Guild Wars 2

Hello there!

I have to say I love the controls on the Mac version. I can actually play better with the Magic Trackpad than the mouse (say that on a PC!).

However, the Mac version, is in the end a port using Cedega Transgaming, which essentially is Wine. It will always run awfully slower, while on Mac should actually run faster. On Windows (bootcamping) I get twice the FPS with over double settings (medium-high). The Mac version is just sluggish, it freezes whenever I rotate the camera, and there is virtually no other setting I can lower to make it work.

The port is clearly not working for us. It’s GW2 for Windows, wrapped up to run on Mac.

Companies like Maxis are now making native versions of their games for the Mac, like their latest game SimCity. Now, GW2 as an MMO has many years to go. Will we ever see a native Guild Wars 2 Mac version?

ArtPulse.8630:

Hello there!

I have to say I love the controls on the Mac version. I can actually play better with the Magic Trackpad than the mouse (say that on a PC!).

However, the Mac versions, being a port using Cedega Transgaming, it’s basically running Wine. It will always run awfully slower. On Windows (bootcamping) I get twice the FPS with over double settings (medium-high). The Mac version is just sluggish, it freezes whenever I rotate the camera, and there is virtually no other setting I can lower to make it work.

The port is clearly not working for us. It’s GW2 for Windows, wrapped up to run on Mac.

Companies like Maxis are now making native versions of their games for the Mac, like their latest game SimCity. Now, GW2 as an MMO has many years to go. Will we ever see a native Guild Wars 2 Mac version?

I sure hope so but I’m not keeping my fingers crossed. I don’t think anyone here can answer that question aside from Anet but they don’t like to provide us with any information related to the Mac client. So I don’t think we will know any time soon if ever.

I hear you. At least I want to state this is not working, and why. I don’t expect much at this point…

ArtPulse.8630:

I hear you. At least I want to state this is not working, and why. I don’t expect much at this point…

It works for the most part for me. There are some minor bugs specific to the Mac client but they don’t irritate me as much as they used to now that I have acclimated to it. I keep pretty good FPS on medium settings with a few set to high. I usually stay between 35-45 in normal areas, sometimes higher. I do dial it down a little if I’m getting ready to do an event with massive people like SB.

I have heard that it runs much better under bootcamp. However I prefer not to put Windows on my shiny iMac. I can do everything I need to without it. So I’m just going to have to be satisfied with what I have now.

You have to keep in mind that Maxis is a much larger company with the backing of EA, a very well established developer. They can afford to have a much larger mac team.
It’s also really worth noting that the OSX release of SimCity has been pushed back, suggesting that they’re having issues with it (an looking at the issues they’ve been having even with the Windows version that isn’t surprising).

I’m struggling to think of any other games that are being released with both Windows and OSX versions. The few that do are either much much smaller games or Indie-ish games. Even The Sims 3 is a transgaming port… It’s just not easy for companies to develop games that work in both Direct X and OpenGL, they are two completely different systems and they require a completely different knowledge and skill set.

Yeah. Even if you attempt to do concurrent DirectX and OpenGL development from the start, it’s almost always a goodwill/PR thing that you subsidize with money from other revenue streams.

Native clients don’t make money from mac gamers – they make money from mac gamers who wouldn’t otherwise play the game in bootcamp. That’s a tiny subset of an already tiny group.

While I would love a native Mac version the performance hit is realitivly minor after the recent update. So much so that I removed Bootcamp and solely run the OS X version now.