ASP.8093

Really appreciate these posts! I can't try every variation myself, so if anyone wants to make a step-by-step set of instructions for PlayOnMac, Crossover, Parallels, &c., I'll gladly copy it into the first post. (I have a recent-model Intel laptop so I'm probably going to try dual-booting this weekend. The PortingKit/Wineskins performance isn't very great right now.)

"Being really good at running away" is, like, the entire roaming meta. Only difference is some classes also have strong sustain.

> @"Chrysline.2317" said: > Here is Apple’s article on the Windows on Bootcamp process: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468 > > (In case others have trouble: when Windows installs, it can’t connect to the internet. Because Bootcamp can only install the Wi-Fi and internet-related drivers after Windows is done installing. If you get stuck, you can click “I don’t have internet now” during the Windows install.) > Thanks! I adapted this to a small set of instructions in a new section. One part I'm not sure about without testing it myself is how much disk space to allocate to the Windows partition (I know GW2 wants like 60 GB for its data).

> @"Asgaeroth.6427" said: > > @"ASP.8093" said: > > > @"Asgaeroth.6427" said: > > > There's more to it than the technical issues. If Apple doesn't think they can onboard you onto Apple Pay and sell you $2 million of development kit, they wont even respond to your emails. The Apple MO is to stonewall developers who aren't 100% in the program. They make it as difficult as possible to work with them because they know most studios are going to bend over backwards to get access to the Apple customers, you know, those people who pay $3000 for $750 hardware configurations because it has rounded bezels? Apple has a really good scam going and it is hard to wrap your mind around the horror of dealing with it until you've had to. > > > > This has rather little bearing on an existing game that's basically in maintenance mode as far as the engine itself is concerned. > > The age of the game and the limited ArenaNet development resources are why it has to go this way, not why it shouldn't go this way. With a broader and more realistic perspective, this is obvious and unavoidable. It's nice to live in a world where you can say "just do X thing and it's fine". The problems start when the people who actually have to do X thing live in reality, and the people who proposed X thing can't see the spectrum of problems that make X thing completely unrealistic. You have no greater insight into "the spectrum of problems that make X thing completely unrealistic" than anyone else here, you're throwing stuff at the wall and at least half of it very evidently doesn't fit the situation at hand.

> @"Asgaeroth.6427" said: > There's more to it than the technical issues. If Apple doesn't think they can onboard you onto Apple Pay and sell you $2 million of development kit, they wont even respond to your emails. The Apple MO is to stonewall developers who aren't 100% in the program. They make it as difficult as possible to work with them because they know most studios are going to bend over backwards to get access to the Apple customers, you know, those people who pay $3000 for $750 hardware configurations because it has rounded bezels? Apple has a really good scam going and it is hard to wrap your mind around the horror of dealing with it until you've had to. This has rather little bearing on an existing game that's basically in maintenance mode as far as the engine itself is concerned.

> @"Asgaeroth.6427" said: > Apple doesn't appreciate software with 3rd party billing services. … in the App Store. Most users aren't married to the App Store. The tussle over Fortnite was about App Store billing structure, which is the same reason you can't buy Fortnite on Steam. (And the reason "how do we put Guild Wars 2 on Steam?" has been a months-long process for Anet even though just uploading a game to Steam takes like a single afternoon.) You can install any software you want directly, or through a storefront like Steam, GOG, _Epic Games Store_, &c. without giving Apple a single cent of your money. The only obstacle is a single clicky box saying "hey, did you download this installer from a website you trust?" > @"Asgaeroth.6427" said: > Apple plainly doesn't want you to be able to deal with ArenaNet, and they are seizing the opportunity to lock you out now that they have the "our ARM chips are good enough for general compute now" excuse. They're not locking you out of anything, though. The OGL layer is still there. x86 binary translation is there. The forced 64-bit thing was annoying (why no legacy layer for that?) and the app-signing thing is annoying, but neither of these have had a visible impact on Anet's ability to provide a GW2 Mac client so far. If they want to take the same approach that Steam did where they just slap "This product is not compatible with Mac OS version blah blah" on the product page and call it a day, I wouldn't begrudge them that — I'm sure the end of the OS 10.x line is a big deal under the hood and it's okay if they don't have the resources to continually iterate on an old game. I'm not here to defend a giant computer manufacturer, but you are absolutely reaching to try to paint a cost-cutting move as something they've been forced into by a hardware/OS roadmap that mostly affects *new computers* while we're talking about the needs of an existing customer base still playing their ten-year-old game.

Send a support ticket, they'll fix it for you pretty quick.

> @"Linken.6345" said: > And then you would have the people that read, oh macOS great it works for my machine not knowing what intel means and then get mad at anet. If "what if someone doesn't understand system requirements and gets mad about it" was a show-stopper for game development, literally zero video games would be published.

> @"Linken.6345" said: > Aint the 32 bit client discontinued? It's still on the download page, for whatever reason (so is the Mac client but we have a firm end-of-life date on that one). https://account.arena.net/welcome

> @"lare.5129" said: > Parallels Technical Preview + Windows 10 Arm Preview Virtualisation + 32bit Guild Wars 2 + 1440p UltraWide resolution + **Max** Settings Preset to Appearance. > I have less fps on new geforce wiht that resolution's and settings ..looks great on m1 ! Any specific reason you picked the 32-bit client?

> @"Linken.6345" said: > So if anet advertise that its avaliable on mac and then dont work on all type of macs people will accept that? > I dont think so hence why they are pulling out. I think the vast majority of the user base would rather have continued "no warranty" access to the native Mac client than jump through all sorts of hoops just to keep playing an old game in a degraded state. I get that MMOGs are "always evolving" but the basic engine code seems to be pretty static (look at how the Windows client is still locked to DX9); continuing to compile the Mac binaries and just letting the chips fall where they may bug-wise would be way better than what we're getting now.

Been experimenting with Porting Kit (i.e. Wineskin) because that's the one I have working at a baseline level. Stability is great so far. Only trouble I've had is the client sometimes gets stuck during its auto-update cycle, but that's solvable by just closing stuff manually. Once you're in game, it's about as stable as the native client. Performance? :grimace: Feels like my laptop aged seven years when I run GW2 through the compatibility layer.

> @"Balsa.3951" said: > I imagine that's the real reason Anet delayed Steam To be honest, I think a long internal conversation about how to fix the Living Story monetization model is the real reason Anet is delaying Steam. (For the simple reason that they could simply do a Windows-only Steam release if they wanted to.)

If you're feeling overwhelmed by all this, I'd say wait until at least February 1st before you commit to something — other people are going to be trying stuff out, posting more detailed information about tradeoffs like stability and performance, and smoothing away some of the rough edges of more "finicky" approaches like Wine wrappers.

My plan is to use some version of Wine to run it on my existing laptop. I did a quick test today (documented in that thread Veprovina linked) and it's working ok so far. This involves installing some extra software, and there may be some surprising new glitches, but you don't have to dual-boot or buy anything. I'll try to post some "benchmarks" to judge how much performance is affected later this week.

Threw together a thread for specific guidelines on how to handle the transition over on the tech support forum: [[100% Unofficial] How to play GW2 on Mac OS after the Mac client is gone](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/121721/100-unofficial-how-to-play-gw2-on-mac-os-after-the-mac-client-is-gone) TLDR: You can keep playing on your existing computer/OS if you are comfortable installing some wrapper apps and taking your chances a bit on whether the translation layers work correctly. Right now, those wrappers don't have nice "out-of-the-box" GW2 presets but that will probably change now that there's a need for them.

Did some digging on compatibility-layer stuff (i.e. Wine wrappers) for folks who don't want to dual-boot. There's a PlayOnLinux script, which could potentially be adapted to support PlayOnMac very quickly: https://www.playonmac.com/en/app-1126-Guild_Wars_2.html (DO NOT try to load that thing into PlayOnMac as-is unless you are confident in your own ability to debug it) Lutris also has a working config for GW2 on Linux — it's a different config system but you can look at their DX settings &c.: https://lutris.net/games/guild-wars-2/ My overall impression is that nobody's worked on Mac compatibility since the official client dropped, since there was no real payoff to doing so. Anything older than that also predates changes to the Win64 game client so it's not likely to be all that useful "out of the box." I know the PortingKit folks have had some success experimenting with Rosetta (the Apple ARM compatibility thing) as well. If you're on the non-Intel machines you probably want to go read that. ***UPDATE:* I made my own really basic PortingKit wrapper and it's working ok so far. I'll poke at it some more to hopefully get a simple process in place by the February 18 drop-dead date.**

> @"Infusion.7149" said: > Arenanet has not said anyone on Mac OS cannot play the game. They stated they will not **support** any users with issues and it's no surprise given the complaint thread this past month by someone getting support information that was incorrect or outdated. They explicitly said they're sunsetting the game client: > Starting February 18 , we will be discontinuing support for the Mac OS version of Guild Wars 2. This means the Mac client will no longer work after this date. You can still find workarounds for running GW2 but it's not as simple as "we give up on support tickets," they're literally turning off users' current client at a specified date.

> @"Gyro.9182" said: > I also notice that the posting said that **For the time being, Mac users can still play Guild Wars 2 using the Nvidia GeForce Now service while streaming over the Internet**. (Apart from the fact that this costs money, and I am not sure how well it will work depending on your Internet connection, the **for the time being** means "this will probably end at any point in time, perhaps soon, and perhaps with little advance warning". I don't think Anet is going to sunset GeForce Now support anytime soon. Especially after GW2 Reddit asked them to explicitly opt into it in sometime last summer. However, GeForce Now is kind of a "beta" product right now (that's why it's super cheap), and it's not clear whether Nvidia will be able to keep it going for long. If you're wondering what it's like to actually use it, I'll quote myself from the other thread: > Feedback's pretty simple: > 1. Input lag is manageable as long as you're close to the data centers. > 2. When the game would normally drop frames (rotating the screen quickly in the middle of a busy WvW battle, for instance) you tend to get massive tearing. > 3. Anet constantly locks your account due to IP address changes. (Their support staff is nice about unlocking you, and reasonably quick, but they really need to fix that third one.) tbh I'm likely to run an emulation wrapper before I go back to GeForce Now.

If you have an Intel Mac running OS 10.x, I'd start by dusting off the old PlayOnMac scripts before you try to buy stuff to play a ten-year-old game.

> For the time being, Mac users can still play Guild Wars 2 using the Nvidia GeForce Now service while streaming over the Internet. Moreover, we are interested in feedback from all of our players about such services. Feedback's pretty simple: 1. Input lag is manageable as long as you're close to the data centers. 2. When the game would normally drop frames (rotating the screen quickly in the middle of a busy WvW battle, for instance) you tend to get massive tearing. 3. Anet constantly locks your account due to IP address changes.

> @"anduriell.6280" said: > > @"ASP.8093" said: > > A lot of these complaints boil down to "5-10 of us can't CC-spam a thief to death because as soon as we start, the thief Shadowsteps away and then runs fast." There's no semblance of a fight here, just "give bag now." > > Well no class should be able to disengage from 5-10 enemies after being CC'ed as the norm. most other classes would be done for and i have to admit the Thief is very forgiving in that regard. > > That's why everybody things thief is the ez class with no skill needed, if you mess up you have too many "oh kitten" buttons. Unlike Stability and Invuln, you're just running away. It's situationally better when you're just trying to get out of some unwinnable gank situation but situationally worse when you're trying to actually move with your team and overpower the enemy. Which is how thieves end up as roamers, scouts, skirmishers. The relative value in a dueling situation is really contingent on whether resetting will cause you to lose an objective (in which case just being able to tank/sustain is usually more valuable) or you're just free to fish for favorable terrain and circumstances for days.

A lot of these complaints boil down to "5-10 of us can't CC-spam a thief to death because as soon as we start, the thief Shadowsteps away and then runs fast." There's no semblance of a fight here, just "give bag now."

> @"felix.2386" said: > herald, way tankier and way more damage and pull enemies together > easier to solo group content with herald Condi Renegade has the same access to Call to Anguish and Temporal Rift, though. With a really sweet Sevenshot follow-up.

I just want to use my fancy chair.