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[100% Unofficial] How to play GW2 on Mac OS after the Mac client is gone - [Merged]


ASP.8093

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Although I have Windows 8 and 10 machines, I still play GW2 on an older Windows 7 machine. Not sure how long Arena will support running 7, but Bootcamp with W7 could be an option. The drivers for iMac AMD GPUs might be an issue though.Also, a small and decent Linux machine, second hand, e.g. a Dell i5 3040 SFF or similar with a new GPU like an EVGA GT1030, is about 300$/€.

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@"raaahbin.7405" said:So the only hope for anyone else in the same boat is that they don't kill the 32-bit Mac client (and that you can get your hands on a copy of it if you don't still have it).

Do you see the "we are ending Mac support" notification when you log in with the 32-bit Mac client?

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@"ASP.8093" said:Do you see the "we are ending Mac support" notification when you log in with the 32-bit Mac client?

Nope! That's why I'm hoping it will survive (given that it's apparently the Windows client in a wrapper).

The long load time for maps (especially Lion's Arch) isn't wonderful, and not having the mini-map is a pain... but it's the closest thing to playable remaining.

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@raaahbin.7405 said:

@"ASP.8093" said:Do you see the "we are ending Mac support" notification when you log in with the 32-bit Mac client?

Nope! That's why I'm hoping it will survive (given that it's apparently the Windows client in a wrapper).

The long load time for maps (especially Lion's Arch) isn't wonderful, and not having the mini-map is a pain... but it's the closest thing to playable remaining.

Interesting!!

Does the long load time affect waypoints within a map, too? (E.g. if you're standing in LA north side and you click the waypoint to go to the Fractal/WvW gate area.) Or only loading a brand new map?

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@ASP.8093 said:Does the long load time affect waypoints within a map, too? (E.g. if you're standing in LA north side and you click the waypoint to go to the Fractal/WvW gate area.) Or only loading a brand new map?

It's definitely every time the map is loaded (e.g. entering or leaving an instance set in Lion's Arch), but I can't remember whether waypointing within the map had the same delay. What's interesting is that the wine-wrapped 32-bit windows version also suffers the same long load time (and it's almost exactly the same amount of time)... but the one wrapped by ANet as a Mac client performs noticeably better once it loads.

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It's definitely every time the map is loaded (e.g. entering or leaving an instance set in Lion's Arch), but I can't remember whether waypointing within the map had the same delay. What's interesting is that the wine-wrapped 32-bit windows version also suffers the same long load time (and it's almost exactly the same amount of time)... but the one wrapped by ANet as a Mac client performs noticeably better once it loads.

Nice! Definitely one of the way to continue playing for users before OS Catalina... the old cider port. But need to wait for 18 Feb.. finger crossed.

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Tried out Codeweavers Crossover and it's a bit odd. IF I go in and click on the GW2-64.exe or w/e it is it runs fine. If I just click on their shortcuts or try to open from with in the Crossover application it opens but then crashes before fully loading the launcher. I'm not sure performance is any better than using Portingkit / Wineskin from initial WvW testing. So far I haven't been able to obtain acceptable frame rates for WvW with either approach :/

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@Leila.7269 said:Tried out Codeweavers Crossover and it's a bit odd. IF I go in and click on the GW2-64.exe or w/e it is it runs fine. If I just click on their shortcuts or try to open from with in the Crossover application it opens but then crashes before fully loading the launcher. I'm not sure performance is any better than using Portingkit / Wineskin from initial WvW testing. So far I haven't been able to obtain acceptable frame rates for WvW with either approach :/

CrossOver and PortingKit have a lot of overlap, as far as I understand.

I've also been disappointed in WvW with PortingKit so far. Gonna do the dual-boot (and tweak those write-ups a bunch) once I get over my laziness with respect to doing all the backups and other stuff first.

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A few days ago, Windows 10 arm insider version updates to build 21286. Which allows x86 64bit emulation.

I tested a few clients briefly, same area (Desert Highlands no pop) for only a few secs..MacOS client: 15 ~ 45 fps turning around.Parallels + Windows 10 arm + GW2 64bit client: 30 ~ 50 fps turning around. (Allocated 2GB video ram / 8 Cores / 8GB ram)Crossover + GW2 64bit client: 7 ~ 66 fps turning around.

I did not try wvw or pvp yet. I don't think I will miss the Mac client at this rate, enough for me to catch up with the story and dailies.

I do not recommend buying M1 Macs or any new Macs just for playing this game.But for people looking to upgrade their Macs to the new silicon for their workflow, they can still play this game even if Microsoft did not provide bootcamp.

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I was able to get the 64-bit Windows client to install and run in a 64-bit Windows 10 bottle using Crossover on an Intel Mac running 10.14 (Mojave). It launches for me double clicking the icon and looks ok. I will probably have to upgrade the OS soon so that could change, and I haven't put it through any real testing. I just logged in and looked around a bit. I still have the Mac client installed and created a hard link to the Gw2.dat file from the Mac version in the Windows version so they share the same 50GB database.

There is a way to get the option keys to work as alt. I've run into this same issue before with Wine and it's a matter of figuring out where to put the options. In this case the file is: ~/Library/Application Support/Crossover/Bottles/your GW2 bottle name/user.reg

Add the following lines:

[software\\Wine\\Mac Driver]"LeftOptionIsAlt"="y""RightOptionIsAlt"="y"

Note: Alt-F4 closes the window and quits GW2. It's a Windows thing. I was using that combination and had to switch. I'm sure there's a way to disable it but it was easy enough to avoid.

Update: I've been running the Windows client in Crossover for a while now and it does seem playable to me, although I don't really do WvW and I'm not a l33t PvP or raid player, more of a casual open world and story player so take that for what it's worth. After upgrading to Catalina I did get the bug where launching the game by double clicking the link in the Crossover window fails immediately. Running Gw2-64.exe directly works. Also, if I right click on the Gw2 link in the Crossover window, select run with options then hit run, with or without options, that works too. In game the biggest issue I've seen is that when I mount I sometimes end up underground. Once I ended up stuck like that and had to waypoint to get out of it. Usually I can just unmount or move out. That happened occasionally on the Mac client as well but not nearly as often. The graphics are a bit weird in that I have to set the screen to a lower resolution with a larger UI to get roughly the same appearance as I had on the Mac client. Maybe because of the retina display, although I have retina mode turned off in Wine.

If you have Crossover you can vote for GW2 to be a supported application on the Codeweavers site. I'm not sure how many votes it takes but there were only 3 the last time I looked.

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Alright I seem to have frame rates, and now trying to sort out issues with stability - not that I have much in the way of ideas to try.WvW medium size fights just crash :/

Crossover Win 10 64bit (although I'm not sure it matters 7 vs 10)

seems all the shortcuts work as they should now. Don't know why others had bad file references in my Win 7 bottle.

Enabled options

Performance Enhanced GraphicsPerformance Enhanced Synchronization (esync)

esync seems to be the root of the frame rate increase and stability decrease. It's probably fine for PvE stuff and maybe sPvP from what little world PvE testing I've done. Rising player density seems to result in the WvW crashes, so it might be worth trying a populated meta event somewhere. Reading suggests that without it you're limited to 20fps.

Registry entry seems to resolve mouse bug:

[software\Wine\DirectInput]"MouseWarpOverride"="disable"

Mouse mapping as mentioned above:[software\Wine\Mac Driver]"LeftOptionIsAlt"="y""RightOptionIsAlt"="y"

Not sure I mentioned before but I'm on latest Catalina

Crash info:

It's odd it lists the VideMem = 0 MB in the logs. I might try to define vRam amount in the registry.

This is most frequently observed:Assertion: Failed to load file.File: ......\Services\Asset\AssetPc.cpp(346)

This is most recent:Assertion: !transferRejectedFile: ......\Engine\Gr\GrTex2d.cpp(4156)

Also seen what appears to be memory related a couple of times. Ram use was high but inactive when I spun up the game so I suspect that's related cause memory management seems to be terrible:Exception: c0000005
Memory at address ffffffff`ffffffff could not be read

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@"Lord Warfin.1209" said:I still have the Mac client installed and created a hard link to the Gw2.dat file from the Mac version in the Windows version so they share the same 50GB database.

Thanks for the tip. I'd never created a hard link before, but it saved me 50gb of space. (For anyone else interested who's also inexperienced doing this, the hard link has to share the same name of "Gw2.dat" or the client will begin a full download.)

There is a way to get the option keys to work as alt. I've run into this same issue before with Wine and it's a matter of figuring out where to put the options. In this case the file is: ~/Library/Application Support/Crossover/Bottles/your GW2 bottle name/user.reg

Add the following lines:

[software\\Wine\\Mac Driver]"LeftOptionIsAlt"="y""RightOptionIsAlt"="y"

I had gotten Karabiner-Elements to change option-to-alt, but I prefer your idea to edit user.reg since it keeps the alt-key change localized to the bottle running GW2 rather than changing it everywhere. Thanks for the instructions.

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  • 3 weeks later...

BOOT CAMP

"If you have an Intel-based Mac and enough hard drive space, Bootcamp is a legit option."-How much HD space do you need?-Can you put this or parts of it on External HD?-Do you need Windows 10 or can use use say Windows 7 (think have license on old PC do not use) ?-If can use older versions of Windows is set up different?

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Got GW2 running on my laptop via Boot Camp and updated the guide accordingly.

The experience is good so far, though I ran into a bunch of quirks specific to my setup:

  1. The Boot Camp touchpad driver isn't nearly as good as the built-in one, so moving the camera is harder. Maxing out sensitivity helps a lot. I'll experiment with Touchpad++ to see if I can fix that tomorrow.
  2. Current Radeon Pro 5500m drivers don't support 1536x960 resolution (half-scale 3072x1920). You either have to go big (and subsample) or make everything blurry.
  3. Windows wants to treat the ⌘ Command key as the "Windows key," which means you can't bind it to other stuff and you'll get dumped to your desktop with your game minimized any time you press it. (Workaround: I used SharpKeys to map both Command keys to Left Alt and both Option keys to Right Alt, which allows me to approximate my Mac keybinds.)

I'll expand the Nvidia steaming write-up soon, but there's no credible way I'm going to test Parallels anytime soon — if someone else wants to do the work, I'll gladly copy/paste your notes into the relevant section.

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