Guild Wars 2

Ok first and for most I want to thank Anet for making a great game I have enjoyed for the past 2+ years, but sadly my PC blew up and I’m on a Mac. I was so happy that HoT was coming but at the time no spects for it. Then the came out and it said 10.8 and above, this is where I got disappointed.

Now for the past year or so since I been using my mac, I have had nothing but, "I’m so sorry your on a Mac, You should get a real computer and get a PC, even to the point of killing myself for owning a Mac from this awesome community of Gw2, NOW the kill myself was from one person and ya take it with a grain of salt and move on. Now as I play this game and stop and look around and enjoy it for all its glory, I have tried to ask why Anet I can play the core game just fine ( though slower but still playable for my liking ) I get nothing from anyone from Anet to why I can’t play HoT because its 10.8. I get no answers to why is its a hardware issue because of the OS, nothing. All I get is you might be able to play this game for fans of this game, but why spend 50 bucks for a base game on not knowing it will work or not.

So I’m done with asking after this post, I want SOMEONE from Anet to explain to me or someone that knows about Intel Base MacPro 1.1 with an HD 5770 ( yes old ) why I can’t play a game all based on 10.7.5 OS compared to 10.8 other then Apple saying we don’t support it, I have explained in chat in game why I can’t upgrade at this time, I will not do it here for person VERY personal reasons.

So Anet if you love and respect the very game you work so hard for I would love a simple answer to why 10.7.5 OS’s cant play GW2 Hot, so I can either move on and quit farming for dusk, and or looking around getting more and more depressed because I can’t play your great game, or maybe I should do what that person said: Maybe you should end it and quit. I’m simply burned out at this point. Take this post and believe what ya want. Good luck for all those that can play HoT and beyond.

Mac opengl version is tied to OS updates.

Blame apple that you are required to update your os for a bug fixes and better opengl version

Apple only supports the latest 2 versions (I think) of their OS. Arenanet list 10.8 as the minimum requirement precisely because anything lower is no longer actively maintained by Apple.

HoT may well work on your 10.7 machine, Arenanet just won’t say if it will or not because they aren’t supporting it. If they said to you ‘yes it will work’ then they would be in hot water if something stopped working for you. That’s why they won’t say it.

If you can’t update your machine then unfortunately you’re going to be running on a machine that legally is unsupported. That doesn’t mean a whole lot though. You most likely will still be able to run HoT (though probably not very well considering your machine is old).

I repeat again – 10.8 is the lowest currently supported OS. They’re not going to comment on your use of 10.7 because it isn’t supported by Apple (as in actively receiving updates). Each new version of OSX brings updates to how the software runs, it isn’t beneficial for a game to support too many OS versions because then they have more things to test and more things that can go wrong. That’s all it means – they’re not actively testing the game on 10.7 and you won’t receive support if something does go wrong. You may however be able to play the game.

My suggestion: Wait until HoT comes out. When it comes out buy it and see if it runs satisfactorily on your machine. If it does not then ask Anet for a refund or upgrade your machine (though I understand that you’re saying you can’t).

Essentially with 10.8 Apple started updating the OpenGL they were using. GuildWars 2 kind of needed that update so that pretty much dictates minimum specs.

There are lots of things that Anet could improve with the mac client (hello crashing every 10 minutes in the new beta maps regardless of settings) but this requirement is pretty much 100% Apple’s fault.

Ok I kinda didn’t want it to be just all on Apple but I kinda figured it was, well with going on in my personal life I just can’t upgrade at this time I’ll say my good byes to my guild before the 23rd in tell then here is to hoping Dusk drops or I farm enough silver waste to make 1300g my last real thing for the core game.

racheloflite.6217:

Ok I kinda didn’t want it to be just all on Apple but I kinda figured it was, well with going on in my personal life I just can’t upgrade at this time I’ll say my good byes to my guild before the 23rd in tell then here is to hoping Dusk drops or I farm enough silver waste to make 1300g my last real thing for the core game.

Are you able to run the game through bootcamp? HoT should play fine through that. Alternatively there’s nothing stopping you from playing the base game. I’m sure there’s still tons for you to do.

racheloflite.6217:

Ok I kinda didn’t want it to be just all on Apple but I kinda figured it was, well with going on in my personal life I just can’t upgrade at this time I’ll say my good byes to my guild before the 23rd in tell then here is to hoping Dusk drops or I farm enough silver waste to make 1300g my last real thing for the core game.

apple is known to be a company that is pretty hostile to gaming. Their hardware can accommodate gaming fine. Their gaming policies or lack of one is quite awful.

Lord Gaben was always disappointed in Apple stating that they could had been a powerful third platform in gaming. They could had Halo as a Mac exclusive.

Nope, Apple historically dont care about game. At least they are currently fixing their graphic stack

FlamingFoxx.1305:

racheloflite.6217:

Ok I kinda didn’t want it to be just all on Apple but I kinda figured it was, well with going on in my personal life I just can’t upgrade at this time I’ll say my good byes to my guild before the 23rd in tell then here is to hoping Dusk drops or I farm enough silver waste to make 1300g my last real thing for the core game.

Are you able to run the game through bootcamp? HoT should play fine through that. Alternatively there’s nothing stopping you from playing the base game. I’m sure there’s still tons for you to do.

The thing about Bootcamp is this I can’t run native 64bit as my MacPro is a first Gen 1.1 Intel base Mac, so the boot doesn’t see Windows 7 Home 64bit as a bootable disk, so I have to create an image of it on a flash drive and have someone that has a Mac with Windows 7 as well to copy files over to the flash drive NOW I’m not 100% on that just trying remember what I have read over the years all I remember is its a lot of steps 20 or so, plus not having another mac to do this well I’m hosed there.

I’m guessing HoT could run on 32bit but it would only read 2GB of my 7GB of main ram ( yes still have the 2 512’s in there ) and being as new as HoT is lets face it most games wills always run on 64bit. Trust me I have been looking all this up left and right, I just can’t see spending 50 bucks on a whim.

As far as I’m aware this game is still running on a 32 bit client. That said you can very easily download a torrent copy of Win7 32 bit (though I’m unsure why ur disk doesn’t include 32 bit also). Since you actually own a legit copy of windows you should be able to activate it with ur current key and I believe ur within ur usage right so ur not breaking any laws here.

I very strong suggest boot camp. I just did that with my iMac use Windows 7. I get 50-65 FPS in areas like DR and LA on most medium setting. I get 30 FPS at boss fights. It look so great I can not believe it. I did not want to do boot camp for a long time because I do not like Windows. I only use boot camp for GW2 so not worried about virus. I did install Avast for being safe.

Qugi.2653:

I very strong suggest boot camp. I just did that with my iMac use Windows 7. I get 50-65 FPS in areas like DR and LA on most medium setting. I get 30 FPS at boss fights. It look so great I can not believe it. I did not want to do boot camp for a long time because I do not like Windows. I only use boot camp for GW2 so not worried about virus. I did install Avast for being safe.

Thats find but what you use 32bit Windows 7 or what, my Mac Pro can’t boot to windows 7 64bit cuz it doesn’t read the boot, something about EUI file or command or something. All I know is I might get it the 1st of Oct. when I get some money but was hoping someone has tried it with 10.7.5 already but most my guess have newer Macs. I’ll be getting a PC someday hoping to find work in 2months or so, who knows.

I use 64bit Windows 7. Seem you have older Mac. You might have to try Vista or XP. You can find chart here with what work with your Mac. Also instruction how to use driver with link on chart. You will need to scroll down page to find chart for your Mac that you use.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205016

That chart also has link to driver I talk about before that should use instead of automatic driver install during boot camp set up.

Hope this help.

All I can offer is my own experience – if at all possible, switch to playing in Bootcamp. I got at least double the performance. And with Macs Fan Control (windows app specifically made for bootcamp fan control) set to control the fan based on the CPU core, I never have an excessive heat issue.

@racheloflite If 32bit Windows 7 will work then that will still be a great boost. The game runs in 32bit anyway, the only thing you’ll miss out on is if your computer has more than 3GB of RAM it won’t make use of it (though 3 is still ample for playing the game).

I wish you the best of luck with your situation! I hope it sorts itself out soon and that you manage to play HoT.

The core game is still NOT A NATIVE BETA on the mac. So why even consider buying the expansion… I’m not. If your on a mac, it’s almost a waste of money for how terrible the game runs through the cider port.

Hollow.9758:

The core game is still NOT A NATIVE BETA on the mac. So why even consider buying the expansion… I’m not. If your on a mac, it’s almost a waste of money for how terrible the game runs through the cider port.

While that may be true not everyone has the option of buying a windows machine or running in boot camp. I don’t mean this in a nasty way, but your comment isn’t really helpful with racheloflite’s problem and in fact is completely unrelated to the topic at hand.

The mac version from 1 year ago has much better performance. All their PC-only update were made without parallel improvements to the mac version.

Xillllix.3485:

The mac version from 1 year ago has much better performance. All their PC-only update were made without parallel improvements to the mac version.

Actually a very large number of the updates over the past year have actually made PC performance worse. Any update that has improved PC performance has also improved Mac performance (even if by a tiny bit). But with a lot of the LS S2 updates and the introduction of the new, very CPU intensive, zone performance has gone down quite a bit for everyone. The new FoV sliders were also a big culprit, that update reduced performance on both OSX and Windows.

So yea, the mac client from 1 year ago had better performance. As did the Windows client from 1 year ago.