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 10.4 "Tiger".
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 10.4.10 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
- 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.)
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
- The more RAM you have, the better; 1.5 to 2 GB is a good baseline.
- PowerPC Only: PowerPC OpenGL tweak
- 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.
- Intel Only: 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.
Intel-based Macs:
- Mac Pro – Professional desktop without a display
- iMac – Consumer all-in-one (built-in screen) desktop
- Mac mini – Bare-bones desktop (bring your own keyboard, mouse, and display)
- Macbook Pro – Professional laptop
- Macbook – Consumer laptop
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.)
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
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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
Patch 2.2.0 brought a built-in video capture utility to WoW on the Mac.
Third-party solutions also exist, however Mac OS X has yet to see a screen-recording product that performs quite as well as Fraps for Windows. Ambrosia's Snapz Pro X is a popular screenshot tool that can also capture video (and now has an Intel-native version). A newer product, iShowU, is also available in a Universal Binary and provides a fairly good capture framerate.
As of 08OCT2007, movie capture using WoW's native UI is disabled on the new aluminum iMacs and some others. The default keybindings are set, but if you try to use them it'll give you a bogus error leading you to believe that the problem lies on your end. The actual issue is a software bug for AMD/ATI graphics cards. According to Blizzard ('blue') poster 'Tigerclaw' on the official US WoW forum 'Mac Technical Support':
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2043718036&postId=22153482176&sid=1#8
FWIW, just on Intel Mac here are the models that do support movie recording at this time:
--> "all of them, except the newest iMac because of that driver bug." <--
AMD already has a guy working on this issue. It really doesn't matter to us whether it's 1 or 1000 affected users in this case, we will get it fixed.
We didn't discover this bug until right before 2.2's final round of debugging, so we put in the kill switch on it. Part of that had to do simply with the release date of the new iMac vs our work cycle on 2.2.0.
And we knew, anyone affected by this would likely ask tech support and get the inside scoop. At one point we had hoped our answer would be "download update X and enable it in-game with this secret code" but the update is not yet available.
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. New in Patch 2.1.0
- <number> - framerate not to exceed.
- screenshotFormat - Controls which graphics file format is used for screenshots taken in-game.
- 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
For those having trouble with the Blizzard Downloader, mirrors of patches and other WoW updates are often available at MacGameFiles.
"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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 [1][2] or #Hybrid_Approach_.22How-To.22 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 |
|
|
| Copying just the WoW app |
|
|
| A Hybrid Approach |
|
|
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"
- 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
- 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. - 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.