Guild Wars 2

I think this is awesome, and a good sign going forward OS X will get more love, but I am curious: is this a stepping stone while you work on a native version built for OS X, or is this your answer for the foreseeable future (aka for a few years)?

Thank you ANet, this is fantastic

I’m curious as to what you mean by ‘native’ for OSX. This installs and runs on OSX natively. Also, what’s your real question? Are you implying that something about this current solution could be improved? If so, what?

he means that the client is actually running on an emulator called “transgaming”.
running it on an emulator causes big performance drops on some systems. and It may occur that you can perfectly run the game in bootcamp but when you go to OSX you suddenly can’t because of FPS issues.

They can only make the client native if they use OpenGL instead of DirectX.
It’s weird that they took DirectX over OpenGL since they were experimenting with console ports which uses OpenGL as well.
the only operating system that uses DirectX is windows.

but we should be happy with what we have and that’s more then nothing.
I am happy to give 10fps to get rid of bootcamp.

Its a cider port, it does not run natively.

Enoch.1058:

I’m curious as to what you mean by ‘native’ for OSX. This installs and runs on OSX natively. Also, what’s your real question? Are you implying that something about this current solution could be improved? If so, what?

Transgaming’s Cider port is not a native OSX App. If you right click the app and hit “Show contents” then navigate to Resources, you’ll notice and entire Windows ‘setup’ within the app itself. Essentially you’re running the game in a self-contained Windows disk.

I have been running in Windows 8 bootcamp on my Retina Macbook and it has been working great! I get bout 45-50fps with 0 lag.

Using Wine/Transgaming is not emulating. It’s a wrapper between the game binaries and the OS. You’re not running it in a ‘self contained Windows disk’, you’re not even running Windows at all. Just because the directory structure is the same in Windows and on OSX doesn’t mean that it’s a ‘Windows setup’. Hell, the ‘real’ file organization is hidden in the .dat file anyway (it’s application specific, not OS specific).

The only difference between running it in OSX and Windows at this point is that there is a translation layer between the app and the OS that proxies commands from the requested Windows functions to the equivalent OSX functions.

It’s too early to say if performance will be limited due to running the game on top of this adapter. It very well may be that all the optimizations needed can be achieved within the game itself, not this compatibility layer.

Enoch.1058:

The only difference between running it in OSX and Windows at this point is that there is a translation layer between the app and the OS that proxies commands from the requested Windows functions to the equivalent OSX functions.

That translation layer is what keeps this from being a native application. There’s a reason copy-pasting doesn’t translate well, that copying in-game uses Ctrl+V and pasting out is Command+P. The Cider wrapper emulates a Windows environment for DirectX. I’ve been through this whole rigmarole with City of Heroes and this is no different. A native app would be fantastic.

Bear in mind that rebooting into Windows and running it natively there with the exact same hardware produces better stability and FPS than if run under the Cider port on OS X. It’s not the game itself. The cider setup has some serious kinks.

Running a 2011 macbook pro, decent specs. I was running through Parallels (work a lil play a lil – didnt want to have to run through bootcamp). I had all settings set to lowest and getting about 19-25 fps.
Looking forward to the beta mac client, even if it is lower specs than full bootcamp!

It’s NOT an emulator http://transgaming.com/cider/frequently-asked-questions

What specific, measurable problems have been experienced in this application by running it on top of this compatibility layer? Are those issues, in fact, caused by said layer, or is there a more optimal way to address the issue in the GW2 source code?

Personally, if I were a game developer, the calculation to build a native app comes down to these questions. If you can gain acceptable performance with little/no effort by wrapping your existing binaries with a compatibility layer, why would you ever maintain two different codebases?

So, again, what is the ‘gain’ for running natively? Further, if it just means you can squeak out 5-10 more FPS, don’t expect that to be reason enough for ANet to invest development resources in such an endeavor. (Personally, I’d gladly sacrifice performance for compatibility, but that’s getting off topic)

Enoch.1058:

It’s NOT an emulator http://transgaming.com/cider/frequently-asked-questions

Alright, I get it, it’s not an emulator even though it allows one OS to operate with the exact results of another OS, which is the definition of an emulator. If you don’t think “[implementing] common multimedia Windows APIs such as Direct3D, DirectInput, DirectSound and many others by mapping them to Mac equivalents” is emulating I’m not sure what to tell you.

Enoch.1058:

What specific, measurable problems have been experienced in this application by running it on top of this compatibility layer? Are those issues, in fact, caused by said layer, or is there a more optimal way to address the issue in the GW2 source code?

This exact question was asked of City of Heroes. The Cider wrapper causes crashes and memory leaks in no small capacity. Running the game natively under Windows eliminates those problems. The game’s performance also drops. Considering, again, that the exact same hardware setup produces better results on Windows than it does with the Mac port, the reason should be obvious. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, search for “Assertion failure” and “cider wrapper memory crashes.” Again, I’ve been through all of this runaround with City of Heroes. This is the exact same company and wrapper used there.

Cider, being based on Wine, is a weird beast. You can get worse, same or better performance, seemingly for no reason. For running the core game, it’ll work, but it feels a little dirty

To be truly awesome it would need to be native, though. Look at the WoW client, which has built-in movie recording that works smoothly. Things like that would need a whole lot of extra care if they merely ported a Windows feature in Cider.

And as noted above, using Windows shortcuts is painful. Some keys I set up for OS X global functionality might collide with common MMO shortcuts using control instead of command.

vince.5937:

Enoch.1058:

What specific, measurable problems have been experienced in this application by running it on top of this compatibility layer? Are those issues, in fact, caused by said layer, or is there a more optimal way to address the issue in the GW2 source code?

This exact question was asked of City of Heroes. The Cider wrapper causes crashes and memory leaks in no small capacity. Running the game natively under Windows eliminates those problems. The game’s performance also drops. Considering, again, that the exact same hardware setup produces better results on Windows than it does with the Mac port, the reason should be obvious. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, search for “Assertion failure” and “cider wrapper memory crashes.” Again, I’ve been through all of this runaround with City of Heroes. This is the exact same company and wrapper used there.

That is the problem. It is not the exact same company. ArenaNet may be owned by NCSoft but they are an independent studio, using their own technologies, and their coders are far better than those that worked on CoH. Different teams, coders, studio, and tech stack.

Second, ANet is supportive of writing their applications to work through wine and such. Even GW1 had patches that fixed compatibility when running it on Wine.

If the game is written well, they can make it work just as good. Don’t put the failures of a completely different team, entity and studio onto others.

Cider/Wine has worked with many games flawlessly with same performance. They can do that here too.

Second we don’t know how often Cider updates their Wine install. For all we know they are using Wine 1.1 and dont get all the awesome fixes in the latest 1.5.12. So we don’t know what Cider is using.

Worst case, ANet can work with the official wine, and use a wrapper generator like WineSkin to make their own wrapper, with their own custom build of Wine, or a updated wine with the fixes they want from the project to make it work.

Ive been running Wine 1.5.12 with GW2 on my mac, it works fine, some bugs, but they can be fixed. Though the Cider port is more performant and I got an FPS increase from the official Wine build.

Daegalus.8216:

That is the problem. It is not the exact same company. ArenaNet may be owned by NCSoft but they are an independent studio, using their own technologies, and their coders are far better than those that worked on CoH. Different teams, coders, studio, and tech stack.

Second, ANet is supportive of writing their applications to work through wine and such. Even GW1 had patches that fixed compatibility when running it on Wine.

Let me clarify: The ‘same’ company I’m talking about is Transgaming, not Anet.

I have been using Wine (the foundation of Cider) for years to run Windows game in Linux and Mac. Indeed, it’s how I ran GW1 for a long time. Your mileage with compatibility layers will vary depending on the quality of the source application. Cider is a very straightforward piece of software and a lot of the performance issues, crashes, and memory leaks are the result of the application, not Cider, being poorly written. Sure, it might be that City of Heroes ran poorly on top of Cider, but both Cider and application development have come a long way since that game was released.

I truly hope that Guld Wars 2 was written, from the beginning, to be delivered this way. Given that this soon after release they are offering this solution, it indicates that they had this in mind for a while now. I hope that GW2 proves to leverage Cider with little to no issues.

Given how well GW1 ran in Wine and the fact that many games in the App store and Steam are running using this SAME technique, I’m hopeful this will be fine. I can understand the nitpicking about ‘native’ or not, but if it’s 80% as performant and stable, I don’t think native is necessary.

Enoch.1058:

I have been using Wine (the foundation of Cider) for years to run Windows game in Linux and Mac. Indeed, it’s how I ran GW1 for a long time. Your mileage with compatibility layers will vary depending on the quality of the source application. Cider is a very straightforward piece of software and a lot of the performance issues, crashes, and memory leaks are the result of the application, not Cider, being poorly written. Sure, it might be that City of Heroes ran poorly on top of Cider, but both Cider and application development have come a long way since that game was released.

I truly hope that Guld Wars 2 was written, from the beginning, to be delivered this way. Given that this soon after release they are offering this solution, it indicates that they had this in mind for a while now. I hope that GW2 proves to leverage Cider with little to no issues.

Given how well GW1 ran in Wine and the fact that many games in the App store and Steam are running using this SAME technique, I’m hopeful this will be fine. I can understand the nitpicking about ‘native’ or not, but if it’s 80% as performant and stable, I don’t think native is necessary.

The reason I’m so concerned is because already the known issues and reported issues here on this forum are nearly identical to those seen when CoH first went to Transgaming. I’m thoroughly enjoying GW2 (and so is my wife, who hates MMOs in general) and I don’t want the same crash-ridden slew of problems to happen here. The more I can get this info out the better, so that people are at least aware that these things can occur.

Why a native client?

First because Cider/Wine is so hit or miss in terms of performance/stability that I am genuinely surprised they are even considering using it at all. Emulation layers just add more code that could go wrong, and if there is a problem in GW2 and the root cause is the fault of the cider layer and not the client itself we’re left out to dry because Anet has to wait for Transgaming to issue a fix, something it is well known for NOT doing in a timely manner whatsoever.

Secondly, just making a band-aid emulation port gives out the perception that Anet doesn’t want to invest the time and work necessary to make a quality Mac version of the game and is satisfied with the game functioning 80% of the way. “Good enough” shouldn’t cut it, especially when there are many many posts and articles where they talk up how they care about a quality experience, a Cider port isn’t a quality experience, its a slapdash quick-n-dirty solution.

This game is just too amazing for it to be marred by a poor abstraction layer. I really hope this is a stopgap measure until they get an actual native client out the door.

Guys…

If anything, this is going to be the first step towards an OSX native binary. If people don’t use it, or interest is ‘meh’, odds are any further development in this direction is going to be limited.

Enoch explains it pretty well – performance is a matter of hardware and overhead more so than the OS (being part of the overhead). That said, GPU driver support may be better in Windows, leading to some performance gains.

Either way this allows me to play a bit at the office, as bootcamp’s not an option and Fusion is too much overhead.

Enoch.1058:

I have been using Wine (the foundation of Cider) for years to run Windows game in Linux and Mac. Indeed, it’s how I ran GW1 for a long time. Your mileage with compatibility layers will vary depending on the quality of the source application. Cider is a very straightforward piece of software and a lot of the performance issues, crashes, and memory leaks ….

Cider was a branch off a VERY old version of Wine and today they are very different products. Based on experience with WAR and CoH my expectations are pretty low… but one always hopes to be suprised

I’m looking forward to comparing the Cider wrapper performance against Wine/Crossover.. should be interesting. Hopefully TG’ing have added some value in terms of performance/stability above and beyond acting as a simple executable wrapper…

My favorite part of this thread is someone whining about being corrected that WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is not emulation and then tries to argue that it is emulation anyway.

This runs fairly well for me thus far and I thank ArenaNet for it. If this version of the Mac client gains enough popularity a Blizzard-esk future version could be in the works (if needed) but it has to make fiscal sense for ANet. I’m just happy they threw us this bone in the form of a beta client.

NerfedWar.8749:

I’m looking forward to comparing the Cider wrapper performance against Wine/Crossover.

I tried with Wineskin before and was quite terrible (so many bugs and slow), this Cider port is playable at least.

Giddeon.3429:

My favorite part of this thread is someone whining about being corrected that WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is not emulation and then tries to argue that it is emulation anyway.

Doesn’t matter what someone named it, its primary function is emulation as definable by any dictionary. :P

I’m happy about the mac client too. I just don’t want the issues seen with other Transgaming ports to crop up here as well.

vince.5937:

Giddeon.3429:

My favorite part of this thread is someone whining about being corrected that WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is not emulation and then tries to argue that it is emulation anyway.

Doesn’t matter what someone named it, its primary function is emulation as definable by any dictionary. :P

I’m happy about the mac client too. I just don’t want the issues seen with other Transgaming ports to crop up here as well.

Hehe, this goes back to the early days of Wine when it should have been called WINVM (or WINVM Is Not a Virtual Machine), but that’s just not catchy

So yes, Wine does ‘emulate’ an ever increasing number of Win32 APIs but as a lightweight translation layer rather than a full blown system emulator. Bottom line, it IS an emulator of sorts, which is why even in their docs you’ll see them refer to Wine as “Wine Is Not <that kind of> Emulator”.

Just about to test on my macbook now, fingers crossed it works well !

A native client would be AMAZING.

It’s very promising that they’ve made a Cider port but i just hope they don’t stop at that!

Pull your finger out Apple and give some better OpenGL certification!

i’m hoping for a native client some day. however, i think it’s awesome that they’re even adding a cider port, and for that, thank you.

hopefully if enough of us use it they’ll maybe see it worthwhile to create a native client.

In order to create a real native client, I believe the dev team would have to take the portions of the game that rely on Direct X and re-implement then in OpenGL. This would be a pretty labor-intensive process, so my guess is that they’re using the Cider port to see how much Mac adoption they get. If Mac ends up being a significant portion of their audience, then it would make sense for them to develop a fully native Mac client. If not, they can still support the game in a slightly diminished fashion with Cider.

WINE provides a “rough” ABI emulation through what amounts to a very large library interposing system. It is a fairly old technique that has been used in many different operating systems over the years to do all sorts of interesting things. (See FreeBSD as a great example). It is not a virtual machine in the classic sense as there is only one kernel actually running.

From a performance perspective, in general, anything going through an interposer is going to be slower since there are some clock cycles that must be dedicated to doing the actual translation. The question comes down to how efficient the translation is vs directly calling the normal ABI. In some extreme/perf sensitive areas, it isn’t unusual to see interposers bypass the user layer and work directly with kernel space. I don’t think Cider does this, but it is a possibility.

In any case, I’m looking forward to trying the beta out tomorrow at work!

Logsi.2031:

Pull your finger out Apple and give some better OpenGL certification!

Apple are at full OpenGL 3.2 with Mountain Lion, and have promised 4.1 during the lifetime of that OS. I just wish they’d hurry the kitten up before another big cat is due.

(Fun fact: Their shader level implementations are independent of GL implementations, so it might be ahead or behind once the 4.x update comes along.)

Hedyn.5917:

Logsi.2031:

Pull your finger out Apple and give some better OpenGL certification!

Apple are at full OpenGL 3.2 with Mountain Lion, and have promised 4.1 during the lifetime of that OS. I just wish they’d hurry the kitten up before another big cat is due.

(Fun fact: Their shader level implementations are independent of GL implementations, so it might be ahead or behind once the 4.x update comes along.)

Yeah one of the larger bottlenecks here is Apple. Apple has realised that iOS is great for gaming, and now slowly opening their eyes for their desktop/laptop OS. They need better OpenGL support and be generally better at updating their graphic drivers and work with nVidia or ATi about driver updates.

I think we’ll see a lot more games for OS X pop up in the near future and Apple should jump on that bandwagon and make it accessible and maybe also push OpenGL to be more competitive with Direct X?

I’m seeing terms like “slightly diminished” and “small performance hit” etc.

Let me just state well established fact that is in no way based on opinion that “slight” and “small” is no way to describe the huge performance hit made by using a wrapper like Cider. I tested on a hackintosh using a GTX 570 as well as a 2012 iMac with Bootcamp. A 40% performance hit isn’t “small” or “slightly diminished”. That’s absolutely absurd.

Granted, it works, it is hardly what a native port could accomplish. From a business standpoint it no longer makes sense to use DirectX1x as a primary development platform if you want to port your software. Native ports are always better, but if a Ciderized game is a way for a developer to do a feasibility study more power to them, it’s their work.

Is it better than nothing? That’s up for debate and opinion based. Some people are grateful for a prepackaged wrapper because it’s “good enough”. For what you get shortchanged over compared to the Windows version, I view it as kind of insulting. I don’t want to discourage the developers, however, so it’s worth trying and encouraging their efforts. Ultimately though, developers really need to stop using DirectX for their graphics. The OpenGL 3.2 implementation on OSX isn’t the greatest, but it should be more than capable of handling the visual goals of most developers. This is especially true for GW2.

Do not have any illusions about a Ciderized port being good for the Mac. On its technical merits it’s a disaster, and on its ethical merits it’s at best a “well, we know you exist”. Transgaming is a blight and a truly disgusting thing to see. I’m glad they are at least putting some resources into the Mac, but I usually avoid Cider ports. I know they may not have the resources to justify a re-code to OpenGL, but to that effect I point at the developers that say a native port is monetarily justified. Look at Valve, id software, and Blizzard. Granted the WoW Mac client may not be the greatest, it’s native and it’s better than running it on Wine/Cider. Those developers have stated on several occasions that a native client stands on its own two legs from a business perspective. I encourage ArenaNet to seriously consider setting up a few FTE’s in their budget to start from the ground up and do a truly native port that relies on OpenGL 3.2. Not only will it make your codebase better, but you’ll reach more customers. I don’t care what Transgaming is telling you, you just aren’t going to get “good enough” performance going this route.

Venator.5780:

Guys…

If anything, this is going to be the first step towards an OSX native binary. If people don’t use it, or interest is ‘meh’, odds are any further development in this direction is going to be limited.

/snip

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Really guys, use it. Get other people to use it. It sucks in a few cases but they need to be pushed to get a native client.

Mind you, I do not use a Mac, although I have several coworkers and friends that do.

The main thing that most of my Mac friends have complained about is that the system requirements are almost twice what they are for the PC. What that means is basically, if you have a 3-year-old system (still supported by Apple and Mountain Lion, just uses the very last Core 2 Duo processors that Apple placed into their machines and is still usable for most other aspects), in Mac OS X you will not be able to run GW2 well, if at all. The same machine, running Windows on Bootcamp, will be able to run GW2 with medium/low settings fairly well, maybe even slightly higher.

The point that has been brought up to me, and it’s a fair point to make, is that it wouldn’t be an issue if the difference in quality was “minimal”. The difference isn’t quality, it’s between “being able to run in bootcamp” and “not being able to run at all in OS X”.

SatyrBuddy.1586

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Really guys, use it. Get other people to use it. It sucks in a few cases but they need to be pushed to get a native client.

I’d really like to think that, but the pattern I’ve seen many developers take is to continue to lean more heavily on Cider if people use it.

Seth Oriath.7265:

Mind you, I do not use a Mac, although I have several coworkers and friends that do.

The main thing that most of my Mac friends have complained about is that the system requirements are almost twice what they are for the PC. What that means is basically, if you have a 3-year-old system (still supported by Apple and Mountain Lion, just uses the very last Core 2 Duo processors that Apple placed into their machines and is still usable for most other aspects), in Mac OS X you will not be able to run GW2 well, if at all. The same machine, running Windows on Bootcamp, will be able to run GW2 with medium/low settings fairly well, maybe even slightly higher.

The point that has been brought up to me, and it’s a fair point to make, is that it wouldn’t be an issue if the difference in quality was “minimal”. The difference isn’t quality, it’s between “being able to run in bootcamp” and “not being able to run at all in OS X”.

I am running GW2 on a 2008 24" iMac 512mb nVidia 8800gs with 6gb system ram just fine.. for what its worth..

Granted it doesn’t perform nearly as well as it does on the same hardware under bootcamp W764bit .. but then again having years of experience with CIDER/Wine I expected it .. For PVE its fine .. more than adequate.. I have to turn down all the eyecandy but I get more than acceptable frame rates.. even WvW was ok .. but not ideal..

Short answer .. no .. the cider version is most likely what we are going to get ..

Having been part of the Mac beta for warhammer online before it went live.. and i’ve seen this entire discussion back then, all the same issues, questions and concerns cropped up 5 years ago then as well ..

people listen ..

unless some miracle happens .. you are only going to get this Cider wrapped version.. Its a near statistical improbability a proper xcode made “mac native” OpenGL version of GW2 is going to come out, it would simply be too much work to make an OpenGl version now, you might as well start mostly over from scratch.. what you got is what you got.. love it, loathe it, or leave it.. this is what your going to get.

I think the best to hope for is a native gw3, if enough Mac users ask for it it may be a possibility. If Arenanet started with the two platforms in mind it would be much easier.

The best hope is for Microsoft to write a Windows OS that runs on a UNIX core… then the gap between OSes will no longer be worlds apart in terms of coding. Microsoft is in no hurry to close the gap.

The performance of this half assed Mac version we’ve been given is terrible really and it wont improve. I don’t know what it’s going to take for the development community to understand that the Mac platform is the only PC platform that is continuing to grow.

At least us MMO Mac gamers can look forward to Elder Scrolls online which has been confirmed to be getting a native Mac client on day one alongside the Windows client.

Maybe when we all split for that game ArenaNet will understand just how important a REAL Mac client is for their bottom line?

Shadywack.8497:

I tested on a hackintosh using a GTX 570 as well as a 2012 iMac with Bootcamp. A 40% performance hit isn’t “small” or “slightly diminished”. That’s absolutely absurd.

There is no such thing as a 2012 iMac.. 2011 was the last refresh.

Nitpicking, I know. But, the 2011 iMacs were using hardware from 2009 and 2010.

Could you please tell us if this will be the only Mac client you will be releasing (Cider port) or if you are working on a native Mac client?

Thanks

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Question-Will-there-ever-be-a-native-OS-X-version

None of us need speculation from the community. I’m looking for an answer straight from ArenaNet. Any answer that comes from any other source besides ArenaNet is a guess and that helps no one.

It’s not a difficult question to answer. I don’t see what should be so difficult about them answering whether they are or aren’t going to release a native Mac client.

Patience? Fun was only trying to help…

I apologize to Fun if he was just trying to help and felt I was rude with my reply. The way I took it though was like, hey this topic has already been discussed in this thread so why are you creating a new one?

If that wasn’t your intention then it was my misunderstanding and I apologize if my reply seemed critical of you, Fun.

The reason why I created this thread as is though and with the title I did is so it’s clear that I’m looking for an answer from ArenaNet as I’m sure we all are. This is really something that needs to be answered by ArenaNet. We can discuss it and theorize but they are the only ones with the answer that we’re all wanting and they should be providing that answer.

If I were Arena Net, I certainly wouldn’t reveal what’s being worked on in our labs.

Besides that, what difference would the answer make to you?

There are currently two (supported) ways to play GW2 on a Mac: reboot into Windows or use the Mac client. How would Arena Net working on / not working on a “native” Mac client affect you? Would it change how you play GW2 today? In my opinion, either a “yes” or a “no” answer would have 0 impact on you currently play the game. It would be useless information.

And your response to him Todd, was also useless. He has the right to ask whatever question he wants to Arena. You also don’t know what his situation is. It could be that he is having trouble with the cider version (as many currently are, including myself) and feels that a native version would work much better with better performance (both of which are true). And why should the fact that he asked this question even cause you to post a pointless reply on this thread in the first place? What difference does it make to you?

No one has the “right” to use the Mac Beta Client Tech Support forum to ask whatever question they want to Arena Net. The forum has a purpose. That purpose is not for nagging to get gossip on what new products may or may not be in development.

It makes a difference to me to clear the forum of useless noise and concentrate on legitimate bugs and problems to be solved to improve the current Mac client.

Todd.8162:

No one has the “right” to use the Mac Beta Client Tech Support forum to ask whatever question they want to Arena Net. The forum has a purpose. That purpose is not for nagging to get gossip on what new products may or may not be in development.

It makes a difference to me to clear the forum of useless noise and concentrate on legitimate bugs and problems to be solved to improve the current Mac client.

There really is no need for arguing here. You’re just trying to incite something to get the thread closed because you for whatever reason don’t approve of it. Quit being an kitten and trying to be the forum Nazi.

This is a very legitimate question and not at all too much to expect that we should be able to get an answer to this very simple question.

I might also add that this Cider client is NOT up to par. Performance is really kitteny and it’s nearly impossible to play in WvW using this Mac client due to horribly low frame rates/performance. This Cider client is unacceptable and being forced to dual boot to play in virus laden Windows is not acceptable. If they wont make a native Mac client many of us will just leave and play something that does have a native Mac client. There are devs out there that understand and profit from understanding the importance of having a native Mac client.

This is the last time I will address your attacks/unfair criticisms of this topic as I’m not going to engage in a bickering match and I don’t want this thread sidetracked and subsequently closed.

Its very simple Cider is absolutely not the way to go. I love GW2 and would love to play it on my iMac (mid 2011). You should take a look at Blizzard, WoW and Diablo 3 runs perfectly on my Mac thanks to native clients. Would love to continue to play GW2, but as it is now performance with Cider is just to bad. I know that Mac client is still in beta but i really hope that its not your final intents to go with Cider, we need native Mac client, i hope your a listening to us players.

I too would love a native Mac client and I REALLY hope that they build one but for the time being I’m just grateful to be able to play on OS X.