NVIDIA GeForce Now & Guild Wars 2

[Aoi.8570]

Is Guild Wars 2 going to be playable via NVIDIA GeForce Now in the future or is it only a temporary solution since MacOS is no longer supported? It's important to get this straight, because as a consumer I'm standing before an important decision: wether to pre-order new expansion and risk not being able to play it in 2022, or just forget about it and enjoy the game without it as long as it's possible?

 

Edit: NVIDIA GeForce Now is the only way Guild Wars 2 is accessible for me, as well as for a part of other players.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Aoi.8570

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

This seems pretty definitive:

 

 

[raaahbin.7405]

That's a definitive answer to the wrong question (although personally I'm glad you drew my attention to it! More bad news for the Old Hardware crew). The OP asked if Nvidia Geforce Now would continue to be an officially supported/authorised way to access the game. Given they're now dropping support for everything except an up-to-date 64-bit Windows box, I wouldn't risk pre-purchasing EoD. Wait until it's released, see how things go, make sure things still work after 31 August on whatever your particular platform is. I don't see any reason why they'd actively *stop* letting users access the game through GFN - from ANet's point of view, GFN is just a whole bunch of up-to-date Windows game clients running on good hardware, so as long as they continue to support the game at all, GFN should remain supported.

 

That is, if you happen to live in a part of the world where GFN is available. As for the rest of us... guess I'll be taking a break from GW2 until GFN launches in Australia.

[raaahbin.7405]

The irony in all of this is that one of GW2's excellent points of demarcation against other MMORPGs - a single purchase model rather than a monthly subscription - has effectively vanished. Once they've killed all the clients they used to support (except the Win64 client), a whole bunch of people will now be stuck paying Nvidia a monthly subscription fee to continue to access the game that we thought we had purchased.

[Touchme.1097]

14 hours ago, Aoi.8570 said:

Is Guild Wars 2 going to be playable via NVIDIA GeForce Now in the future or is it only a temporary solution since MacOS is no longer supported? It's important to get this straight, because as a consumer I'm standing before an important decision: wether to pre-order new expansion and risk not being able to play it in 2022, or just forget about it and enjoy the game without it as long as it's possible?

 

Edit: NVIDIA GeForce Now is the only way Guild Wars 2 is accessible for me, as well as for a part of other players.

Hi Aoi, you don't have to pay for a service to play GW2 if you have an Apple computer. If you Mac is not too old you can use the Bootcamp, create a Windows 10 partition, install a free Windows 10 OS 64-bit and play GW2 in that partition. Just remember to allow an abundant amount of disc space for your Windows 10 partition in order to allow OS updates and game updates to be installed. I would recommend at least 100GB if disc space. You can always make it bigger if you have more free disc space and make room for other games that can only be played on Windows 10.

[Anthonev.6452]

27 minutes ago, raaahbin.7405 said:

Once they've killed all the clients they used to support (except the Win64 client)

 

Which maybe putting aside the Mac client (and lets face it, Apple themselves do a pretty good job of killing gaming on their platform), Windows XP is basically 20 years old now and Extended support ended 7 years ago. So you can hardly expect any business to try and build, maintain, run or improve software for a dead OS.

 

As for Windows 32 bit support, I would be amazed if someone is actually trying to play a current game or really do anything on a PC that doesn't support an install of Windows 64bit. Mainstream desktop CPU's have been around for over 15 years, so anyone playing GW2 using a 32bit client and saying they can't run 64bit, is because they installed a 32bit version of Windows, not because their hardware can't run 64bit code.

 

As for the OP, I agree with the other poster, your likely best bet would be Bootcamp or maybe a VM option to run Windows on your Mac. I'd go with a 150GB partition tho, GW is already 50GB, and the Windows 10 folder on my PC is 28GB, and that excludes the Program Files folder, swap file and having a good 10GB free for patches/updates.

[raaahbin.7405]

If the OP is in a similar situation to me, they may have a Mac for which Boot Camp doesn't work (it may once have worked, but my recent attempts to install Windows 7 - the last theoretically supported system on this model - have comprehensively failed, as I gather they have done for others from what I've found online). Wine-based compatibility layers (PlayOnMac, Crossover) allow me to install the 64-bit Windows client, but it is effectively unplayable (I can move around solo [getting a small single-digit number of frames per second], but if I try something like a world boss it completely stops working - as in, "force-quit the whole Wine system" stops). Virtualisation (Parallels) can't cope with the processing overhead either. The 32-bit version, buggy as it might have been, at least allowed me to continue playing after they abandoned the Mac 64-bit client. But appears to have gone too now. 

GFN sounds like the only practical solution remaining - it just doesn't exist in my part of the world yet (supposedly coming later this year... but then, so is my next computer).

 

It's a pity that ANet decided updating the Mac client to new tech wasn't worth their efforts (especially since they're now killing the 32-bit Windows client under the pretext of updating the 64-bit client to new tech).  The videos online of people playing the native WoW client on M1-based Macs are absolutely incredible for a consumer laptop - a solid 60fps at max graphics settings. If I could only find a way to play the GW2 game using the WoW client... 😆

Edited July 29, 2021 by raaahbin.7405

[Bellefon.1259]

I don’t recommend Boot Camp. It’s going to run very hot (BIOS can’t switch between integrated and discrete graphics, so the fans will run constantly if you have two cards); it’s going to take up a good chunk of drive space; it’s going to require applying constant Windows updates and troubleshooting them; and it’s going to wall you off from all your usual other third-party programs unless you redownload the Windows versions.

 

CrossOver had been working for me since the February removal of the Mac client. But it and other Wine compatibility layers seems to require setup using the 32-bit Windows installer, which will be going away end of August. I don’t have the knowledge to manually create, customize, & troubleshoot a CrossOver bottle using the 64-bit client.

 

Now I’m trying out GFN for the past few days. I don’t think either ANet or NVIDIA is going to provide any guarantees, but short of a business decision or bad corporate relations, there’s no technical-capability reason that GW2 on GeForce NOW would go away. But since ANet doesn’t reassure on these issues, and usually doesn’t provide more than 6-8 weeks notice on technical matters, there’s no need, as a consumer, to pre-purchase any sooner than the day before EoD is released.

[Aoi.8570]

On 7/28/2021 at 4:10 AM, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

This seems pretty definitive:

 

 

 This says nothing about NVIDIA GeForce Now (it is a completely different thing than MacOS).

 

On 7/28/2021 at 6:10 PM, Touchme.1097 said:

Hi Aoi, you don't have to pay for a service to play GW2 if you have an Apple computer. If you Mac is not too old you can use the Bootcamp, create a Windows 10 partition, install a free Windows 10 OS 64-bit and play GW2 in that partition. Just remember to allow an abundant amount of disc space for your Windows 10 partition in order to allow OS updates and game updates to be installed. I would recommend at least 100GB if disc space. You can always make it bigger if you have more free disc space and make room for other games that can only be played on Windows 10.

 

 I know about Bootcamp, but it requires more free memory space on your laptop than I ever had (haha).

[Svata.8034]

On 7/28/2021 at 12:10 PM, Touchme.1097 said:

Hi Aoi, you don't have to pay for a service to play GW2 if you have an Apple computer. If you Mac is not too old you can use the Bootcamp, create a Windows 10 partition, install a free Windows 10 OS 64-bit and play GW2 in that partition. Just remember to allow an abundant amount of disc space for your Windows 10 partition in order to allow OS updates and game updates to be installed. I would recommend at least 100GB if disc space. You can always make it bigger if you have more free disc space and make room for other games that can only be played on Windows 10.

This is great idea but my Mac HD is 250GB with only about 10GB of available space.  I do have other Thunderbolt HDs but appreciate if you have better ideas.

 

Setting up bootcamp would be great but having 100GB plus of disc space is a fantasy for me.  

 

So love get MAC back to play GW2 and pre order next edition but... Need resolve current problems.

[Touchme.1097]

2 hours ago, Svata.8034 said:

This is great idea but my Mac HD is 250GB with only about 10GB of available space.  I do have other Thunderbolt HDs but appreciate if you have better ideas.

 

Setting up bootcamp would be great but having 100GB plus of disc space is a fantasy for me.  

 

So love get MAC back to play GW2 and pre order next edition but... Need resolve current problems.

I see, well if you want a better solution you can buy a cheap computer with 1 tera of disk space and windows 10 and play the game with it. This way you don't have to pay for G Force Now.

[Shikigami.4013]

2 hours ago, Touchme.1097 said:

I see, well if you want a better solution you can buy a cheap computer with 1 tera of disk space and windows 10 and play the game with it. This way you don't have to pay for G Force Now.

Game runs fine on my 13 year old Core2Duo with 64bit Win7 and an 11 year old GTX460 gfx card. An ancient potato PC with hardware like that probably won't cost more than a few months of Gefore Now sub cost. Also don't really need 1 terabyte, or Win10. 🙂

Maybe someone among friends/family would have an old unused PC from when they bought a new one.

[Aoi.8570]

On 8/7/2021 at 2:19 AM, Shikigami.4013 said:

Game runs fine on my 13 year old Core2Duo with 64bit Win7 and an 11 year old GTX460 gfx card. An ancient potato PC with hardware like that probably won't cost more than a few months of Gefore Now sub cost. Also don't really need 1 terabyte, or Win10. 🙂

Maybe someone among friends/family would have an old unused PC from when they bought a new one.

 

I don't think there's a computer that costs less than NVIDIA GeForce Now subscription (6 months = about 30 euro in my case).
Moreover, I can play Guild Wars 2 with the best graphics settings (everything Ultra High) and still reach 60 fps without overloading my laptop.

 

I'd just love to know whether they are going to continue working with NVIDIA or not. I don't count on bringing back macOS support at all - I know this ship has sailed! 😄

[Shikigami.4013]

15 hours ago, Aoi.8570 said:

I'd just love to know whether they are going to continue working with NVIDIA or not. I don't count on bringing back macOS support at all - I know this ship has sailed! 😄

I just can't help to be reminded of this VLDL video -> The Robber - Bored Ep 18 | Viva La Dirt League (VLDL)

Youtube watch string would be /watch?v=Z0QgBX4WFKQ 🙂

 

Anyways, I heard of a few games first being available on GeForce Now and then not anymore so I understand your concerns about that 😞

[guildwarrior.6304]

On 7/28/2021 at 11:51 AM, raaahbin.7405 said:

The irony in all of this is that one of GW2's excellent points of demarcation against other MMORPGs - a single purchase model rather than a monthly subscription - has effectively vanished. Once they've killed all the clients they used to support (except the Win64 client), a whole bunch of people will now be stuck paying Nvidia a monthly subscription fee to continue to access the game that we thought we had purchased.

It's still much cheaper than I would have to pay for a whole new Gaming PC ...I love my Mac and don't mind a few bucks going to Nvidia if I can keep playing. It does suck though, I know what you mean.

 

[guildwarrior.6304]

On 8/8/2021 at 9:08 AM, Aoi.8570 said:

 

I don't think there's a computer that costs less than NVIDIA GeForce Now subscription (6 months = about 30 euro in my case).
Moreover, I can play Guild Wars 2 with the best graphics settings (everything Ultra High) and still reach 60 fps without overloading my laptop.

 

I'd just love to know whether they are going to continue working with NVIDIA or not. I don't count on bringing back macOS support at all - I know this ship has sailed! 😄

I'm happy with Nvidia as well, I hope we can continue to use it 

 

[artharon.9276]

I'm a little late to the party but,

 

I'd like to thank Anet for letting players use GFN streaming service to play our favourite mmo only using my samsung dex, keyboard mouse and a monitor or my portable dex laptop. 

 

I've been dreaming about this as a gamer for long time.  

 

If you ask why, 

Spoiler

Why, I'm not getting a laptop, I got one, many in fact. When you travel around with a laptop for your work a lot, and carrying that haevy thing for years, slowly breaks your body. So recently, I begun to utilize cloud pcs and streaming services that works much efficent than teamviewer for productivity. And started to carry lighter equiments like dummy dex laptops. I had stadia but never was able to play the games that I like the most. Until I searched for a stadia alternative after hearing it's getting shut down... 

 

That was a great experience!

 

Take that elder scrolls online. 

Edited October 26, 2022 by artharon.9276