YMMV but this worked for me:
Open your config.wtf file and find: gxWindow
It might not be there - but you might find ‘gxWindowedResolution’ and it’s value.
Replace that line with: gxWindow “0”
Launch the game and cross your fingers.
Once inside the game go to your settings and remain in Window Mode.
This worked for me - I hope it works for you, too.
I don’t have any line that had windowed in it
14.2.1 (23C71) on 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 with Intel Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB here. (also tried Sonoma 14.1.2).
None of the solutions work for me (it was a fresh WoW install done after Sonoma was already installed). Things I tried:
It would always crash shortly after the cinematic finished (didn’t matter if I let it play out fully or skip it). And it would show connecting and freeze before crashing.
Well now it’s been almost the entire patch, hopefully it gets fixed in season 4 so things run for next expac at least.
You’re assuming the prepatch won’t break things again. Given the track record over the last decade, care to place your wagers now? 
Did this ever get fixed? Can I stop using Bootcamp now?
Hi. I don’t have an Iris Onboard GPU Mac to test this on. Just a t thought here.
Go into your config.wtf file which should be in /Applications/World of Warcraft/Game/WTF/ folder and change
SET playIntroMovie “0”
Also try changing from METAL to Metal Legacy in Graphics API.
Nope, not fixed. For me it crashes on BFA Shadowlands, and Dragonflight stuff, at least 8/10 times. So I played old Legion content instead with my new main 
Updated to Sonoma, WOW stopped working. Crashes at the Connect screen, which itself is missing some graphic elements. Tried deleting/re-installing, but ran into the usual 45% hangs or Initializing 88.00MN/5XX.X MB hangs (understood that these are different issues).
Finally got it re-installed and it still crashes.
2020 i7 MacBook Pro with Iris Plus running Sonoma 14.3
Plenty of “The Application Encountered an Unexpected Error” codes, so no use adding more to the pile.
Your only solution, and I mean only solution, is to back everything up and downgrade to Ventura. Sonoma broke the Iris driver. Blizzard can’t find a workaround and Apple seemingly refuses to fix it.
Blizzard can. They just won’t because they are inept.
I’m experiencing intermittent crashing and I’m still on Monterey. I have not upgraded to Sonoma and don’t plan to until Apple fixes all the bugs in it as well as the problem so many here are having with WOW. That said, I’ve finally decided to unsubscribe for now. Even though there are times when the game plays fine, the crashes are happening too often and there are days where I can’t play the game at all. The only commonality I’ve noticed is it seems to crash when I’m riding a dragon. I will hear 3 audible “clicking sounds” and the window closes. This happens on every crash. I can’t justify paying $90 for 6 months when I can’t play the game when I want to. I’m playing on a Macbook Pro with the M1 Max chip. I’ve played WOW since 2012 and this is extremely disappointing. I hope it gets corrected. I can’t imagine Blizzard wants to lose 10s of 1000s of Mac owners over something like this.
Your issues are actually BECAUSE you haven’t upgraded. apple silicon SHOULD be on sonoma. anything that isn’t apple silicon should avoid sonoma like plague and stay on ventura. M1 Max plays this game like a dream, especially on sonoma in game mode.
You are missing so many fixes for apple silicon ventura and sonoma had. Apple is working on that driver. it’s intel and AMD drivers they aren’t working on (and regressed in sonoma). I played this game an M1 max on all of those OSes, and each one improved performance and stability. Montery was basically apple silicon beta. it was actually quite unstable so i’m not surprised at all. Ventura improved stability, sonoma improved performance.
As for everyone else else on iris pro still refusing to hear the truth, that’s on them. Blizzard cannot fix a kernel driver in protected kernel space. A crash or hang in a sandboxed kernel driver is unfixable by anyone but apple, period. Could blizzard invest many man hours into trying to find a work around for the issue, maybe disable certain graphics features on it if they ever found WHERE the driver is crashing. Sure. will they? Not a chance. Nor should they. Apple shouldn’t have let older macs updated to sonoma if they weren’t gonna be willing to fix issues on it for them.
I am having the same issue. I installed Sonoma and then tried returning to the game. For a couple weeks, I couldn’t download the game – had the stuck at 45% issue. That was resolved and now my game crashes while playing within 1-10 minutes each time. So frustrating. Not sure what to do.
My Mac info: 2020 MacBook Pro, 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 1536 MB
I’m having the same difficulties on Seasons of discovery… I fixed this on Dragonflight by turning Legacy mode on the graphics… the thing is you must have to try to launch the client on Mac about 100-1000 times and once it fully loads switch the graphics API to Legacy Metal mode and it would hopefully be the resolution to yours crashing too!
SO I was able to get WoW Classic SoD working again after a couple of steps:
I did the whole ‘-windowed -metal’ in the additional command line arguments which let me generate the WTF folder in the classic game folder, I then made sure mtl-legacy was in the config.txt file. this still crashed my game during the ‘connecting’ phase of game startup.
HOWEVER, this WTF folder was NOT being created in the classic_era folder; just the classic folder , I created a WTF folder in the classic_era folder and then copied the config.txt file into this new WTF folder from classic, removed the ‘-metal’ from additional startup command arguments and its worked for me.
I hope this makes sense and helps some folks still having issues.
At this point I think I have to unsubscribe too.
Sotti’s trouble shooting gave me a good idea of what to try but didn’t work ([Feedback Needed] WoW Crashing on connect under macOS Sonoma (14.0) - #245 by Slotii-mankrik)
I was in a similar situation after updating my laptop (I update late for stability but didn’t find this issue until it was too late). Like Sotti I fresh installed and had no Conifig.wtf to modify. However, I always crashed too early for the config to generate even with the recommended command line arguments (-windowed, -metal).
In the end, I fixed it by running with only -windowed and using the stable time during the opening cut scene for fresh installs to press the red X. Apparently normal shutdown will generate a Config.wtf file to modify with SET gxApi “MTL_Legacy”, which resolved the issue. Force quitting the app or crashing by letting the cut scene finish (either by skipping or waiting) not result in the Config.wtf being generated. A single line Config.wtf file with only SET gxApi “MTL_Legacy” will also not work.
May | 2024
Just started playing again in the last month. Updated my MacBook to Sonoma without thinking to look into it because I just started again. Still no fix. It’s about time they figure it out though if the issue has been going on this long.
I ended up downgrading again to Ventura. Had to do a clean install on my MacBook. Was a real PitA.