Not running low resolution mode. However I noticed my rendering resolution was not set at 100% in video settings. Set it to 100% and have not had a single freeze over several hours of gameplay. Might have done it.
But… 100% resolution has completely tanked my FPS now, lol. My windowed (fullscreen) resolution is fixed in the settings at 2880x1800 despite my native resolution being 2560 x 1600. Is there no way to change this? Kind of ridiculous how I’m having to play WoW at such a high resolution and sacrifice FPS just to ensure I don’t randomly crash.
You not running in low resolution mode is the culprit. What low resolution mode does is your mac is one determining the resolution of wow instead of the in game client, it basically sets wow’s resolution as your native mac UI resolution.
To enable this, right click world of warcraft, show in finders, right click again, click get info, then check off open in low resolution mode.
There is no option to Open in Low Resolution mode in the Info panel. I’m looking at the World of Warcraft.app in retail not World of Warcraft Launcher app or the Battle.net.app.
I was testing low res mode a couple of months ago and didn’t have any crashes… but then 11.2 came out and I switched back to normal mode to see whether it was fixed. It wasn’t.
Unfortunately my raid group fell apart so I wasn’t able to do any more testing apart from the occasional ad-hoc raid, so haven’t been able to conclusively say whether low res mode fixes the issue. However, it makes the game look ugly so isn’t ideal!
Thanks for suggesting this. Switched to low res mode and game is running smoother than ever now. I’m able to go to higher graphical settings than before with the FPS staying a pretty consistent 60. Haven’t played enough to be able to see if it’s fixed the freezing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it has.
Yes, low res mode makes the game look noticeably less sharp/fuzzier. But if that’s the price to pay for a stable game at higher graphical settings I’m not gonna complain, especially since I’m playing on a laptop. It is annoying though that these are the steps that apparently have be taken just to normally play a modern game on current hardware.
So, I am having something which sounds much like this. Basically the screen freezes – often times right before a boss in M+ dungeon. If I’m in discord I can actually still talk, so things are still happening but it’s sort of a graphics freeze or crash. I can still move the mouse around, but can’t do anything. Eventually my computer reboots.
This is really causing a lot of trouble.
smaller imac, with 32 memory, 6-core i7, Radeon pro vega 20, current software
I really don’t have any problems with fps, I just changed the render to something smaller than the super high resolution of the mac screen, but the crashing is a big problem
This is a pretty big thread, I’m not really sure what applies or does not … so, it’s happening though, much like people report here
EDIT: I’ll give this low res mode a try but I’m open to other current ideas
EDIT: low res maybe helps, seems to? can’t tell objectively.
Reading through this thread, I think I’m experiencing something similar but I’m not sure.
During raids and some dungeon runs the game will act as if I’m experiencing bad lag. I can move my character but I can’t interact with anything or use any abilities and everyone else is running in place or frozen. My internet connection hasn’t dropped, however. I can still hear and talk on Discord and browse websites with no issue. I can cmd+tab away from WoW and use my machine with no issue and I don’t have a beachball cursor.
Sometimes the game comes back and recovers, but very infrequently. If it does come back that tends to happen within a minute or so. Most often the game doesn’t seem to come back, or at least I haven’t let it run long enough to check. I’ll force quit WoW and restart the game and I can play again without issue for a bit.
It seems to happen after a certain amount of time, maybe about a half hour or so. So in raids that ended up feeling like it would happen once every boss or so. In dungeons it would only happen on a particularly longer M+ run. I’ve never had this happen while playing in the open world.
Thinking back, I did have it happen in Torghast but I haven’t played Torghast in quite a while so I can’t say if that’s still happening now in there. When it was happening in Torghast it wasn’t happening in raid or dungeons. That is new and feels like it might correspond with macOS 11.3 as far as timing, but I can’t say for sure.
I haven’t checked console logs yet but I’ll do that next time it happens and post here. I’m on a 27-inch iMac from 2017, 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB of memory, Radeon Pro 580 with 8 GB of memory, running macOS Big Sur 11.3.1. I’ve set WoW to run in Low Resolution mode and that has lengthened the time between the issue cropping up but it still happened during raid this past Sunday, after about 1.5 hours of play time.
Does this sound like the same issue? Reading through this thread it sounded like everyone’s screen hard freezes and that isn’t the case for me. I can still move my character around, I just can’t do any actions.
Yeah that resonates with my experience. Low-res does seem to help and it’s a big jump in fps, things just look a little different. But yeah, it still happens. I haven’t gotten full reboots since I switched to low-res, just freezes and eventual recoveries. That’s still very bad though, it’s a death, a screwed over m+ key, or raid boss.
About the only bit of info which stands out is that after a freeze the cooling fans go from zero to full really quickly, like it’s trying to catch up to something. I’ve actually considered taking it into the store around here to see if anything shows up in diagnostics or they have info. I’m sure some of them play games as well. After that, yeah, the regularity of it does put memory leak into mind. But that’s just a random thought.
Whatever it is, I’d be pretty happy to see it gone. My specs are above, current software (big sur) like you.
EDIT - hard crashes aren’t gone in low-res. Without discord running I had a freeze with the mouse still moveable and I thought I’d wait it out, eventually the computer gave up and tried to reboot - failed at that. Only thing I can see is that the computer was very hot, and the fan wasn’t running.
Blizzard have confirmed to me via a support ticket that there is a problem with WoW on Mac M1 and that this is unlikely to be fixed before 9.1. I’m catching up on my reading.
From a couple of days ago:
Thank you for taking the time to recontact us regarding the M1 issue with Macs. I checked on our side, this is still being worked on, that’s why there is no ETA. As usual, it’s as soon as possible.
the thing (or something similar/identical) is on the intel too
My recent tact is to change from windowed-fullscreen to fullscreen-fullscreen when playing. This does wake up the cooling fan and I hear it running at different levels presumably as needed appropriately. Maybe that’s good? Duno, kind of throwing stones in the dark.
Ever since prepatch I’ve noticed things have gotten worse. Two hard freezes where EVERYTHING stops working and I have to force a computer restart. I’m on a 2017 iMac Pro. Running 11.2.3.
In the past I would get some soft freezes where things fix themselves in 20 seconds or less. This last freeze, only wow and discord were open. No other programs. Kind of scared to heal naxx next week. Something has changed with the prepatch and I’m not sure what but this is really an awful experience for me
:<
This started happening to me this week as well. Both WoW and HotS are doing it. I don’t have anything else open. I don’t have an M1 chip. I have no idea why this started this week. All the sudden the game freezes. I get the bouncing beachball and the sound starts reverberating like a stuck record. Has blizzard responded to any of this with any answers?
I updated to 11.4, so far no freezes, but it has only been a day. 11.3 was awful with freezing in comparison though. With that said I am playing classic era so haven’t had a chance to test out in normal circumstances that triggered it.
“It” seems better. It’s so hard to tell with variable playtime and different situations, but seems better. And there have been a couple updates to both the game and OS. I actually haven’t had a full on crash since, just an occasional freeze which recovers.
The fan is absolutely kicking on a bit more (I’m guessing that’s a good thing) and in retail there’s a bit more of surfaces being silvered out which could easily be some kind of load management.
EDIT: smaller intel imac, 2019, 32 memory, laptop radeon gfx card, running fullscreen more seems to help as well (maybe?)
EDIT: still crashing, just less frequently. so better, but not great. bought a fan to help cooling, seems to be yet another improvment.
Didn’t check logs but seemed to be same issue that it has been the past 2 years. It does recover after 10-15 seconds but super annoying. Had it happen in BWL and Naxx just like before.
) this too on my 2020 iMac.