run at high settings 50+FPS, 30+ in WvWvW. I installed windows 7 via bootcamp and then installed GW2 like normal. Macs = Pro..just saying

Ghyst.8671:

Macs = Pro..just saying

lol! Yeah. So pro you have to install PC software to play a game. I won’t hate anymore on you mac guys but jesus christ don’t say stupid things like that

I’m playing this game on my 2009 mac mini, just up your ram and it sud just play fine, don’t expect high level graphics thou. And do it in bootcamp windows and as it would be better.

And to others, gaming for mac is fine, as long as the game has a mac client, I play D3, L4D2 and portal on my 2009 mac mini and this small computer can handle those game just fine.

Btw mac IS pro.

The PC vs Mac argument does nothing but make both sides look stupid. Take it to a hardware forum!

OP: I wouldn’t attempt to run GW2 on an older Mac via anything other than Boot Camp and actually booting in to Windows proper. I’ve tried other methods (Wine, PlayOnMac, Parallels, VMWare Fusion etc) and run in to issues. That’s not to say that those other methods wont improve, but for now booting in to Windows is going to be the easiest and best-performing option, especially on older hardware.

The video card in a Macbook Pro will shut the system down long before it gets hot enough to damage anything, but your girlfriend may need to get used to listening to the system fans running at full-blast every time she plays!

Wow, I didn’t expect to generate so many responses! Here’s more info about the laptop, and I’ll be as detailed as possible.

She has:
Model identifier: MacbookPro2,1 . It was purchased back in 2007 as a graduation present. I do not know where the year 2009 has come in.
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz.
2 GB DDR2 RAM
Graphics card : ATI Radeon X1600 (Name of the graphics card is hiding in plain sight >.>) with updated drivers and 256 MB VRAM
160GB Hard Drive 5400 RPM
17" display

According to the wikipedia page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro – It appears it came out Late 2006 as a first generation.

I’m technically minded enough to figure this stuff out, but couldn’t tell if she could run it. Really, the only thing that worries me is the graphics card. Even if the specs have to be turned down to minimum, it would still need to run at a decent framerate, to do all the dodges and such needed for play.

Thanks for all your interest in this. ^^

I run on a 4 year old laptop with a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo, 9600M GT card, and 3 gigs of ram. It’s a bit laggy, but mostly when big groups of people are around.

Tobias.2397:

Graphics card : ATI Radeon X1600 (Name of the graphics card is hiding in plain sight >.>) with updated drivers and 256 MB VRAM

The x1600 is weaker than the integrated GPU that is listed for the minimum requirement.

She might be able to run the game with low graphics, but events with lots of players and large battles in WvWvW would cause visual stuttering.

All you need to test it out is a version of Windows. Everything else to get Boot Camp going is on the OS X install DVD.

Only way to be sure, is to actually do it. And yes, bootcamp only.