Guild Wars 2

Huge respect for actually being willing to come out and publicly admit that there’s a problem, but also for telling us that you’re actively working to resolve it.

I much prefer this to the approach other companies would take, of denying there’s an issue to try and protect their reputation.

Observation:

On my MacBook Pro with Touchbar, if I set the touchbar to ‘App Controls Only’ in system preferences, in Guild Wars 2 I now have F keys all the way up to F17. Is this intentional? Can I bind F17 to something? I’m not sure why I’d want to but certainly interesting.

I do happen to remember that back in 2005-2006ish when I first switched to Mac the keyboards back then had keys up to F16 so I presume the OS has some support for it? Interesting times.

Keep in mind that the 32-bit client will not work for Path of Fire. Due to the increased system requirements once the expansion is released the game will only function with the 64-bit client, so eventually you will have to move over anyway.

I’m sure ArenaNet are working on fixing the issues with the Mac client – be patient.

Rash.6514:

I’ll help you guys with pleasure, as well. One curious technical question, though, does this game use Metal or OpenGL as the renderer API? Apple seems to be making Metal kitten for gaming…

The Mac client uses OpenGL.

Metal is the new API that Apple released fairly recently and it does provide a substantial performance boost over OpenGL. That said, it’s a substantial amount of work to port the renderer to Metal so I don’t think it’s particularly likely that ArenaNet will do so any time soon.

In all honesty, it’s not necessary for Guild Wars 2. The current optimisation issues with Guild Wars 2 should be solvable whilst still using OpenGL. Whilst it is true that macOS ships with a fairly outdated version of OpenGL, it still has a functional level that is arguably above that of DirectX 9, which is what the Windows Guild Wars 2 client uses. Most of the complaints developers have about OpenGL largely come down to the fact that it’s missing features which are present in DirectX 10 / 11, owing to its age.

I noticed the long grass doesn’t move when I walk through it. I therefore declare this port entirely unplayable and broken.

Jokes aside, fantastic work and it’s wonderful to finally be able to play the game acceptably on the platform of my choosing.

Well this is exciting. Copying my .dat file over now…

Huge thanks to everyone who’s been involved in getting things this far.

The 64-bit client now appears to be available from the account section of the Guild Wars 2 website.

This is exciting.

loseridoit.2756:

cool, I never thought it would happen. They did say that mac os 64 abi broke windows 64 bit abi. I guess they found a good work around.

https://www.winehq.org/announce/2.0

https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2014-February/103074.html

edit: i forgot to write about the mouse issues because I was amazed at crossover ability to develop wine over the years

I wonder if winehq db allows mac submissions

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=32861

You should report the bug here.

https://bugs.winehq.org/

Support the wine community by reporting bugs or buy license from codeweavers

https://www.codeweavers.com/store

Regarding the ABI, essentially the workaround has been to ignore the issue. Turns out a lot of Windows software doesn’t utilise it anyway / calls other APIs that utilise it where Wine’s implementations can simply not make use of that CPU register.

If I recall correctly the bug isn’t actually necessarily one in Wine itself but if memory serves if you’re using Wineskin if you choose to use the Aqua (native Mac) display server rather than X11 that solves this problem. I’ll test when I’ve got a moment.

We got a haiku:

Native Mac Haiku

Spring arrives for Mac
Testers test on alpha builds
Coming soon to you

See here

As others have stated your best bet is to submit a support ticket.

ArenaNet, generally speaking, will not restore individual characters but I believe they do have the ability to restore your account in its entirety to a specific date. That is, they can roll-back your account to before it was messed with all of your characters in the state that they were previously in.

I can’t promise that they’ll do this for you but you’ll only know if you ask politely.

Best of luck and hopefully you’ll be back in the game soon!

I would also strongly recommend that you set up some kind of 2-factor authentication and change your password. Your brother certainly shouldn’t know your password and if you have 2-factor auth enabled then even if he does find it out he shouldn’t be able to abuse your account in the future.

Xillllix.3485:

Maybe Anet shouldn’t have dropped support on the current Mac client considering that the native port seems to take years to develop and the current Cider version crashes every 5 minutes.

There’s not really anything ArenaNet can do with the current Mac client. They paid another company to develop it and that company long since sold their porting technology to Nvidia. ArenaNet can’t update or support the current Mac client because they didn’t develop it and the company that did sold Cider, hence the situation we’re now in where they’re developing a new client themselves.

sunrun.4521:

With each AMA, although it does seem like they are making progress, it’s very frustrating that they are never willing to give any suggestion of when it might be available. I know that development timeframes are notoriously difficult to estimate, but surely they know if it’ll be in the next few months, or whether it won’t even be this year. Throw us a bone.

Honestly based on the last few updates it does sound very optimistic and I think there’s a good chance that we’ll see it relatively soon.

As to why they won’t say when, I think it comes down to managing expectations. The worst thing in the world for them is if they promised it by a certain date, and then missed it, leading to a bunch of angry Mac users. Plus with a project this size it can be really difficult to make an accurate prediction – they could be 90% of the way there, only to find a major issue which sets back development by months.

From their perspective, I think they’d much rather not promise anything and then release it when it’s ready, rather than forcing themselves to work to an arbitrary schedule.

Yinmatook.8302:

I have installed the mac client on an iMac running El Capitan and it last week stopped working (starting the client causes the iMac to hang and reboot itself). Interestingly, I have also installed the mac client on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) which has been upgraded to Sierra (10.12.2); the client still works on the MBP.

Very very frustrating. I also play EVE Online – which in the last six months has moved their Mac version from Cider to the real Wine, maybe Anet could reach out to CCP for some help?

You can use the latest version of Wine yourself if you’d like to. It works reasonably well but with the caveat that the framerates are lower than what you’ll get with Cider.

I wouldn’t worry too much about that though – ArenaNet are working on a native Mac client anyway, so Wine / Cider won’t be necessary.

BDave.9386:

There is one thing that might be a cider glitch that I actually like. I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, and GW2 just automatically figured it out… I didn’t have to remap anything (well, until I switched to ESDF from WASD) and the in-game tool-tips knew it (“press ‘I’ to loot”, etc). If that’s intentional, well done, Anet!

Funnily enough it’s actually a feature in WINE.

I’m pretty impressed to discover that I’m not the only Guild Wars 2 playing Mac using Dvorak user.

The issue with this “feature” however is that it sets the keybinds differently internally so if you reboot into Windows you’ll find yourself having to change all of the keybinds to be correct in Windows after playing in OS X.

Fantastic news indeed.

Definitely sounds like a PSU issue then.

Unfortunately there’s not really any way to test it that I know of that doesn’t require using external hardware.

If you have another PC you could borrow one from that’s definitely worth trying.

Doryx.9182:

Considering that the kernel panics are all in the virtual memory management “vm_map_delete: mismatched entry @ vm_map.c:6960”, maybe the problem is mitigated with a large amount of memory (ram or vram? both?).
From my point of view, another confirmation that they have to patch this…

Unfortunately this issue isn’t really one that can be fixed prior to the native client being released.

The simple fact is that the current Mac client uses a wrapper – it’s running the Windows version of the game in there, and essentially what it comes down to is that Windows and macOS manage memory in different ways. I’m guessing Apple changed something about how the kernel deals with memory management in Sierra that the Cider wrapper can’t cope with, and you’ve got the game writing memory in places that it shouldn’t, causing the kernel panics.

It might be worth testing the game with Wineskin.

When they say it’s a power issue they don’t mean with your power strip. Most likely it’s a fault with the power supply unit in your PC.

If you have another PSU test with it and see what happens. You’ll likely find that the issue goes away.

Essentially this issue is caused by your PC drawing more power from the PSU than it can cope with (either because the output wattage is too low or, more likely, because it’s faulty) and the voltage drops. The CPU throws an error which Windows throws as “WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR”.

This can be caused by bad RAM as well, and of course by a faulty CPU but in my experience 90% of the time it’s a bad power supply.

Honestly as much as it sucks this is almost certainly a hardware issue with the PC itself.

Definitely check temperatures to make sure your system isn’t overheating. It’s unlikely but certainly possible.

That said, if it is a problem with the game itself it’s unlikely that it’ll get fixed until the release of the new Mac client. The company that made the existing Mac client no longer exist so Anet are now developing a new one themselves.

Your best bet if at all possible is to play the game using Bootcamp.

Inazuma.6107:

It’s normal that it will take months… I’d be happy to have the client by xmas, but I know it’s probably too short of a timeframe.

In fairness that’d be a pretty fantastic gift from ArenaNet heh. Seriously the only reason I maintain a Windows install at all at this point is for playing Guild Wars 2.

As I understand it, it’s a matter of the existing developers (who develop the game for Windows) gradually working on adapting the code to be platform agnostic such that the same codebase used for the Windows version of the game can be recompiled into a native OS X client, allowing them to develop both the Mac and Windows versions of the game simultaneously.

I feel like it’s worth mentioning that the latest 64-bit Wine staging build does in fact work with the 64-bit Guild Wars 2 client, which should reduce the likelihood of crashes considerably.

Xillllix.3485:

Since they started on a native client they probably stopped supporting the beta client.
I also have an SSD and the loading times are extremely long.

Well that and TransGaming are no longer a thing so uh yeah, no chance of updates to the ‘beta’ client.

I have the same specs as you and the game runs fairly badly for me, but then that’s probably because I run OS X.

Meanwhile on Windows it runs wonderfully.

Xillllix.3485:

It sure would be nice to have actual support for Mac, specially 4 years after the release.

Blizzards games have mac ports that work flawlessly, maybe you could ask them to help you or study their methods.

To be honest I don’t think the problem is that ArenaNet don’t know how to port their game to OS X – in fact I’m pretty sure they know how. Rather, the issue is one of time and budgetary constraints.

Like it or not, wrapping the game with Wine works reasonably well and allows them to ship a Mac client without much effort. Developing a native Mac client on the other hand requires you to actually invest time, effort and money into developing it and to testing it.

Whilst Blizzard are certainly more experienced in making Mac games, I don’t think their expertise would really be relevant since what they know is relevant to their games and the engine they’ve developed. That and to be honest I don’t think Blizzard’s Mac ports are as good as people like to believe. Performance on WoW for example on OS X is nowhere near as good as what you get on the Windows version.

Inazuma.6107:

It’s not about performance that they are fixing with the native client, it’s the crashes. Of course the performance will benefit quite a bit from it, but not by a huge amount (my wild guess would be around 10-20% fps, which still is nice).

To really then game properly one has to install nVidia web drivers: they use the same driver binary blob used on windows/linux but on OS X. Sadly I have an old 680MX – and the webdrivers support only cards in the 7xx series and above.

Fair point – I definitely think some stability wouldn’t go unmissed plus there definitely will be performance improvements, just I’m concerned it’ll be less than people are expecting.

I’m using the Nvidia web drivers for my GTX 970 and performance is still far below Windows, even with natively ported games. To give one example, Minecraft manages anywhere between 60 and 180fps on OS X compared to 300-400fps on Windows.

I seem to remember reading a while ago that the OS X Nvidia drivers aren’t particularly well optimised though which I could believe – performance on my MacBook Pro (GT 750m) is much more comparable to what it manages on Windows, which makes me think the Nvidia drivers (and their support for 9XX series GPUs) may be at fault.

Fingers crossed this gets fixed at some point – right now the Hackintosh community seem to be largely waiting to see if / when Nvidia will release drivers for the GTX 1080.

Xillllix.3485:

Well I just reinstalled the game after 6 months and wow the framerate on Mac is just abysmal.

All settings minimum I remember getting 45 fps once in WvW, now it barely reaches 20 if I stare at a flat wall near spawn.

What happened to this game performance on mac?

Definitely try tweaking settings – if you turn off shadows / lower shaders I find that helps substantially.

What happened? Not sure honestly. I’d be curious to test the game on Mavericks since some claim Yosemite / El Capitan may have affected it but I’m not entirely sure.

I do know the HoT zones run particularly badly but that’s mostly just because they are by their very nature quite intensive zones. Even on Windows I get less FPS than central Tyria but of course 90fps vs 60fps for the HoT zones is still perfectly playable vs say, 40fps vs 10fps on OS X.

Something that does actually concern me about the work-in-progress new Mac client for Guild Wars 2 is that I suspect it probably won’t give the performance that people are hoping it will. The simple fact is that OS X isn’t as optimised for games as Windows. Even native ports on OS X don’t run as well as you would want them to.

For example, WoW I found consistently gave about half the performance on OS X as it does on Windows in some of the newer zones, despite being a native port.

I can’t help but suspect that the issue isn’t so much the translation but the lack of optimisation for gaming on OS X itself.

Of course, I do hope that I’m wrong and that maybe WoW for example just isn’t well optimised but it doesn’t seem likely. CineBench for example, a benchmark widely regarded as well optimised for OS X still gives 20-30% less performance compared to Windows on the same hardware.

For this reason, I wouldn’t be too surprised if the native OS X client never gets released, simply because ArenaNet might find themselves unable to meet people’s expectations. Obviously I hope that doesn’t happen – I’d be over the moon to have a native OS X client but I wouldn’t rule out that happening. On the other hand, a native OS X client (and one that’s running off the same codebase as the Windows one) would still be better than anything TransGaming can offer.

penelopehannibal.8947:

This is a long shot I know (very long shot!), but any chance a Native Mac Client is being added to the Summer Quarterly Update?

I’d love that myself but unfortunately I think that might be a bit optimistic. It sounds like they still have a way to go and I imagine they’d want to do a lot of quality assurance before they’d want to release it to the public. We can always dream though – Anet seem to have a track record for saying nothing for ages and then one day magically coming out with a release to surprise us all.

Inazuma.6107:

No I am actually worried about software.

Hackintosh does look great, I will probably get one, when I have to change my desktop next year. Looking forward to build some nice MicroATX config.

Can’t say I’d blame you for that – OS X is wonderful and my favourite OS by far but I’ll admit I do make a conscious effort not to get too stuck into Apple’s ecosystem should I decide to move away one day, as much as I love Logic Pro X (it really is a fantastic DAW).

Inazuma.6107:

Apple direction is quite worrying, but I need a unix system to do my programming on that is not a disgrace to use. I’ve used Linux for years before OSX and god knows I don’t wanna go back.

Windows is not an option, even with GNU/kWindows

I know that feeling well. I’m a web developer so Windows really isn’t an option for me and having used Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Linux uh, yeah it’s pretty much unusable at this stage and even then performance isn’t by any means great.

That and at least from a web developer’s perspective it seems it’s much easier to get support and decent applications for OS X.

On the other side of things I make music and well, to put it one way – my audio interface doesn’t even have Windows drivers.

Right now I’ve added a second SSD to my system which I’m running Windows off for the times I want to play Guild Wars 2 – I haven’t actually played the game properly in far too long simply because it doesn’t run particularly well on OS X at all so it was nice to finally start playing it again.

Disclaimer: Apple’s direction on hardware doesn’t really affect me as I use a hackintosh.

I feel like it’s worth me saying, I genuinely love this game. I’ve been playing on and off since launch (despite being the most casual player in the universe) and I honestly can’t wait for the day that I can play this game on natively on my platform of choice.

Granted, I have complaints about every platform and I don’t like the direction Apple are headed in at all when it comes to desktop hardware, but OS X is wonderful and I can’t wait to be able to play Guild Wars 2 natively on it.

Your best bet is either to use the Mac beta client or simply to install Windows using Bootcamp and run the game that way.

I wouldn’t recommend using Parallels to run the game on anything less than a Mac Pro – the performance hit would be pretty dire plus there’s some pretty bad input lag if memory serves.

If you have dual monitors, I found that for some reason having multiple monitors stops Guild Wars 2 from opening. Disconnect your second monitor, open Guild Wars 2 and reconnect it.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Every time I see this topic at the topic of the list, I hope Jon Olson has an update for us! But avast, there’s none yet.

Oh me too. I just mostly want to keep the issue alive and hopefully make ArenaNet aware that we’re still waiting.

Interestingly enough running the official Mac client now yields this:
Exception: 80000101
A serious error has occurred that prevented the application from continuing. A report has been sent to ArenaNet to help determine the cause.

Fortunately Wine still works.

psyt.9415:

Why didnt you guys chose Vulcan or Metal or something future proof? By the time this native OpenGL client comes out WoW and everyone else will be moved to low overhead APIs and Anet will be behind the times again just like with directx 9. Guess I shouldnt be complaining but I wonder why Anet never takes the time to be more future proof , if your doing it anyway why not do it on the API that gets more performance. OpenGL on OSX is still a version or two behind and with apple creating Metal I have a feeling it will be depricated on OSX.

OS X doesn’t support Vulkan so that’s not an option.

Metal is OS X specific but only works on OS X, isn’t nearly as well supported as OpenGL and finding developers who know it (especially within their existing staff) is going to be difficult and expensive.

OpenGL works on OS X, Windows and Linux now (unlike Vulkan which doesn’t work on OS X and still lacks driver support in some cases on other platforms) and would also allow ArenaNet to later make a native Linux port if they want to.

That and, my understanding is they already had a more-or-less working OpenGL renderer from the console port that never shipped, so it makes a lot of sense to build upon that for the upcoming Mac port.

OpenGL is a couple of versions behind on OS X, yes, but this is slowly improving and I don’t think Apple are going to ditch it any time soon – it’d break just about everything.

Jon Olson.8439:

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

Thank you so much for keeping us updated.

With this in mind, can you please send me an address to mail my future first born son to as payment for your good deeds?

Eirian Direstorm.9748:

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!

Yes and no. It’s important to manage expectations but in all honesty I’d say getting the graphical side of things sorted is arguably the biggest challenge to overcome.

I think you’ll be waiting a while still but the fact that they’ve gotten this far is looking very optimistic for the future.

SorionHex.1327:

I also long for the day when I can run GW2 on a Mac Client without issue. Mike hasn’t spoken about it at all, but I’d like to know how large the dedicated Mac team is, and where their patch notes and list of improvements are. As of now, it feels to me that the GW2 Mac team is on maintenance only, maybe 2-3 people tops and they’re just handling basic client maintenance and no improved optimization.

Right so the actual current Mac client has no team at all as it were – it was made by a company called TransGaming who since sold their tech to Nvidia who haven’t updated it at all since.

The new Mac client? No idea. I guess we’ll know when it’s done.

JustTrogdor.7892:

borogove.4739:

That would be a super obscure thing to check no matter what they were messing with.

I don’t think testing if the client opens on Mac is an obscure thing to check at all given that, you know, GW2 has a Mac client. Sorry I’m a bit jaded because I’ve seen Anet treat the Mac client as an afterthought for way too long. I’m glad a customer found a fix though.

Well it’s because Anet didn’t develop the Mac client – they got TransGaming to make it which they did using their Cider product (read: Wine but you pay money to use it).

The problem is, TransGaming since sold off their tech to Nvidia so they no longer maintain the Guild Wars 2 client.

It’s an unfortunate situation to be in but not much Anet can do about it short of just making a new Mac client.

Regarding the display bug – this is separate from the bug that was discovered today with the patching of the 32-bit client.

The display bug is a longstanding bug in Cider where for whatever reason it fails to draw properly.

I’ve found that unplugging any additional displays usually gets it to behave. You can also just play the game with Wine which doesn’t have this bug.

JustTrogdor.7892:

penelopehannibal.8947:

Blackwood.9072:

SOLUTION:

Go to your GW2 application. Right-click and choose “Show Package Contents”
Navigate Contents -> Resources -> transgaming -> c_drive -> GW2
Rename gw2.exe to oldgw2.exe
Rename gw2.tmp to gw2.exe.
Launch GW2.

The launcher will start and will begin the download. I’m downloading now.

Edit: The fix persists through multiple launches.

Taken from https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Mac-client-broken-display

Thanks that worked. I wonder if Anet actually tests their updates on Macs before they release them. It seems doubtful.

Probably not but the current Mac client wasn’t developed by them so even if they did find this bug there’s not really much they could’ve done about it.

<- removed, I was silly. see post below for fix →

Have you tried using PlayOnMac or Wineskin to run the game? Quite honestly you’re likely to get better performance than the Cider wrapped version at present.

In all honesty your best option is just to run Windows but if you absolutely can’t do that for whatever reason your second best bet is just to run the game using Wine.

I recommend Wine 1.9.5-staging as it has the CSMT patches which will allow you to get fairly good performance. Not as good as Windows by a long shot but certainly playable.

What are the specifications of your laptop? This can happen on some lower end GPUs that don’t support the game fully.

cumberdale.3950:

Every once in a while, I feel like playing Guild Wars 2. Of course, I haven’t been able to even boot up the game for 15 months now. Same problem. Fresh install, no leftover files, the game doesn’t start at all. I was able to play quite well 15 months ago, then suddenly couldn’t play at all. Still no solution.

Do you have multiple monitors? Try unplugging all but one and then try starting the game again.

Zeljius.9703:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

The hyperlinks (within the quote) will direct you to the source.

Good luck.

Not new to Guild Wars 2(been playing since 2012) but im totally new to the forums.

Thanks!

So basically they were working on it as of 22 days ago. Whether or not anything will materialise from this is another matter but it’s certainly promising.

Fingers crossed.

The simple fact is that the current Mac client isn’t very efficient – it uses Cider so you’re basically having to translate DirectX API calls to OpenGL in real time, which simply isn’t efficient, especially on such a CPU bound game to begin with.

What I can suggest you try is running the game using Wine with CSMT enabled – I’ve gotten better FPS that way.

You can also try editing the game’s configuration in ~/Library/Application Support/Guild Wars 2 and I believe the file is called config – basically it has a line for the video memory which by default is set to 256M. Try raising this to 1024M or so.

Hope this helps.

Regarding the forums, it’s interesting to note that they’re actually running on Ruby on Rails, which is interesting since ArenaNet are primarily a Windows-oriented development team (i.e. the main site if memory serves runs off ASP.net).

Basically the forums were written by an outside developer, and in the nicest way possible (really, I mean it) they probably don’t have many developers on staff with experience working with Ruby on Rails, and probably aren’t interested in investing in people who do since it’s not a priority for them.

As the wonderful dragon/man known as Trogdor said, yes they’re working on it, but don’t expect any updates any time soon. ArenaNet don’t usually like to share things until they’re ready.

The fact that they’ve got it compiling and starting up is an indication that they’re making very good progress, but don’t hold your breath. As many developers often say, “it’ll be ready when it’s ready”.

In the meantime the game works reasonably well with Wine, or you can use Windows.

onevstheworld.2419:

Are you running the native mac client, or Windows client via boot camp? If it’s the latter, you can try the 64 bit windows client. Not sure if there is a 64 bit mac client in the works.

Unfortunately it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see a 64-bit Mac client, short of ArenaNet rewriting the client to run natively on OS X, due to incompatibilities with the way OS X and Windows use the GS register to address memory.

Frustrating I know, but the solution is really just to run Windows.

Unfortunately there’s not much that can be done.

If I am not mistaken, this error is caused by the client running out of memory. Unfortunately, due to the way in which the Cider translation layer works the simple fact is that the game client on OS X uses more memory than it normally would, and suffers from memory fragmentation more than it would on a Windows system.

On Windows this issue can be alleviated by using the 64-bit client but unfortunately due to incompatibilities with OS X’s ABI (and how OS X and Windows think the GS register should be used) it’s unlikely this will ever be fixed unless ArenaNet one day decide to write a native Mac client.

You can certainly try playing the game with PlayOnMac and see if you have any luck with this – many users have had success this way. I would also suggest you try lowering the settings you’re playing the game at – especially texture settings and those relating to character limits.

If not, try playing the game on Windows.