Guild Wars 2

I play on mac and ever since it came out it has always been BETA. When is beta going to end? and also why is minimum 4gb RAM required? I heard its because of this non-native client but could someone explain what that means, as much as I could get I think that means that the client has been translated to suite Mac. Does this also mean that when Native Client for Mac will come out minimum requirements will lower and my i5 4gb macbook pro will be able to run the game smoothly?

IF a native client was released, yes it would possibly allow lower spec’d machines to run the game better. But that is a BIG IF.

The GW2 mac client runs through Cider, so it is actually the Windows client being run inside of a wrapper – it’s emulating windows sort of. So to run the game it needs to allocate memory and processing power to running the wrapper as well as the client inside of it – which is why it takes 4GB.
Keep in mind that a Beta tag indicates very little – they could decide tomorrow to say that they are removing the Beta tag because they are confident with how the client performs, they could also say tomorrow that they aren’t happy with it and are scrapping it altogether. Bottom line – don’t get hung up on the fact that the client is a beta because that is relatively meaningless.

Thanks for response and your definition is what I’ve been thinking about Non-native client. It’s just ridiculous that if you have PC with 4g you can run BEST APPEREANCE and on mac 4gb means that you wil struggle to run through Lion’s Arch

So.. What i am getting out of this is:

1. Be happy that there even are a mac client?

2. It is not going to change any time soon?

So the lags and stuff like that is just things we are gonna live with if we are gonna use it on a mac?

If i am wrong – please correct me.

me and my wife, we are waiting for Mac native client, and we have a hope that Anet will release it soon. We I’m looking forward to hear any news about it from devs. The game is awesome without a doubt! But, we need this client ASAP, because of old specs of Mac and because of Mavericks will release soon.

Hey Talek,

I really hope that you are right – that they will listen to the community.

So i really hope that they will see how many ppl that are playing on the macs

Does anyone know if the moderator’s watch these threads?…

Well... I installed GW2 on Windows via Bootcamp and compared with the Mac client.
GW2 runs better on my Mac than on my Windows. Same settings...

I’ve never had problems with the Mac client. I suppose I’m lucky

I’ve a Macbook Pro 13" i7 early 2011 (intel HD 3000).

Hey Winged,

I also got the bootcamp installation, but i hoped that it would work nearly perfect, on the mac beta, so i wasen’t forced to use windows…

So the next thing i am gonna do is installing, the gw2 on the bootcamp – and see how it works!

But it would be so much cooler if the mac beta would just be 100% done

I don’t think it will. Since they no-culling updates (WvW was months ago) it crashes all the time and they haven’t fixed it yet.

Yes, we currently have a tech support staff member exclusively for mac watching these forums.

Sadly, the mac players are split between either reasonably good performance for many and for very poor performance for others. It’s hard to say why without understanding how our cider wrapper is coded and such.

I’m one of the lucky few, I get relatively few “major” issues and when I do, they’re usually something Anet broke with the patch (and many others have it then too, so it usually gets fixed). I know 4 other mac players currently playing and they also have minimal issues.

I suspect if we ever do get out of beta, we’re going to be stuck with the cider wrapper client for some time… Unless Anet has a top secret development team hiding out in the sub levels of Anet HQ working feverishly to get the game coded for Mac OSX by the anniversary of the mac client beta release!

Lol we can dream, can’t we!?

Probably it will never end since ArenaNet are totally clueless about Mac software and Transgaming is well know to abbandon things half done.

mac version has been a joke since the beginning and sadly i doubt it will resolve. Me and my friends are waiting a native version to come back to play but maybe is will not see the light of the day.

It’s December 2nd 2013 and I just bought it. It still has the ‘Beta’ tag on it and I’m hoping it doesn’t last long. I’m kind of shocked that they are charging so much, even with the November discount, for something that they still class as ‘Beta’. It should be under €10 or free if it’s still in beta in my opinion…

veylun.5476:

It’s December 2nd 2013 and I just bought it. It still has the ‘Beta’ tag on it and I’m hoping it doesn’t last long. I’m kind of shocked that they are charging so much, even with the November discount, for something that they still class as ‘Beta’. It should be under €10 or free if it’s still in beta in my opinion…

The client is free. The money you paid is for the right to have an ACCOUNT. The price of an account has to be the same across all platforms because if it wasn’t that would be ridiculous. You purchased something knowing that it is in beta for the system you are using, it’s a buyer beware situation. They could turn around and say that they are discontinuing the beta and you would have absolutely no grounds for a refund (although I imagine they would give you one anyway just because they aren’t bad people).

FlamingFoxx.1305:

veylun.5476:

It’s December 2nd 2013 and I just bought it. It still has the ‘Beta’ tag on it and I’m hoping it doesn’t last long. I’m kind of shocked that they are charging so much, even with the November discount, for something that they still class as ‘Beta’. It should be under €10 or free if it’s still in beta in my opinion…

The client is free. The money you paid is for the right to have an ACCOUNT. The price of an account has to be the same across all platforms because if it wasn’t that would be ridiculous. You purchased something knowing that it is in beta for the system you are using, it’s a buyer beware situation. They could turn around and say that they are discontinuing the beta and you would have absolutely no grounds for a refund (although I imagine they would give you one anyway just because they aren’t bad people).

I have to agree and disagree with you.

Yes the money is the access to the account, but ArenaNet’s advertising (see https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-guild-wars-2-for-mac-beta/) hinted at a finalized Mac client. If people who use primarily Mac OS bought the game based on this advertising, then it is fair to expect ArenaNet to follow through with finalizing a Mac client for the game, and if they decided not to follow through with this, then they should offer refunds with account terminations of course.

That article consistently refers to it as a Beta, it doesn’t mention anywhere that a final product is guaranteed. A beta does not guarantee a final release, it’s a way of testing a product, and then based on that testing they decide on the viability and on what changes would need to be made for a final launch.

If they were to remove the beta client then yes they should offer refunds, but as long as the beta client exists there is no legal reason for them to do so. Also they could very easily remove the beta tag and leave the client as is and once again there wouldn’t really be any legal grounds for requesting a refund – especially if you’ve been using the product for an extended period of time.

I am interesting in the Mac client developments

There is quite a few possibilities.

Anet spread their development resources thin and support both direct x and opengl render

Drop support for Mac OS X and direct x 9. GW2 can finally move to direct X 11

Maintain different version of the engine with direct 9 and 11. Basically, support for direct x 9 get worse and the mac client degrades

Move everything to Opengl. Window client might experience a small boost in performance but it not easy. Mac OS X instantly get 2x boost in performance.

I am mumbling all the possibilities the Mac OS client future

loseridoit.2756:

I am interesting in the Mac client developments

There is quite a few possibilities.

Anet spread their development resources thin and support both direct x and opengl render

Drop support for Mac OS X and direct x 9. GW2 can finally move to direct X 11

Maintain different version of the engine with direct 9 and 11. Basically, support for direct x 9 get worse and the mac client degrades

Move everything to Opengl. Window client might experience a small boost in performance but it not easy. Mac OS X instantly get 2x boost in performance.

I am mumbling all the possibilities the Mac OS client future

Alternatively, and most likely, everything stays as is…
The chance of a windows game development company moving from directX to OpenGL is next to none. I imagine the work to move from directX 9 ti 11 is also worth less than the effort it would take.
There game works as is and more people don’t experience issues so things are unlikely to change. They also wouldn’t make large changes to the windows side in order to accommodate the OSX users because the OSX users represent a tiny minority of the player base.

Apparently, I am also very lucky in that I have very few problems with my Mac install. It runs well for the most part, I get fair frame rates and I have few issues that so far are easily fixable by logging in and out (and entertain my friends in the meantime).

That being said, I would love a non-beta, possibly-native client, but I wonder if it will ever come about. I was a player of Sony’s Everquest for quite a while, and it suffered from the same issues I think the GW2 Mac client suffers from, a small user base. This ends up creating a sort of circular-logic conundrum: Macs are a small user base > therefore don’t devote lots of resources > therefore the client is not optimal > then the Mac client base either stagnates or shrinks > thus no incentive to increase support or develop further.

For now, I really enjoy playing. I have helped entice a couple of other Mac users to play and so far they are pretty pleased. So we’ll see.