I’m on a 21.5-inch, Late 2012 iMac, 3.1GHz i7-3770, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512MB graphics, running macOS Mojave (10.14).
Recently WoW will randomly stutter for a few seconds at a time while flashing crazy green. Sometimes doesn’t happen for an hour or more. But if it does happen text will glitch to hell, ground textures will be drawn incorrectly, and then everything is shaded green and the stuttering/flashing begins.
If I let the game run too much longer (30 seconds or so) it will usually freeze up and I’ll have to force quit WoW. I can’t tell if it’s a video card issue, memory issue, or disk issue.
I usually have the iMac screen and two other displays connected. I’ll switch to mirrored mode when running WoW. Even if I disconnect the two displays, reboot, and just run with the iMac display it still happens.
I posted a few screenshots but apparently ‘can’t include links’ so I’ll just type out the address: drive(dot)google(dot)com/open?id=1jFsoFPRlJk0c12Bj4M74YZfqVmM2F9Oo
Any ideas?
Hi identical setup! Twins! I do only have the iMac screen, and you’re right that it doesn’t help at all to limit to that. Blizzard apparently doesn’t think we’re having the same issue as the Intel Iris graphics cards, and has told me to blame Apple and NVIDIA for not updating the driver. I’m planning to get a USB drive, use Boot Camp Assistant to partition it for Windows, then load the Windows WoW client. From the massive thread started the day after the 8.3 patch, this solves all the issues despite running on the same hardware.
I noticed the green/blue almost immediately, and it’s a warning when I see it that there’s trouble. If I keep the camera pointed away from that area, and don’t fly into it, I can usually keep going, but it won’t be long. The occurrence got a LOT more frequent after the most recent maintenance. I could sometimes get a night’s play out of it without a crash, Tuesday night I can’t go more than five minutes, sometimes as little as thirty seconds, before the screen goes green. I’ve had some lovely texture issues, like the giants in Nazjtar first going marbled black and white, then all pearlescent…of course I crashed after that, but it was sure pretty.
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I feel you. I’ve got my iMac partitioned with Windows 10 Pro. I jump over and play the Windows WoW client sometimes. It works well but I much prefer to be on the macOS side.
I’m scared this might mean the last days of playing WoW on this machine as I don’t see Apple or NVIDIA updating drivers for this old graphics card any time soon. It’s been a good many years!
I tried to update to Catalina several months ago. Went horrible. Had to revert to Mojave. But now I read our machines (Late 2012 iMac) are on the list of supported devices for Catalina. I’m seeing people are still having issues with 10.15 so I may just stick with Mojave for a bit and try to find compatible drivers.
I realize Apple releases graphics drivers with their maintenance updates but sometimes similar card drivers work just as well. I’ll poke around.
I’d been sitting on a graphics card update from last year or so, went and installed it but it didn’t help. I’ve resisted upgrading to Catalina at all, I’m not an early adopter. I’m a little worried about the Boot Camp thing as when I tried starting the process, with a USB drive attached that’s a backup for the computer, I was getting the error of insufficient space on my startup disk.
I have this almost identical setup, and same exact problem. 21.5-inch, Late 2013 iMac. 2.9 GHz i5, 8 GB RAM, NVIDIA Geforce GT 750M 1GB, running Mojave.
It’s been going on for a few months now. It almost only happens out in the world. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen in an instance. Otherwise this game would be completely unplayable for me.
I’ve noticed that it most commonly happens when I open my map.
Sometimes, though I usually see the graphics show up on the minimap or blue-green stripes on the ground and if I have to dive into the affected area, I pull up the map while I move. Somehow it protects me, …sometimes. I have found that keeping my camera away from glitched out areas can keep the game going a few minutes longer–but I’d better be ready to shut it down.
Any news on this? It’s been several weeks. Thank goodness for Classic. I’ve been only playing there since every time I try to jump back on to normal WoW the screen will eventually flash and crash.
I haven’t been able to play (any reasonable length of time) for two months. If Classic weren’t available I actually think I would’ve finally and forever ended my fifteen year sub.
You’re on thin ice Blizzard 
10 to 1 it’s probably overheating on retail, classic is less demanding so it doesn’t there.
retail would push a 2012 nvidia gpu VERY hard, especailly without a good cap (and default settings are crap and i’ve told blizzard that, 100fps cap as default is horrible). a cap no higher than 60 should be in place for lower end hardware, with graphics settings suitable that 60fps is achieved without needing 100% load.
a gpu that old can start to have lower thresholds too because eventually thermal paste gets older and conducts less heat, or fans start to get blocked or fail if machine has never been taken apart and cleaned or serviced.
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Hmm. I’ll take this machine apart and give it good cleaning. I usually bring the max fps down to 60 on all games since my iMac display has a 60Hz refresh rate.
Thank you.
What’s odd is, my 2012 NVIDIA GPU has absolutely no problem running WoW with the windows client. The graphics are amazingly clear much further than they ever were on the Mac client.
I suppose I can’t say it’s zero problem, every few hours the screen will freeze for about seven-ten seconds usually as a WQ box pops up with a NPC. Then the game continues as though it never happened.
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The nvidia drivers for macOS haven’t been updated since 10.13.x by nvidia, and the stock drivers even older. although apple makes stock drivers work with 10.14 and 10.15, they are very much old and buggy so it’s no surprise any nvidia hardare works best in windows. at this point, any nvidia mac is not supported by apple. their working relationship is completely abolished :\
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