Can we please get a working Mac Client [Merged]

Can we please get a working Mac Client [Merged]

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Posted by: Scatha.5931

Scatha.5931

Brand new fully upgraded 2015 iMac:
• 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.2GHz
• 32GB 1867MHz DDR3 SDRAM – four 8GB
• 1TB Flash Storage
• AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB video memory

Game crashes more often than on my basic 2010 iMac with equivalent settings.

ANet should be ashamed, the quality of their Mac client is appalling and false advertising. HoT broke the game and isn’t worth playing at all in it’s current state.

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Posted by: Onichi.4073

Onichi.4073

A Mac client is probably not going to happen. As far as I know the team working on resolving the wrapper bugs for running the Window’s client on Mac was a skeleton crew about 2 years ago, and I am sure once the development on HoTS started they shifted their resources to that.

They may get the wrapper somewhat stable again, but it will hardly ever be a Mac client. It was awesome when Anet advertised it to Mac users. I played with the Mac client awhile ago and it worked pretty well, but maintaining it is probably very difficult for their current dev team.

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Posted by: Aemon.8146

Aemon.8146

Well this thread doesn’t instill me with confidence. I’m glad I haven’t actually purchased the expansion yet.

From the thread, I gather I need to lower all the graphics settings to minimums to reduce crashes. Maybe you all could help me with another problem.

UI elements in the game (menus, minimap, chat log, etc.) are showing up incredibly small. I almost need a magnifying glass to read chat. I couldn’t find an option for scaling the UI under the UI options menu. Is it hidden somewhere else?

edit: I found UI scaling under the graphics options, but even at the largest setting, the UI elements are still very small (mostly a problem for the chat log).

(edited by Aemon.8146)

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Posted by: Myst.9182

Myst.9182

Anet,

Thousands of your customers (the ones who trusted you and bought your product: “GW2-Mac client”) are starting to be very upset with your all over the world.

You sold us a deficient product and you seem to ignore our complains.
This is something that Law takes very seriously in many countries around the world.

I specifically logged on to complain about this.

3 years and mac Client is still in beta.

When will this be optimised for Mac? 3 f-ing years and still nothing?

Let me elaborate:

On the Boot Camp side of my Mac I can play on a smooth 60fps.

On the Mac side I play with with lower graphics settings and only get 30fps, while it spikes from 20 to 60fps and back at times of intensity.

The Mac version needs optimisation, and 3 years on, this should have been done already… Can we believe anything Anet says? They change their minds more than my wife changes clothes!

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Posted by: FlamingFoxx.1305

FlamingFoxx.1305

Well this thread doesn’t instill me with confidence. I’m glad I haven’t actually purchased the expansion yet.

From the thread, I gather I need to lower all the graphics settings to minimums to reduce crashes. Maybe you all could help me with another problem.

UI elements in the game (menus, minimap, chat log, etc.) are showing up incredibly small. I almost need a magnifying glass to read chat. I couldn’t find an option for scaling the UI under the UI options menu. Is it hidden somewhere else?

edit: I found UI scaling under the graphics options, but even at the largest setting, the UI elements are still very small (mostly a problem for the chat log).

There’s an option in the games settings menu, either in the main tab or the graphics tab I can’t recall which, and it allows you to set the UI to small, large, or larger. If you have a 5K iMac or a retina display on full resolution then the UI is going to be smaller (just as it would be on a windows computer with the same resolution). One solution would be to play the game in a lower resolution, which would make everything a little larger.

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Posted by: Ironriots.7146

Ironriots.7146

So, I’ve had an open ticket with Anet about game crashes for over a week now, and every single time someone returns a solution not only is it a different GM answering my ticket, I’ve now had TWO PEOPLE tell me to do the EXACT SAME THING they told me to do SIX DAYS AGO.

This is absurd especially when some of the answers they have provided me are literally undoable because apparently there are several library system files that are completely absent from my machine, and any terminal command they ask me to try returns an error message saying:

“Jan 31 15:01:29 MacBook-Pro.local cider4141 <Error>: The function ‘CGContextErase’ is obsolete and will be removed in an upcoming update. Unfortunately, this application, or a library it uses, is using this obsolete function, and is thereby contributing to an overall degradation of system performance.”

So basically what I’m being told is that I have wasted a lot of my money on a game that is not only broken, but run by people who clearly do not use or care about other users with my operating system.

That’s messed up.

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Posted by: Aemon.8146

Aemon.8146

There’s an option in the games settings menu, either in the main tab or the graphics tab I can’t recall which, and it allows you to set the UI to small, large, or larger. If you have a 5K iMac or a retina display on full resolution then the UI is going to be smaller (just as it would be on a windows computer with the same resolution). One solution would be to play the game in a lower resolution, which would make everything a little larger.

Yeah, I got a brand new iMac, and I wondered if the higher resolution might have something to do with it. It’s kind of annoying, but I should probably run it at lower resolution anyway to help reduce the chance of a crash.

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Posted by: HippieJoel.9537

HippieJoel.9537

Technical explanation incoming…

Right so the issue with the crashing is actually present on the Windows version as well, it’s just less pronounced. Essentially the Guild Wars 2 client is quite bad at freeing up memory after loading and unloading textures as you play the game. Sooner or later you’ll hit the 3.5GB RAM limit as it fails to unload textures properly and it’ll crash. On Windows they’ve resolved this issue by ignoring it entirely and just releasing a x64 client raising that 3.5GB limit to however much memory you have in your system, and realistically you probably won’t hit the 8GB or 16GB or however much memory you have in your system playing Guild Wars 2.

On the Mac side of things however, due to incompatibilities with how OS X deals with CPU registers (which by the way, it really shouldn’t do but it does but that’s a discussion for another time), it’s currently not possible to run x64 Wine on OS X. What this means is that you’re limited to using the x86 client.

Now, due to limitations with how Wine works, the 4GB limit is actually split between both your system memory and your video memory, meaning that effectively you’ve got 1.75GB to 2GB of VRAM and system RAM that the game can utilise. I believe newer versions of Wine don’t necessarily have this issue (or rather, divide it differently) but I cannot confirm.

What this means is that it takes much less effort to crash the Mac client, simply because you’ll run out of memory a lot sooner.

But wait! There’s more bad news!

Due to the fact that Wine is having to translate DirectX calls to OpenGL ones in real time to allow the game to run on OS X, there’s a performance penalty, meaning that it takes longer than it does on Windows for the game to load and unload textures. This means that the amount of memory Guild Wars 2 requires is even higher than normal, because it simply takes longer to unload textures that are no longer required from memory.

In real world usage, this means that the game ends up needing almost twice the memory that it would require on Windows, running the game on the same settings.

There are plans to make Wine unload textures more aggressively in future but this is likely to lead to increased CPU usage, further reducing framerates (and let’s be honest, they’re already far from excellent on OS X).

Tl;dr:
Don’t expect a working Mac client any time soon unless ArenaNet decide to rewrite the game engine, something I can’t see them finding money in the budget to do.

If you are an OS X user I suggest the following two options:
1. Quit playing Guild Wars 2 or
2. Install Windows

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Posted by: Figlilly.3907

Figlilly.3907

Thanks for the explanation. I could actually follow it so you write well for the non tech types

It is depressing that the future looks so bleak for us GW2 Mac users. As I said earlier though, I can have a pretty good game by lowering my graphic settings down. It is certainly not ideal but I don’t want to bootcamp my Mac and I do want to play GW2. I actually have a PC laptop that runs the game smoothly but I prefer my Mac.

I have experimented lately in raising a few of the options to Medium and so far so good. I raised the character view (can’t think of the term) so now I can see people’s outfits again.

Perhaps lowering the graphics will not work for everyone or maybe is not acceptable to most. I fought it for a long time as it seemed so unfair. But, crashing over and over is no fun either and eventually I gave in.

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Posted by: Inazuma.6107

Inazuma.6107

Don’t expect a working Mac client any time soon unless ArenaNet decide to rewrite the game engine, something I can’t see them finding money in the budget to do.

Great post, everything is correct.

Actually it would be possible to have a native client that uses only a togl layer like Valve’s Vogl, or eON (which I believe offers consulting to companies that want their games ported).

It would be still quite costly (especially to maintain and QA), but nowhere near as rewriting the engine. This is supposing the main loop, network code and audio code are well factored so that the windows specifics are well isolated.

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Posted by: Aemon.8146

Aemon.8146

Hang on, I thought the problem with the mac client was because the outdated wrapper wasn’t communicating well with OSX, but from what you said, this is a memory leak inherent to the base coding of the game that affects all systems.

How did that kind of error make it into a final live piece of software? I would think something like this would have been apparent during alpha/beta testing of the original release.

What triggers in the program are supposed to release RAM again? Are they failing or simply not triggering often enough to keep up with demand for RAM?

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Posted by: HippieJoel.9537

HippieJoel.9537

Hang on, I thought the problem with the mac client was because the outdated wrapper wasn’t communicating well with OSX, but from what you said, this is a memory leak inherent to the base coding of the game that affects all systems.

How did that kind of error make it into a final live piece of software? I would think something like this would have been apparent during alpha/beta testing of the original release.

What triggers in the program are supposed to release RAM again? Are they failing or simply not triggering often enough to keep up with demand for RAM?

It’s actually a bit of both. Essentially the memory leak is on all systems, but the outdated wrapper makes the issue more apparent, and because it’s currently not possible to run the 64-bit client on OS X, Mac users are more affected by it.

The wrapper that Guild Wars 2 is using is based on an old version of Wine from back before they switched to the GPL license which prevents outside companies from releasing closed source forks. Some people have had varying success by playing the game with software such as PlayOnMac which allows you to use the latest version of Wine.

With the original (non Heart of Thorns zones) the issue wasn’t as apparent as the game simply didn’t use as much RAM back then, in part simply because the zones in the base game aren’t as detailed and don’t feature the multiple layers present in HoT zones.

From my understanding, there’s two problems:
1. It isn’t unloading assets from memory quickly enough (made worse by Wine simply being slower at doing this)
2. When memory is free, it is left fragmented. What this means is that the space released by old assets being unloaded may not be large enough to load new assets into, so assets are loaded onto the end of the game’s allocated memory, increasing its RAM usage until it reaches the 3.5GB limit and crashes.

In this case you’ve got memory being un-used in many places within the RAM that the game is allocated, and as far as I can tell the game doesn’t really do anything to try and defragment the RAM its given, which is surprising seeing as how on systems with multiple cores the game really only utilises the first core.

As far as I know, the game only really runs any proper garbage collection when the map is changed, but even then I’m not convinced it properly deals with memory fragmentation.

Actually it would be possible to have a native client that uses only a togl layer like Valve’s Vogl, or eON (which I believe offers consulting to companies that want their games ported).

It would be still quite costly (especially to maintain and QA), but nowhere near as rewriting the engine. This is supposing the main loop, network code and audio code are well factored so that the windows specifics are well isolated.

I’m actually surprised that more developers haven’t used Valve’s offering simply because it’s freely available on Github and works well.

If I had to guess, the reason Anet haven’t opted for a native client (for example, by using eON’s technology) is because they don’t want the expense and workload of maintaining two distinct clients. Assuming their code is fairly platform agnostic it wouldn’t be too difficult but to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it wasn’t.

What they could do is build an updated game client which could be more easily ported and release it alongside a future expansion (maybe even have DirectX 11 support on Windows!) but now we’re just dreaming.

I’d like to think that a decent part of their market are Mac users but unfortunately I do get the impression that that’s not really the case.

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Posted by: Inazuma.6107

Inazuma.6107

What they could do is build an updated game client which could be more easily ported and release it alongside a future expansion (maybe even have DirectX 11 support on Windows!) but now we’re just dreaming.

I’d like to think that a decent part of their market are Mac users but unfortunately I do get the impression that that’s not really the case.

Well, even before even going the togl route, they could start by managing the memory a little better. For example I’ve read that many games always allocate big chunks of space and then fill that with textures/models/etc (this way they can defragment it).

Anyway, I will probably switch back to Linux sooner or later and enjoy the 64bit client on Wine-Staging

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Posted by: Moesmaker.9581

Moesmaker.9581

This morning I tried to play GW2: five crashes in 30 minutes.

Don’t we think it is about time that Arenanet acknowledges that they don’t deliver sufficient support for the Apple productfamily and refunds ALL Mac-users who purchased the HoT-expansion? No offense, no harm done.

And it is NOT an incident (several times per day), it is NOT my Mac (all other games perform like a charm)

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Posted by: HippieJoel.9537

HippieJoel.9537

Well, even before even going the togl route, they could start by managing the memory a little better. For example I’ve read that many games always allocate big chunks of space and then fill that with textures/models/etc (this way they can defragment it).

Anyway, I will probably switch back to Linux sooner or later and enjoy the 64bit client on Wine-Staging

Oh definitely. I’d be lying if I said I was an experienced game developer – I’m not anything close to that – but I did get the impression from some anet posts on Reddit a while back that they’re not exactly doing things in the most efficient ways possible.

Unfortunately Linux isn’t really an option for me as when I’m not playing Guild Wars 2 I primarily use my computer for web development and music production. Web development is absolutely fine in Linux but music production well, it’s much better than it used to be but still not really at a level where I could comfortably switch.

I know many people would suggest I run Windows but I’m honestly not a huge fan for many, many reasons. Otherwise I’d switch now and make things a lot easier for myself.

I think it’s worth mentioning as well that my main system is actually a PC I’ve put OS X on, or a “hackintosh” as some might call it.

This morning I tried to play GW2: five crashes in 30 minutes.

Don’t we think it is about time that Arenanet acknowledges that they don’t deliver sufficient support for the Apple productfamily and refunds ALL Mac-users who purchased the HoT-expansion? No offense, no harm done.

And it is NOT an incident (several times per day), it is NOT my Mac (all other games perform like a charm)

Unfortunately I can’t see them rushing to do that.

Personally though, I don’t want a refund. I really enjoy Guild Wars 2. I just want to be able to play the game on my platform of choice.

(edited by HippieJoel.9537)

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Posted by: Moesmaker.9581

Moesmaker.9581

Of course I totally agree with you, GW2 is one of the greatest games I have ever played. I simply wish I could play the game on my platform of choice too…

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Posted by: Quark the Charming.1695

Quark the Charming.1695

The mac client is unplayable. I have to maintain a bootcamp install just for GW2.

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Posted by: Moesmaker.9581

Moesmaker.9581

Same here, its the only reason a have it on my mac, I switch to it now and then, when I have had it with the mac client.

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Posted by: Nitro.4732

Nitro.4732

Out of curiosity, has any Mac OS X user tried Parallels Desktop for Mac?

It supports 64 bit windows, allows you to boot into your mac operating system and you would be able to install 64 bit Guild Wars.

Its been a long time since I used Parallels, however just thinking, it could run Gw2 just as good as w.i.n.e. with the added bonus of accessing more memory due to 64bit support.

Unfortunately it is an additional cost so I am unwilling to purchase it just to test a theory as I do not play games on OSX. However if someone already uses parallels desktop or has access to it, I would be intrigued to find out how Gw2 performs with it.

CoolerMaster Masterbox 5 | H110i | AMD Ryzen R7 1800x 4.0GHz | 32GB DDR4
512GB Samsung 950pro | 2TB SATA-3 | AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB

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Posted by: Lews.8146

Lews.8146

Out of curiosity, has any Mac OS X user tried Parallels Desktop for Mac?

It supports 64 bit windows, allows you to boot into your mac operating system and you would be able to install 64 bit Guild Wars.

Its been a long time since I used Parallels, however just thinking, it could run Gw2 just as good as w.i.n.e. with the added bonus of accessing more memory due to 64bit support.

Unfortunately it is an additional cost so I am unwilling to purchase it just to test a theory as I do not play games on OSX. However if someone already uses parallels desktop or has access to it, I would be intrigued to find out how Gw2 performs with it.

Yep, I have parallels desktop with a 64 bit windows 8.1 installed in it. Tried using the gaming only option for it and a bunch of tweaked settings, but to get any performance out of it i have to go to the best performance settings in gw2. Sadly the cider wrap runs faster, just crashes all the time, I would not use parallels for it.

I have been using a bootcamp partition for gw2, as it is the only way atm to really enjoy playing the game. Im on a mid 2015 macbook pro 15".

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Posted by: FlamingFoxx.1305

FlamingFoxx.1305

Out of curiosity, has any Mac OS X user tried Parallels Desktop for Mac?

It supports 64 bit windows, allows you to boot into your mac operating system and you would be able to install 64 bit Guild Wars.

Its been a long time since I used Parallels, however just thinking, it could run Gw2 just as good as w.i.n.e. with the added bonus of accessing more memory due to 64bit support.

Unfortunately it is an additional cost so I am unwilling to purchase it just to test a theory as I do not play games on OSX. However if someone already uses parallels desktop or has access to it, I would be intrigued to find out how Gw2 performs with it.

While in theory parallels might allow you to access more memory and run the 64bit client, in reality your mac is now having to emulate the WHOLE windows OS, rather than just the bits and pieces that Cider emulates to enable the game to run. That means that on top of your CPU and GPU having to power OSX, they’re also having to power Windows, and then GW2 on top of that. No matter what way you spin it you’re going to get far worse performance. Parallels and VMware weren’t really designed for gaming and it’s doubtful they’ll ever be useful for it.

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Posted by: HippieJoel.9537

HippieJoel.9537

Out of curiosity, has any Mac OS X user tried Parallels Desktop for Mac?

It supports 64 bit windows, allows you to boot into your mac operating system and you would be able to install 64 bit Guild Wars.

Its been a long time since I used Parallels, however just thinking, it could run Gw2 just as good as w.i.n.e. with the added bonus of accessing more memory due to 64bit support.

Unfortunately it is an additional cost so I am unwilling to purchase it just to test a theory as I do not play games on OSX. However if someone already uses parallels desktop or has access to it, I would be intrigued to find out how Gw2 performs with it.

I’ve tested using both VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop. Basically, yes, it works, but I wouldn’t recommend blowing the money on Parallels for it.

I found that I could attain higher framerates, though granted this is on a Hackintosh where I have resources to spare. With that said however, the game did feel a lot less responsive despite the higher framerates, and had a tendency to hit pretty severe lag spikes frequently – if I had to guess because of the reduced IO performance.

If you can possibly run Windows it’s honestly the best way to enjoy Guild Wars 2 right now. I know it’s not the answer you want to hear at all – I really do love OS X myself – there’s a reason I went to the effort of getting it up and running on non-Apple hardware – but the performance difference between running the game on OS X and running it natively on Windows in night and day.

The unfortunate reality is that, for various reasons (which I’ve detailed in previous posts), the situation is unlikely to improve any time soon as it’s just broken on such a fundamental level, and short of ArenaNet suddenly deciding to invest time and energy into writing a native Mac client it’s unlikely that we’ll see any major changes any time soon.

For this reason I’m also thinking of restructuring my personal computing setup, since I do own a MacBook Pro. I just really love having a desktop wth OS X for productivity reasons (and I don’t really care about dual booting).

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Posted by: HippieJoel.9537

HippieJoel.9537

Apologies for bumping but I noticed something:
The official Mac client uses the cmdline flag ‘-umbra cpu’. To clarify, this is NOT the same as -umbra gpu.

Has anyone tried testing this on Wine yet? Any performance effects? I’ll test later when I’ve got a chance but just wanted to throw that out there for the curious.

In other news, with that flag in mind I’ve had success playing the official Cider client by editing the configuration – by default it specifies 256MB VRAM – change this to the amount your Mac actually has (in my case 4096MB) and the second line which is set to 128MB by default to half of that (i.e. 2048MB).

(edited by HippieJoel.9537)

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Posted by: Tiaar.4231

Tiaar.4231

- Client freezes the patches on startup.
- Client sometimes doesn’t even open.
- No fix in about 2 years now.

I’ve played Guild Wars 2 on my MacBook for a long time, and then somehow it stopped working. After that, ArenaNet has done nothing (noticeable) to fix this problem. Mac users are disappointed, and you still advertise with the fact that GW2 also runs on Mac OS.

I’m glad I didn’t buy the expansion yet.

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Posted by: Quark the Charming.1695

Quark the Charming.1695

Out of curiosity, has any Mac OS X user tried Parallels Desktop for Mac?

It supports 64 bit windows, allows you to boot into your mac operating system and you would be able to install 64 bit Guild Wars.

Its been a long time since I used Parallels, however just thinking, it could run Gw2 just as good as w.i.n.e. with the added bonus of accessing more memory due to 64bit support.

Unfortunately it is an additional cost so I am unwilling to purchase it just to test a theory as I do not play games on OSX. However if someone already uses parallels desktop or has access to it, I would be intrigued to find out how Gw2 performs with it.

It’s been a long time for me too, but I have used it in 32bit mode. And I remember performance being on par with both the regular mac beta client and a wine client. I opted for the beta client because it was just less of a fuss.
Now, running the whole OS virtually makes things feel rather unresponsive. But I had lots of cores and memory to spare which made graphic performance okay.

Parallels 64 bit should work though. And the client just not crashing would be incentive enough to give it another try. Also my fusion drive doesn’t work in bootcamp. So I have huge loading times in bootcamp and okay performance, but okay loading times and terrible performance + crashes on the mac client.

(edited by Quark the Charming.1695)

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Posted by: Andruil.3479

Andruil.3479

As a mac user I have also become very fraustrated with the Mac “client”….
I viewed all 12 pages of this 3 month old thread (at the time of this post) hoping to get some feedback from actual developers and ANet people, but I only saw one reply from them which really didn’t say much….
I have read complaints from people that have been utterly unsatisfied for the past 3 years with the Mac beta “Client” and are still awaiting a response 3 years later…. Well, I now hear their response loud and clear:
“THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT MAC USERS” …
I was wondering wether to buy the HoT expansion and support the company but the answer is now clear to me…..
Finally, I would definetly advise any mac user to stay away…

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Posted by: ypy.2865

ypy.2865

I know it’s not the best to do but if you really really want to play GW2 in your Mac without bootcamping to windows (because of reasons) you have to low your graphics to best performance, put the character model options to lowest and close all your RAM consuming apps (chrome for example) every time you are going to do a zerg event (world bosses, ds, WvW, EotM, etc) for the game not to crash. For everything else in the game you can play with the settings as usual.

I really hope Anet does something with this because I think only the fanboys will stay with gw2 when you have to play with play-doh graphics or it will crash.

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Posted by: Qugi.2653

Qugi.2653

What Anet should do is stop advertise Mac client to future customer. It well know client is very broke and probably Anet can not fix because cider port stuck with 32 bit. But very often we see player post here how they got game for Mac and crash or graphic problem. It not very honest for Anet to sell client that is beta after over 3 year that is junk they can not fix.

;)

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Posted by: ananda.5946

ananda.5946

Wow, they really stuck to ignoring this thread. RIP Mac Beta Client. They should stop advertising that it works because it’s just not true at this point. This is the worst customer service and communication I’ve ever seen.

Since installing bootcamp to be able to play GW2, my husband and I actually moved on and do other things now that we have more options. So, I don’t think it was in Anet’s best interest for people to use bootcamp because we are no longer captives to the tiny amount of choice for OS X.

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Posted by: Figlilly.3907

Figlilly.3907

Good news Mac folks. From the AMA on Reddit today.

Stephen: They are actively working on a proper Mac version of GW2 and this week they finally got it compiling, linking and starting up, but it crashed at the login screen; no ETA

I wish I knew how to link neatly but it is in here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/

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Posted by: FlamingFoxx.1305

FlamingFoxx.1305

Here’s the full quote for anyone interested:

“When we shipped the game originally we used a third-party shell to ‘host’ the Windows version. While this got the product out the door on Mac there are some things we haven’t been able to do to make it a true Mac application. We are actively experimenting with getting native code that runs directly on the Mac with OpenGL etc. I don’t know how long it will take to make it “real” but I can say that this week we finally got it compiling, linking, and starting up on a Mac before it crashes at the login screen."

Thanks for pointing it out Figlilly! I had asked the same question early on in the AMA but didn’t receive an answer (because obviously it’s very easy for things to get buried on reddit), but I’m glad they answered it somewhere and it is indeed good news!

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Posted by: Talek.6795

Talek.6795

Wow! Such a great news! I am looking forward to hear more news on that topic!!!

Talék

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Posted by: ananda.5946

ananda.5946

While I am glad to hear they are trying to do something, it is a little bizarre that they are not communicating anything on the official forums so people don’t think they just gave up. I hope it works out, but the communication really needs to improve.

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Posted by: Jon Olson

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While I am glad to hear they are trying to do something, it is a little bizarre that they are not communicating anything on the official forums so people don’t think they just gave up. I hope it works out, but the communication really needs to improve.

We don’t have much to say about it. That’s often why we are silent. I don’t want to give you all hope of something only to take it away if it doesn’t work out.

Beta, Character Select/Create, Enhanced Squad UI, Play for Free, Raids, Streaming Client, & Mac

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Posted by: ananda.5946

ananda.5946

While I am glad to hear they are trying to do something, it is a little bizarre that they are not communicating anything on the official forums so people don’t think they just gave up. I hope it works out, but the communication really needs to improve.

We don’t have much to say about it. That’s often why we are silent. I don’t want to give you all hope of something only to take it away if it doesn’t work out.

If this were something like the old bird issue or the flickering bushes, then I’d agree. However, the Mac Client has been sold for the expansion for several months now, but it does not actually work. One would think this was a case where excellent communication would make sense. Knowingly selling a broken product and then remaining silent on the issue hardly seems like a strategy for retaining goodwill from the customer base.

It is easy to understand that the company wants to manage expectations and not promise things that won’t happen. However, the company already promised things that didn’t happen; they sold (and continue to sell) a game client that is advertised as working, but does not. It doesn’t seem like the hole could be dug any deeper by communicating. I don’t think it is unreasonable for the customer base to want more than a note a few months ago saying that ‘we know the mac client isn’t the greatest’ and then silence (although, I think we understand there is probably also a corporate strategy going on which could explain the silence).

Anyway, thanks for the reply. I hope the company can change direction and see that this is a sort of special case where the policy of no communication is no longer the best choice. And good luck on getting things to work!

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Posted by: Aquamad.7028

Aquamad.7028

I have been trying to play GW2 HoT on my Mac but the game keeps crashing any time I try take part in meta events… it will even eventually crash if I explore for an extended period of time. While I love the game and its new features (I admit I collect a lot of in store skins as I like to have good looking toons) it has got to a point where I no longer get enjoyment from the game and, unless a fix comes out soon, I will migrate to other online games. The money I spend on the in game purchase will instead be spent on sub fees for other games. please fix this game as I love where it is going, otherwise I will take my money elsewhere.

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Posted by: Zeljius.9703

Zeljius.9703

I have been trying to play GW2 HoT on my Mac but the game keeps crashing any time I try take part in meta events… it will even eventually crash if I explore for an extended period of time. While I love the game and its new features (I admit I collect a lot of in store skins as I like to have good looking toons) it has got to a point where I no longer get enjoyment from the game and, unless a fix comes out soon, I will migrate to other online games. The money I spend on the in game purchase will instead be spent on sub fees for other games. please fix this game as I love where it is going, otherwise I will take my money elsewhere.

I also regularly experience this on my Mid 2014 Macbook Pro. The legendary Dragon in Verdant Brink crashes my client and eventually after rougly 4-5 hours of straight gaming my mac inevitably crashes. This is a terrible thing that nobody should experience when playing a game as great as Guild Wars 2.

ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING when the expansion is currently being sold as a game that is working for Macs when it clearly does not.

I cannot stress enough how annoying it is trying to complete Meta events only for your client to crash moments before the meta event finishes.

It is extremely off putting and I hope an effective solution is provided very soon. For current Mac players and especially for Mac newcomers.

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Posted by: Zeljius.9703

Zeljius.9703

Because this crappy Mac Client crashed on me.

Over the course of the entire Dragon’s Stands events my Mac client crashed about 8 times. 3 of which were at mordremoth. The LAST crash was right before mordremoth died and now I can’t re-enter the map to get my rewards.

My crappy windows laptop that I had before this would drop down to 10 fps during meta events but never crash. This Mac Client has me running at 30 fps during meta events and crashes every 5-10 minutes during said events.

Way to sell us an Expansion marketing working for Mac when in reality you dish us out a broken Mac Client.

Thanks for wasting my time ANet.

Jesus Christ i’m so salty right now.

(edited by Zeljius.9703)

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Posted by: RavBunneh.6854

RavBunneh.6854

My mac client crashes a lot too. Was fighting the Megadestroyer and the game crashed. When I came back I had no credit.
I don’t think they are going to make a native client, so I think we have to just live with it.

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Posted by: Figlilly.3907

Figlilly.3907

Well a native client was discussed on the AMA on Reddit. Here is a link to the summary:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/490u3k/missed_the_ama_heres_a_summary/

So, it does look hopeful that they might get it to work.

In the meantime, try lowering your graphics for the big fights. I put mine on Best Performance and then I tweak them a little so I can at least see the players in their outfits and not the generic base model figure. Although it isn’t an ideal solution and means I don’t have the lovely graphics my computer is capable of displaying, at least I don’t crash. As well, try to party up at the big fights then if you crash, you have a chance at re_entering the same map. Join a commander’s squad or party with a random.

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Posted by: JustTrogdor.7892

JustTrogdor.7892

Just an update from reddit. It seems that the native Mac client is still in the works, or at least has not been abandoned yet.

From today’s April 19th AMA thread on reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4fjrxt/we_are_the_gw2_dev_team_here_to_chat_with_you/d29ergx

[–]danidanitta 11 points 3 hours ago

Due to the small work around most of us mac players had to use earlier to get in the game after the patch, could you give us any news on the progress of the mac client you mentioned briefly in the previous AMA?

I understand it’s not top priority but any news on it is appreciated.

Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet[S] 18 points 3 hours ago

Just so you know, I’m primarily a Mac user too. I’m going to celebrate with you on the day that playing GW2 on my Mac is as enjoyable as playing it on my PC. But it’s a big project.

The Burninator

(edited by JustTrogdor.7892)

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Posted by: penelopehannibal.8947

penelopehannibal.8947

Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet[S] 18 points 3 hours ago

Just so you know, I’m primarily a Mac user too. I’m going to celebrate with you on the day that playing GW2 on my Mac is as enjoyable as playing it on my PC. But it’s a big project.

Brings back memories of when the Mac Beta Client was first announced, especially this bit:

“On top of it all, ArenaNet staffers are big fans of Macs. We offer them as part of our employee laptop subsidy program, and our president Mike O’Brien is rarely seen without his Mac laptop. We’re as excited as anyone to play Guild Wars 2 on OS X.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-guild-wars-2-for-mac-beta/

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Posted by: JustTrogdor.7892

JustTrogdor.7892

Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet[S] 18 points 3 hours ago

Just so you know, I’m primarily a Mac user too. I’m going to celebrate with you on the day that playing GW2 on my Mac is as enjoyable as playing it on my PC. But it’s a big project.

Brings back memories of when the Mac Beta Client was first announced, especially this bit:

“On top of it all, ArenaNet staffers are big fans of Macs. We offer them as part of our employee laptop subsidy program, and our president Mike O’Brien is rarely seen without his Mac laptop. We’re as excited as anyone to play Guild Wars 2 on OS X.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-guild-wars-2-for-mac-beta/

Yeah I always found that bit interesting given the problems and lack of support the Mac client has had over the years. That and this line from the same link given it has been over three years now:

and understand that your overall experience will be better when we release the final version.

I guess we can keep our fingers crossed and hope it is for real this time and not like all those times they offered Mac support specialists that vanished. It does seem they are honestly working on it now. Although I think their hand might have been sort of forced once Nvidia acquired TransGaming and they lost the ability to work with TG on updates.

Given everything that was delivered with today’s patch it seems like MO and his team have been trying to turn things around across the board. I was rather impressed. Heck they even fixed the Mac launch bug within several hours. Only time will tell. I’m optimistic but hesitant to be so at the same time if that makes sense.

The Burninator

(edited by JustTrogdor.7892)

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Posted by: IRISHlongbow.4960

IRISHlongbow.4960

I love this game; I really do. Areanet you have created a wonderful gaming experience for many people around the globe. That being said; we need your support! Many people have been begging for answers about when the Mac Client will be fixed and we are getting no answers. Mac users are constantly dealing with game crashes and aren’t even able to play with the graphics settings that our hardware can support. We need you to pay attention to this issue as we want to support your game, but we can only do that if you support us. Please do not ask me to just run bootcamp for Windows on my Mac. I realize that this is a work-around for this issue, yet I refuse to purchase another operating system for my computer to only play this one game. Don’t get me wrong, I really want to play this game, but it is getting very difficult to enjoy my gaming experience when my client crashes in any high population area. Please Areanet; Mac users need your help. Please offer us at least some details on what progress is being made for Mac users. Thank you for your help.

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Posted by: Moesmaker.9581

Moesmaker.9581

Though there are other threads about this topic, I am glad another one pops up. This weekend I tried to do some metas in HoT and couldn’t finish just one! Reason: game crashes when many folks come along for the final battles in a meta. The Mac client can’t handle it. And indeed the game works in Bootcamp-mode, but I don’t want to switch OS several times per day. And btw: HoT WAS sold as a PC/Mac-game remember?

Me too, I am stoked to hear more about the status of the native Mac client that should be in the works.

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Posted by: Lews.8146

Lews.8146

Bumping this just hoping for some info, playing ffxiv right now mostly becouse I hate rebootin to Windows to play, and thankfully ffxiv has a good client for Mac even though it is cider. Would like to know how he native Mac client is coming ????

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Posted by: Jon Olson

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Jon Olson

Programmer

We can login and see some graphics. Physics is the next major step.

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Posted by: penelopehannibal.8947

penelopehannibal.8947

We can login and see some graphics. Physics is the next major step.

I love you. <3

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Posted by: Eirian Direstorm.9748

Eirian Direstorm.9748

We can login and see some graphics. Physics is the next major step.

That sounds very basic, like there might be a long way to go, but either way, I’m really glad people (or at least someone) are working on it!

Thank you!

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Posted by: IRISHlongbow.4960

IRISHlongbow.4960

We can login and see some graphics. Physics is the next major step.

Thank you for the update Jon. I appreciate your dedication to the community! Please keep us in the loop as you make progress on the client.