Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of people on these forums with non-minimum requirement macs, and many are experiencing game crashes. However, I see 2010 and 2009 macs being posted all the time, and I play with something even older — yes, a 2007!

The game runs fine, for a while. Clearing my PRAM and setting the mtd3d=0 helped significantly (e.g. I’m past the crash every other hour and the getting stuck not being able to load into certain zones). But now, I’m running into something else. Every once in a while (say once or twice a day if I do a good gaming stint of many hours) the system just freezes. Full lock up. I have to power down and fire it all back up again.

I would love it if someone might know of anything I can do to stop this. I would much prefer a crash to desktop, as this constant random powering off of my system just can’t be good. This doesn’t happen in anything but GW2, and I see so many others talking about crashing to desktop that I suspect it’s something to do with my old system and the transgaming wrapper where something about this old system handles things even less gracefully than the 2009/2010 versions. If there’s some config video settings I could try I would be eager to hear them.

OK, firstly some machine specific information would be good.

Which OS you running ?
How much memory do you have ?
Which graphics card do you have ?
Etc etc etc
Basically all your machine specifications.

All that would help for people to assist you.

It is entirely possible that, being below the minimum specifications, your graphics card or your processor just can’t handle it for extended periods of time… In which case there really isn’t anything you can do about it.

The wonderful thing about macs. As a late 2007:
Specs: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP16. It’s the MA878LL w/ 4G Ram running Mountain Lion 10.8.2.

However, as stated, my machine is not supported hardware and I’m not actually looking for “the right answer”, because as FlamingFoxx suggests, I may just be out of luck. I’m just wondering if there’s some video/audio configuration settings I can tweak with to try out anything.

For instance, I had the game running on a nice relaxing sunday for an entire day and not a single system freeze (though it was dropping connection in storyline instances — different issue altogether though). Today, I’m jumping up a tower and it freezes up after 30 minutes of play. It could have to do with view distance, particles, hell, at this point I wouldn’t even rule out some bad audio call — (though if that causes a full system freeze I don’t know what it’d be doing).

I know the real fix is to get a mac that meets specs, but with the new 27" going for near 2k at the low end, and the system running great for everything else, it’s quite a hefty price-tag to play one game. But if the mtd3d=0 setting stabilized my system so it only crashes randomly every other day, there must be something else to tweak that makes it crash even less.

Again, my concern isn’t the crash as much as it’s a full system freeze. I see other people with below minimum specs reporting crashes all the time. My concern is having to pull the plug each time. It’s a transgaming wrapper — maybe there’s even a config setting to run it in some kind of “safe” mode?

Grahl.5796:

The wonderful thing about macs. As a late 2007:
Specs: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP16. It’s the MA878LL w/ 4G Ram running Mountain Lion 10.8.2.

However, as stated, my machine is not supported hardware and I’m not actually looking for “the right answer”, because as FlamingFoxx suggests, I may just be out of luck. I’m just wondering if there’s some video/audio configuration settings I can tweak with to try out anything.

For instance, I had the game running on a nice relaxing sunday for an entire day and not a single system freeze (though it was dropping connection in storyline instances — different issue altogether though). Today, I’m jumping up a tower and it freezes up after 30 minutes of play. It could have to do with view distance, particles, hell, at this point I wouldn’t even rule out some bad audio call — (though if that causes a full system freeze I don’t know what it’d be doing).

I know the real fix is to get a mac that meets specs, but with the new 27" going for near 2k at the low end, and the system running great for everything else, it’s quite a hefty price-tag to play one game. But if the mtd3d=0 setting stabilized my system so it only crashes randomly every other day, there must be something else to tweak that makes it crash even less.

Again, my concern isn’t the crash as much as it’s a full system freeze. I see other people with below minimum specs reporting crashes all the time. My concern is having to pull the plug each time. It’s a transgaming wrapper — maybe there’s even a config setting to run it in some kind of “safe” mode?

Well Mountain Lion actually sandboxes apps I think, so it seems like it must be a hardware related crash, if it was just the app then just the app should crash?

I would agree with Flammingfoxx, the machine is probably getting too hot and freezing as a result. Try logging periodically to let it cool down.

I considered the overheating thing, but for instance: I can power up, play in Caledon Forest for 4 hours doing the entire zone and every event I run across, and have no issues. Yet, I power up, play for 15 minute, and hit Farmer Eda’s grove… and freeze. (3 times now btw including a continual lockup until i set the mtd3d=0).

The fact that certain areas like this are “trouble spots” means it’s something more. Yet it’s still random. When Farmer Eda’s trees lock up my machine, I can power down, power back up, and finish the area and leave. Certain areas are just worse for crashes than others. Heart of the Mists I’ve also frozen in a few times.

Unfortunately, with a full freeze I’m not even sure if I can get any kind of crash report. Though if I can, please point me to where. I was just looking for some transgaming or GW2 config file settings I could tweak to “play” with, but if there are no suggestions, I guess I’m just out of luck.