Bao Lin Nda.1042

I'm on a red coloured server this time, and well, we are just cheap food for the blue and green with some big guild blobs running around on all maps. No idea how bad their queues must be, but their experience might be nevertheless better than we just being noshes for their zergs. This will likely be one of the worst wvw weeks I ever had - and I play since beta. Our server seems to be full of "the rest" that didn't fit into other servers I guess, smaller guilds, players that got disjointed from their guilds and a lot of players with no guild tags at all. Just terrible.

My server got linked with a big one last month and we had terrible queues on prime time, now we are linked with a smaller one and get overrun by the other servers, a single queue on EBG on prime time. No, that's not funny, and I really wait for a new system. I never switched the server, 11 years now on my home server, but "for a better experience" I'd take anything.

"When it's done!"So.. it might take some 11 additional years..

No, you didn't. With your level of knowledge you are a typical Apple fan with the typical strong tie and engagement to Apple and a strong will defending this company against all odds. People like you blame all other companies to not support the brilliant and beloved Mac, but never ever admit that Apple could have done something questionable like dropping standards.

Well, if you have no idea what you are talking about, than there is no point arguing. First get the facts (hint: Who is Khronos?), then come back an explain again why Apple is right to stop supporting OpenGL and its successor Vulkan. And also explain, why game developers should bother making games running on MacOS/iOS where Apple's new API Metal isn't any standard, open or supported anywhere else. They either concentrate on Direct3D on Windows only (Linux might work with D3D12 and such) and 90% market share or use OpenGL/Vulkan to provide support for Windows, Linux and prob. MacOS (where OpenGL is stuck at a buggy v4.1) for 95% market share. Yes, there is MoltenVK, but it's not from Apple and not supported by Apple. It might or might not work good enough, so why even bother trying. There is good reason why eg. Autodesk killed Alias on MacOS. Apple is showing some quite annoying amount of arrogance here, though they still included their kitten old OpenGL- and OpenCL-implementaion on macOS 11 and therefor auricularly admit that noone really uses their brilliant Metal-API. Besides companies like Maxon with Cinema4D, but they still do have a lot of Mac users.

Well, if OpenGL aka Vulkan is not made for modern hardware, then AMD, NVidia, Intel, Google, ARM, Samsung, Dassault, ptc, Siemens etc. pp. are all wrong, you should tell them! Really, they need to know!

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$/€.

No, the Mac Beta began around mid 2012. But Apple dropped OpenGL-support ages ago, providing only a buggy and damn old version, no Vulkan-support at all though Apple is still member of the Khronos board. Shame on Apple. There is a Metal-Vulkan layer call MoltenVK, but it's far from finished or ready for production, and I also doubt that GW2 is already on Vulkan.Blaming Arena for Apple being unsupportive for industrial standards - well, I guess you're an Apple fanboy.

Lutris is IMHO so far the best Wine-Wrapper, with games often run at 90-95% of the speed compared to running natively under Windows. And it has many games preconfigured, a nice GUI and all the hacks and drivers you will need on Linux. Second best is Proton by Valve, trying both is also a god idea if a games doesn't really run well. Proton will also give you the newest D3D12-drivers aka VKD3D. Proton is made more or less by Valve, VKD3D by codeweavers.

Sorry, but playing a game like GW2 with 15 FPS with reduced graphic effects is just.. not fun. So PlayOnMac and other emulators are not a thing one should even consider. Either Windows 8/10 or, if possible, Linux Mint with Lutris. GW2 on M1 - forget it, not even for the dailies, not mentioning an evening on EBG in WvW...

Though we all know how strong the believe in their god, no, Mac is, its beloved users tend to disregard some minor facts. Yes, the new CPU is kinda nice, a good SoC for a tablet or an entry level notebook. But playing a 3D-game takes some more power that the Apple GPU don't really have. Yes, it's faster than an Intel based built-in iCore-GPU. But that is not really worth mentioning. The M1 8-Core GPU is not exchangeable, it's fixed and is as fast as a low end new mobile discrete GPU by AMD or NVidia. Running this Apple-GPU with non optimized and deprecated OpenGL-code on a completely new platform - well, you really need to love your Mac to willingly do so. But, looking from the other side, a publisher needs to be sure to give customers a good product - which is quite hard on a Mac without building a new client from scratch. Comparing the comic-style WoW with GW2 is not really useful either, WoW is available on the iPhone for quite some time.So, well, be happy with your fresh and new M1-SoC, but do not expect many game publishers jumping on the Metal & Mx-train. Emulations and Bootcamp is also impossible, stopping the Mac-client is a kinda sad but logical thing to do. Players with an Intel-Mac can still make a Windows- or Linux-partition (Linux Mint & Lutris is fine if the hardware is supported).