Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing GW2 on the windows side of my mac book pro since just after it launched, and have decided to try the apple side to see if I get better performance, but mainly to do some screen caps using quicktime.

Apart from the massive download (don’t know why they don’t have an option to use the pc game discs for data), what should I be aware of as I venture forth and play GW2 on mac book pro?

Here’s some of the things I’ve noticed with the Mac Beta Client:
1. Overall, it shouldn’t make much of a difference. The game experience is very similar to a PC version with some minor differences.
2. Toolbar or Aura skills that would normally be activated using F keys (i.e. F1, F2, etc.) are considerably harder to do in mid-battle sequence. Instead of pressing a simple button, the flow of battle seems to be interrupted by having to focus on hitting the “fn” key and then one of the respective F keys. There are ways to fix this, programs that can disable the Mac functioning keys and instead make the F keys work with a single touch.
3. The world map seems to lag in the Mac Beta, most of the time sporadically. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s annoying when it does, and GW2 staff hasn’t done anything about it in the past couple updates.
4. The game itself does not require the use of right-clicking, so in that sense it is compatible with Macs. I still strongly suggest playing with a mouse or a gamepad instead of a trackpad, however, as it will affect the flow of in-game travel, battle and interaction.
I play GW2 on my Mac because out of my computers, my Mac is by far the strongest in performance and speed. This is why I use the Mac Beta client, and it seems to truly bring the full experience of GW2 to my Mac without many problems. I can connect easily with people who are playing on Macs and PCs alike. It’s just a good choice to make as long as your Mac can handle the powerhouse that is Guild Wars 2. Happy gaming, and I’ll see you in Tyria!

I’ve been using the Mac client on my MBP since it became available. Previously I was on the Windows side with bootcamp.

Overall, the experience is now equal in virtually every way with the Windows experience with the exception of what’s listed here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Known-Issues-Guild-Wars-2-Mac-Beta-Client

The biggest loss in playing on Mac compared to PC IMHO is the loss of the F keys on the MBP, either having to hit fn for them to work or manually clicking.

My performance is no better on OSX compared to W7, but it’s certainly a lot more convenient than rebooting the MBP every time I want to play.

Something that you should know is that it constantly crashes on a Mac!

• It’s possible to avoid downloading everything again by copying the .dat file from your Windows partition to your OS X partition.
• The OS X client is a Cider port (kind of a Windows simulator, in layman terms), so performance will take a hit. Depending on your machine you should need to lower you graphic settings a bit. In my MBP mid-2010 (i5, 330m) I play with mid-high settings in Windows but with low-mid settings in OS X.
• F-keys functionality can be toggled at System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard, Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys, so you don’t need to use Fn. Note that the game still only captures these key-presses in fullscreen (on my machine at least). If you don’t want to change this setting, I heard there’s an app called FunctionFlip that can toggle only some of the F-keys, but I never used it. Also, you can remap your F1-F4 skills in-game.
• I never had the aforementioned map problems or Mac-specific crashes, lucky me (knocks on wood)
• One annoying thing to me is that in fullscreen the gamma setting resets to 1.00 if you command-tab out of the game then in again.

Overall it’s a great client, the convenience of not having to reboot is unbeatable. If your machine is in the list of supported Macs, you should definitely try it.

How to avoid unneccessary download:
First you need to download official Gw2 mac client software.
Install the client on your mac, but when it begins the large download, close the client.
Open Finder, go to your GW2 app.
Right click Guild Wars 2 icon and click “Show Package Content”
Navigate through the folders to find the GW2 files (Contents > Resources > Transgaming > C_drive > GW2)
Copy/paste your GW2.dat file from your Windows folder to the folder above. Overwrite the one that’s already there.
Restart GW2 Mac client.

How to use F-keys:
Personally I use the FunctionFlip app, and found it working great. Incidentally, F1 to F4 are functions I never used anyway

How to right-mouse-button:
I strongly disagree with Entaurrus. While you can play without using right-clicks, it’s like trying to eat asian food with only one chopstick. There’s a lot of functionality you’re losing without right-click functionality. The magic mouse can be enabled to simulate right clicks, but a real mouse with 2 buttons works even better, since being able to use both buttons simultaneously is desirable. Personally I use a Razer mouse, but there should be many choices for Mice with OSX drivers. Find one that fits your hand.

One major downside of the Mac client is that it has the same limitations as the 32bit Windows client (since it pretty much IS the 32bit Windows client).
Meaning, you cannot chose high-quality textures in the graphics options, it only goes up to medium quality. To me, the difference is pretty noticable, though it may not be an issue for you.

The Mac client has an option to make left click drag to control the camera behave like right click drag on Windows, that should help a lot.

Personally, I never use both buttons for camera controls.