Guild Wars 2

I have a late 2010 model MacBook Pro that is running 10.6.8. I’m really happy with 10.6.8, but if I need to upgrade to 10.7 in order to run this game on Mac, I will (begrudgingly) do so.

I have used 10.7 on a newer version of MacBook Pro (my mom owns a late 2011 model), and I do not care for it.

So, here is my concern. Will I still be able to play Guild Wars 2 on my (outdated?) MacBook Pro? I do not want to upgrade to an OS I will not enjoy for one game, only to find that I won’t be able to play it anyway due to hardware constraints. Here are the specs I’m running with. The only thing due to change will be my OS to the latest version of 10.7.

Computer/Processor/RAM
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 8 GB (2- 4gb DDR3 chips @ 1067MHz)
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Graphics Card
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 320M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCI
VRAM (Total): 256 MB

I don’t care about graphics quality or if I can run them at medium vs. low… I just want to be able to play.

just update your os lol x.x, sheesh i understand not upgrading from windows 7 to 8 but mac os update as so many new features and its better…plus u can talk to your mac to do stuff for you or tell it to read stuff when your to lazy ><

Well the question why not upgrading is irrelevant. I’m sure he/she has his/her reasons. For the performance question you should look at this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Post-your-performance-here/page/1

People are posting their performance + hardware so this should help you.

Haha, thanks for the insight Xelion. Maybe I haven’t given it a chance, but I’ve always resisted new OS upgrades. I suppose I’m just a fogey like that. XD

Kanako, thank you very much. I will post there.

Well, for some systems you gain absolutely nothing by upgrading the OS, my system is one of them. In fact, it is highly unlikely that upgrading the OS will allow my system to run GW2 using their port either. I suspect, based on their system specs, they are catering purely to the more recent hardware configurations and that if you have an older system, like 2010, you’re best bet is to use bootcamp.

pmiles, That is exactly what I was afraid of. When they said the processor needed to be an i5 and I only have a Core 2 Duo… But oh well.

You guys are really clueless – 10.6.8 was the last release of OS X that included Rosetta. Rosetta allows you to run older PowerPC software on an Intel system. 10.6.8 also was optimized for 32 bit and actually ran well on PPC and Intel. If you have older versions of Office, Photoshop, etc you are locked to 10.6.8

I took a chance and downloaded the beta (took about 14 hours[!] over my ISP connection) and can happily state that it works fine under 10.6.8 on a vintage 2007 iMac. This does not necessarily mean things will be hunky-dory on a MacBook, but the odds are good.

The only issue I have experienced is that the scroll button on the mouse has no effect (zooming the map, paging through pages in invetory, at al). As the scroll button’s functionality has alternative buttons in every case I’ve seen, that is a minor inconvenience at most.

(Incidentally, I am also running GW2 under Windows XP through Bootcamp on the same ancient iMac. No problems at all.)

I didn’t really mean “clueless” – hit enter too soon … what I meant to say was maybe some people can’t upgrade because of 10.6.8 being needed for other stuff. You can always dual boot — you might have to repartition your disk if it is a “MBR” style partition.

Kelkka.9086:

I took a chance and downloaded the beta (took about 14 hours[!] over my ISP connection) and can happily state that it works fine under 10.6.8 on a vintage 2007 iMac. This does not necessarily mean things will be hunky-dory on a MacBook, but the odds are good.

The only issue I have experienced is that the scroll button on the mouse has no effect (zooming the map, paging through pages in invetory, at al). As the scroll button’s functionality has alternative buttons in every case I’ve seen, that is a minor inconvenience at most.

(Incidentally, I am also running GW2 under Windows XP through Bootcamp on the same ancient iMac. No problems at all.)

Kelkka, I wonder if you’ve tried to play today? This is what greets me when I try to log in as of the patch this morning:

I have a 2010 MacPro 6-Core Intel Xeon with ATI Radeon HD 5870. There is nothing in Lion or Mountain Lion that will improve my system’s performance.

I run GW2 just fine under bootcamp… again, the port is written for newer hardware configurations, not older ones. It’s not that older Macs can’t run GW2, it just that the port doesn’t adequately support them.

This port is mostly for those who don’t have bootcamp. Compared to nothing at all, it’s better than nothing. But if you are already running it under Windows, you probably should just stick with it since you are not running a version of GW2 written for the Mac, but rather a port that allows you to potentially run it on a Mac.

Silvaria.7635:

Kelkka.9086:

I took a chance and downloaded the beta (took about 14 hours[!] over my ISP connection) and can happily state that it works fine under 10.6.8 on a vintage 2007 iMac. This does not necessarily mean things will be hunky-dory on a MacBook, but the odds are good.

The only issue I have experienced is that the scroll button on the mouse has no effect (zooming the map, paging through pages in invetory, at al). As the scroll button’s functionality has alternative buttons in every case I’ve seen, that is a minor inconvenience at most.

(Incidentally, I am also running GW2 under Windows XP through Bootcamp on the same ancient iMac. No problems at all.)

Kelkka, I wonder if you’ve tried to play today? This is what greets me when I try to log in as of the patch this morning:

This was happening for me today on both windows and on the Mac side. Fixed now, afaik.

Lion sucks, but fortunately the game will run in Snow Leopard still, despite having no support for it. Hmm.. Back to bootcamp I guess.

Maybe you’d clear up the confusion a bit more if you specified that you really don’t support the older graphics cards… because people running out to upgrade their OS may just find that the new OS doesn’t have any newer graphics drivers for their older cards than what they have now. A lot of people are trying to run GW2 under systems that don’t even remotely match your minimum requirements on the Mac mainly because it runs under bootcamp just fine.

Thank you for your response, Robert.
Personally, I agree with pmiles. Once the beta-testing is complete, please try to include a notice that upgrading the OS may not improve or allow gameplay, and to upgrade with caution (i.e.: other applications may be affected). An informed customer is a happy customer!
The game still runs well enough on 10.6.8 for me, for the moment. I can deal with that. I will merely log to Bootcamp on the weekends when I don’t have to log into my Mac partition to work.

All in all, your work is greatly appreciated. I was so pleased to find out there would be a Mac client. Thank you for taking the time and effort to supply it to us!!

Unless you are running some ancient Power PC applications that you can’t live without, there is nothing Snow Leopard offers you. By upgrading you will keep your system operating optimally for changing demands of software and hardware updates, and your system will be more secure from malware threats.

It’s not good to let your OS get too out of date… Little things like browser updates will cease to be supported if you let it go too long.

1. People, upgrade to mountain lion already. It’s like sticking to Windows XP even though Windows 7 is better.
Fine Lion wasn’t really that good, I found it ok, but not switching to ML? I don’t see the reason to.

2. The minimum requirements are for the Beta Client. Although I don’t believe anything before early 2010 can run the whole game satisfactorily. I have a modded MBP from 2009 and I am achieving 20-30 fps in not so crowded and detailed areas areas. And 5-10 in very crowded once and where lots of particles are happening (lions arch, WvW and Dungeons).

I’m not staying in the dark ages… I’m not upgrading because neither OS has anything that my system will make use of. Buying the latest shiny just doesn’t make sense. If I had a plethora of iOS devices (I have none), needed the Cloud (I don’t), happen to live in China (I don’t), etc. Both Lion and Mountain Lion are marketed for the iOS crowd and the laptop crowd. I don’t deal with either, thus upgrading would merely add a bunch of features that my system would never use… how is adding additional unused stuff improving my system? It’s not.

And your frame rates are just horrid for gaming, try it under bootcamp and get back to me how wonderful Lion/Mountain Lion is in regards to improving your frame rate.

@Chobiko: I have had my Windows XP disk for a long time, it was my last native Windows machine. I do not want to spend the money to buy a Windows OS disk (they are quite expensive) when I already have an XP install disk. So sticking to Windows XP when Windows 7 is (arguably) better, might be what someone needs to do if they do not want to fork up the money or just plain cannot afford it at the moment (plus, XP is still a solid OS).

@Silvaria I tri-boot my Mac (an early 2009 Mac) with Windows XP, Fedora, and Leopard(The only use I saw in Snow Leopard was improved PDF highlighting which wasn’t enough for me). TBH, I really dislike the new Lion and Mountain Lion systems and OS. I dislike the trackpad works like it would on an iPhone (bugs me – it is a computer, not a phone) and all the other extra junk to make it look like an iPhone/iPad. Plus, I have heard it is awful when working with Parallels (which is basically a must if you use your computer for work). In my personal opinion, it would be a bad sacrifice just for GW2, especially because the hardware requirements are so high and it may not even make a difference. I would not do it just for GW2. I would either run it in Parallels or Bootcamp. Personally, I am hoping for a Linux version. Both Apple and Microsoft are going down roads with their OS’s I am not fond of.

pmiles.3489:

I’m not staying in the dark ages… I’m not upgrading because neither OS has anything that my system will make use of. Buying the latest shiny just doesn’t make sense. If I had a plethora of iOS devices (I have none), needed the Cloud (I don’t), happen to live in China (I don’t), etc. Both Lion and Mountain Lion are marketed for the iOS crowd and the laptop crowd. I don’t deal with either, thus upgrading would merely add a bunch of features that my system would never use… how is adding additional unused stuff improving my system? It’s not.

And your frame rates are just horrid for gaming, try it under bootcamp and get back to me how wonderful Lion/Mountain Lion is in regards to improving your frame rate.

I told you, anything before 2010 is probably not going to run the game satisfactorily on Mac OS X. My computer is from 2009, i.e. it doesn’t run the game satisfactorily. Not on boot camp, not in OSX either. Unfortunately. Still I do enjoy it in Boot camp due to the slight frame rate increase.

Upgrading to ML or not is your choice in the end. However what I don’t see is why ANet should officially support a system that is not officially supported by Apple. By officially suppporting something it means you have to provide support for it, and that in turn would mean they might have to turn to Apple for advice. That is why they don’t support it.

Even though you don’t see any point in upgrading because the “major” features don’t appeal to you, there’s a lot of under the hood features that should appeal to whomever owns a mac.

What is this with apple not supporting SL, because the do.

Summer 2011 SL all macs still shipped with SL. Lion only lasted 12 months before ML was released, which was a very short-lived OS version.

Apple would actually have legal issues with dropping support for SL after 12 months in many countries.
And do not compare win xp, which is from 2001, and SL which was released 2009.
SL support will stop eventually, but not this year.

Also since it is still supported you still get the security updates in Apple Update, so do not worry.

As for Anet deciding to not support SL, well I can understand that they don’t, they have a limited staff and should focus on getting the best possible support for the most recent OS

Hey I’m running on a mid 2009 macbook pro with the only difference between mine and yours being mountain lion and NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512 MB
I usually get about 25-30fps which I find to be quite playable in pve i have not tried WvW yet tho.

Mountain lion fixed pretty much every grievance I had with lion on my mac systems. I can understand if people are stuck with rosetta issues, but is it really worth degrading your experience (and security) in everything else just to run programs which have updates anyway?

I didn’t have any issues with Lion, but ML did add a bunch of features that I wanted like better iOS integration. But, I’m using the latest model MBP so it probably isn’t applicable here.