The CPUs are 32-bit capable, it’s an exclusion from the kernel that prevents anything with a 32-bit userspace from running. D2R is a 64-bit client FWIW. You’ll notice this in how much RAM it uses. The game client was in fact modernized.
The primary issue is Apple’s treatment of developers. Working with Apple is…problematic. Shame too, because on the CPU side their ARM variants absolutely wreck either Intel or AMD’s best, and that includes the Xeon and EPYC CPUs when you factor in how well ARM as an architecture itself scales. It’s the GPU side of the equation where Apple lags behind still. That also happens to be the very area of betrayal by Apple toward their game devs as well.
Overwatch didn’t get a Mac client because Apple kept Metal to itself for too long and by the time they finally decided to be forthcoming with Blizzard it was too late. Management told Apple to sit and spin and hasn’t released a new Mac game since. Adding to that was the fact that Apple flat out blocked nVidia from making drivers at all, even for existing hardware. That’s why folks like me with a 1080 Ti are stuck on 10.13.6 instead of on Big Sur or Monterey. And with Apple’s transitiion to ARM64 about 75% complete, the days of AMD GPUs are also numbered.
Apple’s best CPU, the M1 Max, is “comparable” to a 3080. No, not the desktop version, the mobile version, and apparently only in very, very carefully cherry picked scenarios. Games? You’re still going to have to dial down either resolution and/or settings. Those M1 IGPs can’t drive native resolution on Apple’s displays at anywhere near max settings. Not even close. They can’t even do that in World of Warcraft.
Apple made its bed. Now they get to lie in it. It’s sad really, especially since having AAA games on that platform would mean a one stop shop for those that like to game and also use iDevices. I’m not among the iDevice users, but it would have been nice to have the more fluidly functional OS for at least my WoW needs for the foreseeable future. That’s going to end almost certainly with WoW 10.0 as 10.13.6 will be on the chopping block physically - the version of XCode in use by then to make the macOS game client won’t be able to target that OS anymore like it can now. It’s why emulators now require a minimum of 10.14.6.
There really isn’t much of a reason for Blizzard to keep making new Mac games when Apple just makes it such a PITA to keep up with and/or deal with.
WoW was the first of their clients to go 64-bit. That happened very early on in the changeover to 64-bit exclusively. In fact, it started years before Windows 10 even came out.
People with Macs can post here, just not those that don’t have the game license on their account (admittedly this is going to be those that have Windows installed for the most part). Unfortunately this particular argument is a bit of both a strawman and a red herring all in one due to its self-fullfilling prophecy nature.
Different teams.
It works, just…barely. It works fine for me in 10.13.6, but that was the last OS with reasonable OpenGL performance and/or functional AMD driver performance (for the AMD GPUs supported up until the time of 10.14’s release). D3 performs as badly as it does on modern macOS because it uses OpenGL still, not Metal. And with all of a single Mac specific programmer left to handle all, I repeat all of the Blizzard games that still support macOS in addition to the Windows load he deals with, I doubt it’s ever going to get an update. I also doubt it will maintain macOS support much longer in the end because the only way to do so is to continue using older versions of XCode to compile the client app so as to not destroy the support currently available to the OSes D3 can run in at present. Using the newest XCode to compile the app would systematically eliminate OSes on a 1-2 year timeline (this is a big part of why Mac support just doesn’t happen and so many devs are bailing on macOS on the whole).