Guild Wars 2

The title describes my problem pretty succinctly.

When I launch the game, it can get to the character selection screen, displays the GUI and all the other good stuff, but the entities that require 3D rendering (such as the characters and their portraits) don’t appear.

After about seven seconds, the game crashes with a c0000094 error.

Speculative theory: it’s my Toshiba hard drive.

I’m on a mid 2011, 13" MacBook Air. My specs are as follows:

• Processor: 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 CPU 2557M
• Memory: 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
• Latest build of Mac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3).

So why am I suspecting my hard drive, and why does it being made by Toshiba matter? Well, I’ll explain.

After testing the game on a laptop that was exactly the same as this one – that laptop works – I discovered that it was a release that had a Samsung hard drive. Apple had stopped manufacturing Airs with Toshiba drives and replaced them with the Samsung drives, and the reason is simple.

After running the app “BlackMagic Speed Test,” I learned that my drive was both slower at reading and writing, and also had a “trickle” stream. The laptop which had the Samsung drive was faster with the former, and instead of a “trickle,” had more of a “flood”.

Anyone with tips or advice for getting my laptop (Toshiba) working with the game?

You are also at the bare minimum system requirements and the MBA isn’t listed as a “supported” system. That being said, I’ll still list some of the basic Mac troubleshooting steps [length warning]:

Read each step completely before attempting

1.) monitor your system temps using istat or some other temp app. You want to check your GPU and even moreso, your CPU. List both temps while the system is idle and after while “attempting to run” the game or after 10 minutes of play if you ever get there.

2.) run software update to ensure all drivers and os are up to date.

3.) try repairing disk permissions via Disk Utility first. Then…

4.) repair the client install

Open Terminal

Type the following:

/applications/guild\ wars\ 2.app/contents/MacOS/cider —use-dos-cwd C:Gw2 -- C:\\GW2\\GW2.exe -repair

You can copy and paste that in, but (check the dash) you must change the dash before the word USE or this will fail the forum shows an em dash (—), but it is supposed to be 2 consecutive en dashes (-). Run it and let it go until finished. FYI if you type the command yourself or paste it, they are 2 dashes (-) side by side… I’m noticing one sometimes looks like an em dash… It’s 2 en dashes though. (the dash before USE is 2 regular dashes)… Reiterated due to previous confusion about that dash on these forums.

5.)Perhaps after doing that, if it doesn’t work, you can try to delete the contents of the gw2 data folder, it’s a pain to get to the right one: this step is a general fix for many t kitten ues, even without the previous steps

Mine is located under the hidden Library folder (navigate using finder, do not use spotlight to search)

/[yourharddrivename]/users/[yourusername]/library/application support/guild wars 2

You may want to copy/paste this folder to your desktop as a temporary back up, just in case.

Delete the contents of that specific folder (you should see files like this contained within “config, dyndata.dat, user.reg, userdef.reg, and folders p_drive and wineserver…namestuff…loca..[long name]” just to list a few), then re-run the client..

~~Your folder is probably hidden (as is the default). Hidden folders display as greyed out text and icons. I found this after googling:

http://m.wikihow.com/See-Hidden-Folders-on-Mac-OS-X-and-Other-Recent-Models

Others claim alt+clicking a file/folder unhides the contents, but that was never successful for me. At least the link has visuals for you. Hope it helps.

6.) If none of this works, check the sticky and submit a ticket, then please come back here and report the fix that worked for you.

You may need to somehow clean the inside of your system and clear the fans and vents of dust and debris (trust me, it’s in there).

Please come back and let me know how you go and what works.

Well, I’ve actually done all those steps multiple times. The game still refuses to run…

The (almost) strange thing is, is that the game runs flawlessly on my Windows 7 Bootcamp partition, and my GPU doesn’t typically even get hot enough to activate the fans.

The game crashes periodically even on Windows, however. Like I said in the OP, I’m thinking it’s my hard drive and it’s latency. And if MBAs aren’t supported, then the other MBA I played the game on — which is exactly like mine — shouldn’t technically be working.

Thanks for your post, though.

There is a huge difference between the Mac and pc clients. So what min specs work on one may not work on the other. The system requirements for the pc client are much lower also (half the ram, lesser CPU), therefore, your MBA is way above the min requirements.

The Mac version is just a port using a wrapper and actually requires way more resources to effectively run. This also generates a lot more heat as it taps the CPU.

I don’t really think it’s the hard drive, but you can run a hardware diagnostic to find out. (check the actual apple forums to find out how to run the Mac hardware diagnostic app, I know you have to hold a button down while booting… D or something, but I can’t remember accurately).

Please, if you absolutely can’t get it to run and really want it to, submit a ticket (read the sticky first); they are no longer reading the Mac forums here any more.