Classic WoW Crashing Computer, 10.14.6

I opened a ticket regarding this but I’m bringing in to the forums as I haven’t found much help through the ticket nor in other threads.

My initial ticket:

I just downloaded Mojave a few days ago- I’ve been using High Sierra up until this point. Retail has always been pretty clunky- since Legion- on my Mac; with loading screens taking over 3 minutes. And now in BFA it has been taking 3-5 minutes for the world to load once the loading screen has finished. Since upgrading to Mojave- it seemed even worse today.

When I launched Classic in Mojave, I lasted maybe about 5 minutes before it completely crashed my computer and the computer restarted. This happened about 2 more times. I followed all the instructions on the support website: deleting all addons, repairing game, clearing cache/wtf/interface folders. But still, classic lasts about 5 minutes and crashes completely.

I have not experienced a computer crash ever on High Sierra ever playing wow (nor do I think I’ve had one since maybe 2008…)

The ticket was responded to as such:

"Reviewing the SPX file the system is overall supported but the hard drive being used: HTS541010A9E632 -> Click to open expanded view Hitachi Travelstar 5K1000 1TB 2,5’ (HTS541010A9E632) SATA-600 8MB 5400RPM 9,5mm <- Is not supported as the 5400RPM speed will mean it’s write speed is below what we recommend to play the game.

Our system requirements located here: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/76459 State the game requires a HDD speed of 7200 RPM and recommends a SSD if possible. When upgrading older systems with newer operating systems it’s not always going to improve the effiency of the system it may increase the load on the system overall to run the latest OS versions changes in how the system runs overall.

Note: HDD wise the requirement is the same for Classic World of Warcraft as well: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/243159

You have a few options here:

  • Roll back to high sierra - though the system would still not be supported if this worked for you it may get you by till the system can be upgraded.
  • Contact apple support for help getting this system upgraded to meet our requirements either a 7200k HDD or for best results an SSD. "

My next response:

"I understand all that- but Classic is a 15 year old game and my 2018 Mac should have no problem running it if my 2005 windows had no problem running in it’s heyday. There is clearly a MAJOR issue regarding Mojave and WoW that should have an easier fix than me being responsible for spending hundreds of dollars upgrading my computer to play a 15 year old game; as well as no reason that an old OS had absolutely no problems running it less than a week ago. Also as you may know, rolling back on Mac is not necessarily a simple process. "

To reiterate, no game this old should be crashing my 2018 iMac nor should I have to roll back to an older software to play it. My hard drive’s lack of speed also does not doesn’t answer why it was working in High Sierra a week ago. Has anybody else been experiencing this and has anyone found an ACTUAL fix?

Blizz team, please look into this and find a fix. Both retail and classic are completely unplayable as it stands.

Classic is in fact not an older game. It’s literally the modern 8.x client that’s able to read and load in classic data, but it’s still in the grossly inefficient CASC system, which is why it runs like dogcrap on a HDD, and it still requires Metal since OpenGL support is gone (especially since apple left opengl in a buggy state and refuse to update or fix it anymore). If you truly are on a 5400RPM drive, retail and classic are always going to run REALLY bad for you, so long as blizzard keeps using the CASC data system for their games.

2 Likes

It’s actually the 7.3.5 client, but I digress.

If my load screens were 3 minutes I’d throw the computer Harddrive in the trash where it belongs.

Also, there are a couple other factors involved too.

  1. If you’re using Mojave, you’re using APFS. CASC slows things down. APFS is the MacOS version of CASC. So you now have both CASC slowing things down and APFS doing the same. APFS is worse. Much worse. It doesn’t store critical system and directory information in the hard drive’s “inner track” area like HFS+ does. It literally scatters metadata everywhere. So you get seek after seek after seek, which adds up when you’re loading highly fragmented files.

  2. CASC fragments over time. As new patches are applied, the data.xxx files are appended to or changed and the index.xxx files associated with them are updated. Problem is, the data.xxx files become fragmented because updates to them are not in contiguous sectors. They’re scattered elsewhere, much like APFS does with its files. That causes performance to degrade over time. This can be remedied by deleting the data folder in the retail and/or Classic WoW subfolders and using the BNet app to reinstall the game’s files. Just remember to not click play until all installing and patching is completed so you don’t corrupt your game files.

Those two things combined are amplified due to the fact that a 5400 RPM drive is in use. HFS+ held its own mostly, but APFS bogs down on non-SSD/NVMe drives thanks to how it haphazardly scatters data. It matters less on NAND based media, but for platter based drives, it’s a disastrous performance killer. The game would be much more playable if the 5400 RPM drive were replaced with an SSD.

Had the same repeat crash issues running classic on 10.14.6. Followed instructions from the last post with a fresh reinstall. Took for-ever on hotel wifi but so far so good.