Launcher will no longer open without allowing root access

Since very recently (WoW shadowlands prepatch is my guess), the WoW Launcher will no longer open on my mac without allowing it to escalate privileges to run something (god knows what) as root. It does not even open the UI anymore, it just immediately pops an escalation dialog saying “World of Warcraft Launcher wants to make changes.” No description of what or why. Cancelling it causes the launcher to fail to open.

All WoW files installed on my machine (that I am aware of) are writable by my unprivileged user, so there is no reason the launcher should require root to administer the game.

I know the party line has been that WoW has always required admin/root to run, I already got that BS from tech support… but the cold facts are: 1) This is not actually true. It has worked fine without root privileges for years. 2) There is a history of abuse of admin/root privileges for unnecessary things like the “Blizzard Battle.net Local Cert”… which should have been optional at best… not forced upon people. No thank you. Stay in your sandbox WoW.

Something has changed, and I would like to know what it is.

I am looking for a clear explanation about what exactly the launcher is trying to do to my computer that requires root access, and ideally a way to say no thanks. There is no reason WoW should be making permanent system level modifications to my computer.

It is also worth noting that I have observed similar behaviour on the windows version of the game, except instead of blocking the launcher from opening it happens towards the end of the patching process and refuses to finish without allowing something to run as admin… makes me very suspicious.

1 Like

I recently installed the Battle.net Desktop App and found out that all the files installed as root. Why the heck does a game need such privileged permissions? Since the inquiry was posted about two years ago and Blizzard just ignores it, I think it would be wise to quit all those games.