World of Warcraft functionality on Macs

From WoWWiki

Mac is an abbreviation of 'Macintosh', a brand of computers manufactured by  Apple Inc.

Mac OS is short for Macintosh Operating System; Mac OS X is the 10th major revision (hence the Roman numeral X). The current release of Mac OS X is version 10.5 "Leopard".

Playing WoW on a Macintosh presents the player with some unique challenges and opportunities, hence this page. Issues to be aware of include differences in the effect of certain video settings on system performance, trouble finding equivalent hardware to that available to the PC player and the availability of in-game native UI Video Recording exclusive to Mac players.

WoW System Requirements

Minimum (from Blizzard)

• Mac® OS X 10.3.9
• 933 MHz or higher G4, or G5, or Intel processor
• 512 MB RAM or higher; DDR RAM recommended
• Intel, ATI or NVIDIA® video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more
• 6.0 GB available HD space
• 56k or better Internet connection

Player Recommended

• Most recent Mac OS X release, updates and patches (Mac OS X 10.5 is current as of this writing)
• Intel processor (or dual/multi-CPU G5)
• ATI or NVIDIA® video hardware with 128 MB VRAM or more
• 2 GB RAM or higher - note that buying RAM from Apple is notoriously expensive, 3rd party sellers have been known to sell at 1/10th Apple's price.
• 10 GB available HD space (WoW + BC is around 8 GB; you'll want more for downloading patches)
• Broadband internet connection

User Interface Addons

Users are sometimes unsure if Macs are able to make use of User Interface Addons. In fact, all UI addons are built on an XML/Lua scripting system built into WoW and cannot contain native code, so they'll run on any platform World of Warcraft runs on -- Windows or Mac. Simply place an addon in your World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns/ folder and restart WoW. (Switching? You can copy that entire folder from a Windows box to get all your addons onto your new Mac. Copy theWorld of Warcraft/WTF/ folder too and you'll get all your macros, chat window settings, and addon saved data, too.)

Caveats:

• Most addons are available in .zip files (which can be opened with Mac OS X built-in software). Some Addon authors like to package their products as self-extracting/installing .exe files; while the addon will work on a Mac, the .exe file won't. If you find an addon that's only available in an .exe, ask the author for a .zip version -- most will be happy to oblige.
• A few addons come with an external program -- e.g. for uploading game info to database sites or downloading auction prices for viewing in-game. The addons themselves will work on the Mac, but you'll need a Mac version of the external program to get the functionality it provides. (Note: use of third-party programs in conjunction with World of Warcraft may violate the Terms of Service.)
• As a general rule, .exe files should only be trusted as much as you trust the person or entity it comes from. Very few people will click an .exe file that comes in an unsolicited email, but the same cannot be said for .exe files that purport to be self-extricating wow addons. Let the player beware, though this is less of a Mac issue and more about prudent personal security.

Technical Support

Blizzard offers a support forum for Macintosh-specific problems playing WoW. The Mac team has proved highly responsive to known issues.

• Official Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum

NB: This forum is for players registered through the US servers only, and will not recognise login details for those on other servers. Mac users on the European servers should post Mac queries on Blizzard's European Technical Support forum.

Performance Tips

This thread on the Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum offers good information on how to optimise WoW both through tweaking options and upgrading graphics cards. Furthermore, Accelerate Your Mac has a page dedicated to user reports on WoW performance on individual Macs.
General Tips

• The more RAM you have, the better; 1.5 to 2 GB is a good baseline. - note that buying RAM from Apple is notoriously expensive, 3rd party sellers have been known to sell at 1/10th Apple's price.
• The Fullscreen Glow effect (in WoW's Video Options) has a much greater impact on performance under Mac OS X than on Windows. Turn it off if your framerate is too low. The Anisotropic Filtering and Multisampling settings can also also drastically lower framerate.

PowerPC-only Tips
A recent thread with posts by Blizzard employee Tigerclaw on the Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum has important things to say about WoW on PowerPC Macs running Tiger or earlier OSes - specifically, that performance will always be limited by the exclusion of certain OpenGL features that are available on Tiger on the Intel-based Macs. Until the release of Leopard (available October 26th, 2007) or OS X 10.4.11 (either of which may or may not include these OpenGL features for the PowerPC), or in lieu of upgrading to an Intel-based Mac, PowerPC users may wish to try the following tweak:

• PowerPC OpenGL tweak

G4 users should specifically note the information provided by post 47 on this thread, which highlights that G4 Macs have an insoluble bottleneck limiting graphics card performance.

Intel-only Tips

• Multithreaded OpenGL is enabled by default, increasing performance on dual-core (or multi-CPU) Intel Macs. An experimental version of this technology can be enabled by typing /console GLFaster 2 in-game -- it's even faster but can sometimes lead to noticeable mouse/UI lag. (Type /console GLFaster 1 to return to the normal setting, or /console GLFaster 0 to turn it off entirely.)

World of Warcraft on Intel Macs

On January 10, 2006, Apple announced the first of the Intel-based macs (Macbook Pro and iMac) which can still run older PowerPC programs in emulation mode with Rosetta. Intel-ready programs are usually available as Universal Binaries, programs that can run on PPC and Intel.

As of Patch 1.9.3.5059, WoW for Mac OS X supports Intel Macintosh. Performance is generally considered very good.

• WoW Insider
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Intel-based Macs

Note: If you're shopping for a new Mac and intend to play WoW on it, beware -- several low-end models use an integrated graphics chipset (Intel GMA950) instead of a dedicated GPU+VRAM, which hobbles game performance. According to many players, WoW is "barely playable" under Mac OS X on such models. (On most Intel Macs, WoW performance can be marginally improved by running under Windows using Apple's Boot Camp utility, but requires a purchase of Microsoft Windows. Getting a better Mac model would be more affordable.)

WoW on OSx86

'OSx86' (or 'hackintosh') is the name given by the community to the collaborative hacking project to run Mac OS X on non-Apple computers. The level of compatibility depends on the hardware used but in most cases is stable due to the recent modifications to OS X's kernel and drivers.

It has been reported by several OSx86 users that WoW runs stable and smoothly on this systems though few graphical glitches can be seen on some systems where the GPU drivers doesn't fully support the GPU used. Besides this, no bug related only to 'hackintoshes' has been reported. As many OSx86 users tend to remove Apple's macs only processes and components, they can even get slightly more performance with similar hardware than real macs.

Voice Communication

WoW offers a built-in voice communication feature as of version 2.20. Blizzard's Mac developers have confirmed that it'll work cross-plaftorm.

Ventrilo

• Ventrilo Mac Status, Ventrilo Download Page

The official Mac port of Ventrilo is currently in beta and missing some features. Ventrilo's developers promise full cross-platform feature parity for their upcoming 3.0 release. Unfortunately this didn't quite go as far as including a way to "normalize" incoming communications, with the result that Mac users either have to go through a two-to-three program long workaround (involving taking the incoming voice comms through at least one other application before going through GarageBand and then out through the speakers), or to suffer the whims of the Ventrilo Volume gods.

Ventrilo servers use the GSM codec by default; the Mac client only supports the Speex codec, so usually a server will need to be reconfigured to support Mac clients. A common misconception among Ventrilo users is that using the Speex codec results in poor audio quality; this is actually an effect of the Ventrilo client/server architecture when mixed-version clients are connected. All clients, Windows included, must be updated to the latest version of Ventrilo or Speex audio quality will be reduced.

Using "Push To Talk" functionality in Ventrilo requires turning on "Enable access for assistive devices" in the Universal Access pane of System Preferences.

TeamSpeak

• TeamSpeex for Mac, TeamSpeex Download

TeamSpeex is a third-party client for TeamSpeak 2 servers. It supports only the Speex client (however, this is default on TS servers, so it's less likely to be an issue). "Push To Talk" functionality is available without enabling Universal Access.

Mouse Issues

Older Macs came with one-button mice, and the built-in trackpad on Mac notebooks has only one hardware button. Since WoW's UI is designed for a 2+ button mouse, this can lead to some confusion.

Left / Right Click

• The single mouse button corresponds to "Left click" in WoW's UI.
• In WoW, holding the Command (Apple or ⌘) key while clicking is equivalent to a right-click.
• Recent Mac notebooks include a feature where holding two fingers on the trackpad while clicking produces a right-click. This can be turned on in the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences.

Any standard multi-button USB mouse can be used with a Mac. (Macs with Bluetooth can also use any standard BT mouse.) No third-party software is necessary to make use of the secondary button or scroll wheel, or to be able to bind additional buttons to WoW actions. (Third-party software may be useful if you wish to customize extra-mouse-button actions outside of WoW, though.)

Mighty Mouse

Current desktop Macs come with Apple's (USB or wireless) Mighty Mouse, a 4 button mouse with a bidirectional scroll ball. It, too, has some caveats when it comes to WoW:

• Right-clicking is disabled by default. It can be enabled in the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences.
• The mouse uses a touch sensor to determine when to send a right click signal, and falls back to sending a left click signal if it's unsure. You may need to lift your finger away from the left side of the mouse while right clicking.
• The mouse cannot send a "both left+right buttons down" signal, which in WoW makes you run forward while allowing you to steer your character with the mouse. This "Move and Steer" action can be set to a different mouse button in WoW's Key Bindings window, however. (It uses Button 3 -- pressing on the scroll ball -- by default.)

Swimming While Dead

Patch 1.10.1 added key bindings for pitch control, so one no longer needs to use the mouse to swim (or fly) upwards or downwards. However, these controls only change the orientation of your character, not that of the camera -- swimming below the surface of water while water-walking (or while dead and in spirit form) requires making both your character and the camera point downward. This can only be done using the mouse: hold the right mouse button (or equivalent) and drag the mouse cursor down.

Mouse Acceleration

World of Warcraft’s mouse sensitivity controls seems to be more useful on a Windows based machine.

People who regularly use a Mac may not have any problems with the OS’s mouse acceleration in game, however people who switch between Mac and PC often will find two totally different mousing experiences.

There are a few tools available to fix acceleration in OS X since the operating system has no system options to do this on its own.

USB Overdrive is a shareware (free) option. It offers a message upon boot, but has no restrictions and the message can be removed with purchase.

Keyboard Issues

Help! My Function Keys Don't Work Like Normal Function Keys!

On laptop Macs, the function keys usually perform double duty. F1 and F2 control screen brightness, F3 and F4 control volume, etc. Pressing the Fn key will use them as function keys, but you can change them to work as function keys by default in System Preferences. Open System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Check 'Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys'.

On desktop Macs, screen brightness is controlled by F14 and F15. Their PC equivalents (Scroll Lock and Pause/Break) don't usually do anything.

Switching to Other Apps

On Windows, one can use Alt-Tab and related shortcuts to switch to other applications without quitting WoW. On the Mac, Command-Tab generally serves this purpose, but when an app "captures" the display to go fullscreen on the Mac, it usurps such system keyboard shortcuts even if it doesn't do anything with them.

WoW (and older Blizzard games, since they've been nice and consistent about it) can be switched between fullscreen and windowed modes with Cmd-M. After switching to windowed, you can Cmd-Tab to another app, Cmd-H to hide WoW, etc.

You can also use 3rd-party software to be able to change apps without switching to windowed mode:

• http://www.proteron.com/liteswitchx/
• http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?thema=witch&sprache=english

An alternative solution would be as follows:

• From within the game, enter the Options menu (ESC)
• Choose Video
• Check to enable Windowed Mode
• Check to enable Maximized

This will provide the feel of fullscreen while allowing the hotkeys to work for Spaces in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The only caveat with this configuration is that upon returning to the game screen, you must click within the game window to fully resume focus and you still can't use Cmd-Tab.

Exposé Keys

There is an — apparently — well-known issue of the WoW client overwriting the default Exposé configuration on exit; these keys get used within the client for various functions but not restored after exit.

A currently untested patch from a third party purportedly works around the issue:

macupdate.com World of Warcraft Expose Fix 1.1

In a thread on the Blizzard Mac Tech Support Forum an alternative work-around has been suggested: removing the Key Bindings for keys F9 to F12, and simply using Shift-B to open all of your bags. This has apparently met with a reasonable amount of success.

Another workaround: some have noticed that the loss of Exposé settings tends to occur when quitting the game while in full-screen mode; making a habit of switching to windowed mode before quitting (Cmd-M) seems to reduce the frequency of the problem.

Image and Video

Screenshots

To take a screenshot in WoW, press the F13 key (or, since some Macs don't have an F13 key, go into WoW's Key Bindings menu and change it to something convenient. This saves the latest frame drawn to a Screenshots folder inside your World of Warcraft folder. (You can also use the Mac's builtin screenshot key shortcuts, but these aren't synced with the game's graphics engine, so they may capture an incomplete or "torn" image.)

Screenshots are saved in the JPEG format by default. This is a lossy compression format -- it produces small files, but with reduced image quality. The format and quality of screenshots can be changed via the screenshotFormat and screenshotQuality config variables. For example, to switch to a high-quality PNG format, type the following into the chat frame once logged into WoW:

 /console screenshotFormat png
 /console screenshotQuality 10

For more details, see the [#Console Variables] section below. (The screenshotFormat control has been available on the Mac since Patch 1.11; it and screenshotQuality were made cross-platform in Patch 2.1.0.)

Video Capture and Editing

Patch 2.2.0 brought a built-in video capture utility to WoW on the Mac.

Since this is a hugely complicated issue, it now has its own WoWWiki page at Mac Video Recording and Editing.

Examples of videos captured and edited on Macs:

World of Warcraft Community Site 0. Mac Video Collection 9 videos posted

Available Codecs

 MJPEG
 H.264

 MPEG-4

Sneaky Faster Video Compression Process While You Make A Sandwich

See Mac Video Recording and Editing.

Changing Recording Location

See Mac Video Recording and Editing.

Mac-specific Console Variables

These can be set by typing /console variablename value while in WoW.

• GLFaster - Enables Multithreaded OpenGL on dual/multi-core Intel Macs.
  • 0 - Off
  • 1 - Default
  • 2 - Experimental faster option, may lead to UI/mouse lag
• maxfps - Caps framerate (useful to minimize CPU usage / temperature or extend notebook battery life). New in Patch 2.1.0
  • <number> - framerate not to exceed.
• maxfpsbk - Caps framerate while WoW is not the frontmost app. You must have maxfps also set in order for this value to work. New in Patch 2.1.0
  • <number> - framerate not to exceed.

NOTE: 'maxfpsbk' can be used in a bit of a convoluted process to maximize the speed at which WoW compresses player-recorded video. Details above or in WoW Mac Tech Support Forum.

• screenshotFormat - Controls which graphics file format is used for screenshots taken in-game.
  • jpg -  JPEG, a widely-supported format using lossy compression. (Default)
  • png -  PNG, a format using lossless compression, fairly well-supported on all platforms.
  • tga -  Targa, a lossless format, but not supported by many cross-platform viewers.
• screenshotQuality - Controls compression level and image quality of screenshots taken in-game.
  • <number, 1-10> - Lower number: smaller file, lower quality image. Higher number: larger file, higher quality image.

Patch Mirrors

"Dual-Boxing" on one Mac

Dual boxing (being logged in on multiple characters at once) is possible on the Mac -- in fact, with the abundance of multi-CPU/multi-core Macs, it works quite well -- but requires some setup. You'll need to make a separate copy of the World of Warcraft application, as attempting to re-launch the same application will just refocus the already running copy. Depending on your goals, there are three common ways to go about doing this:

1. Copying the entire WoW folder:
   • Open the Applications folder (Command-Shift-A in the Finder).
   • Select your World of Warcraft folder.
   • Duplicate the folder by typing Command-D.
2. Copying just the WoW app:
   • Open your World of Warcraft folder.
   • Select the World of Warcraft.app Application Bundle.
   • Duplicate the Application by typing Command-D.
3. A hybrid approach:
   • Make a new folder outside your main WoW folder, and copy just the World of Warcraft app to it.
   • Make a symbolic link (not an alias as created by the Finder, but a Unix symlink; see A brief tutorial on symbolic links, Symbolic link or Hybrid Approach "How-To" section below for info) in the new folder, named Data, pointing at the Data folder in your main WoW folder.
   • If you want both copies to share the same addons, make another symlink for the Interface folder.

Whichever approach you choose, you'll need to repeat some of you work when a WoW patch comes out. If you copied the entire folder, you can just run through the normal download/patch process for each (though you can skip the download process by copying the "WoW-x.y.z.n-to-x.y.z.n-enUS-downloader" and "WoW-x.y.z.n-to-x.y.z.n-enUS-patch" from one WoW folder to the other once the first copy is patched). If you copied just the WoW app, you'll need to re-copy it after patching your main WoW install.

And of course, any approach to multiboxing requires multiple separate WoW accounts (one for each simultaneously logged in character).

Pros and Cons

Method	Pros	Cons
Copying the entire WoW folder	This lets you keep everything in each WoW installation separate: addons, settings, etc. It's just like having two machines to play WoW on. Blizzard employees have recommended this approach when the issue has been discussed in the Mac Tech Support forum.</td>	Everything is separate, so if you want to keep the same addons, settings, etc. for both copies you'll have to keep them in sync manually. It takes up a lot of disk space (7+ GB for all the game data) unnecessarily.
Copying just the WoW app	Uses only a tiny bit of extra disk space (just 17 MB for the app itself). Both copies share the same addons, settings, etc.	Two copies of WoW trying to write to the same files (notably, settings and cache files) at once may lead to unexpected behavior. If you want separate addons or settings for each copy, you can't do that with this approach.
A Hybrid Approach	Uses minimal disk space without any worry of cache/settings issues. Settings are kept separate for each copy, but addons can be shared if desired.	Setup is non-trivial for casual users. Settings can't be shared between both copies.

Hybrid Approach "How-To"

Here is a shell script that greatly simplifies the Hybrid Approach for users who are not comfortable with creating symbolic links. This script allows you to run two clients, keep the cache separate between the two, and only uses about 17MB of additional hard disk space:

#!/bin/sh 
p1="/Applications/World of Warcraft" 
p2=$p1/WoWCopy 
mkdir "$p2" 
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p2/Data" 
cp "$p1/realmlist.wtf" "$p2/realmlist.wtf" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft.app"

Optional: If you would like to share addons between the two installations, add the following line to the bottom of the shell script:

ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p2/Interface"

1. Copy/paste the script into a new TextEdit document, and save the file in your home directory as "wowcopy.sh", i.e. the path to the script document should be something like:

   /Users/YourName/wowcopy.sh

2. Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app), type the following:

   chmod +x ~/wowcopy.sh; ~/wowcopy.sh

   and hit enter. This gives the operating system permission to execute the script, and then actually executes it.
3. Check your World of Warcraft folder for a new folder called WoWCopy. Inside should be three files: a Data folder, a realmlist.wtf text file, and a World of Warcraft.app. This application bundle can be launched completely independently from your main installation.

WARNING: Whenever a patch for WoW is released, patch your main installation, and then copy the patched "World of Warcraft.app" into your WoWCopy folder. Do NOT attempt to patch both installations, as you may corrupt your Data folder and be forced to reinstall the game.

Further Resources For Mac WoW Players

Official forum, places to get RAM and hardware, free internet speedtest site.

• Mac Video Recording and Editing - WoWWiki page with a focus on full-process Mac/WoW audio-visual production, recording, compression, re-compression (!), editing and post-production for dummies and the technologically challenged. Programs discussed: WoW, Quicktime Pro and Final Cut Express. iMovie, VLC Player and MPEG-Streamclip also reviewed.

External links