Just gonna say this is why I became a Blizzard fan early on and why I have stayed. Been a Mac guy since the 80s (even when I worked for their competition for 16 years) and happy they support Apple (I wonder if this is why their art is always one of the best parts of their games?)
I have been a bit frustrated lately with things like current event, but seeing the full support for Apple easily outweighs anything else.
Thanks again Blizzard.
Screw it…I ordered the Air with 16GB and a 1TB drive. I also have an iMac Pro from 2017 that I’m retiring so I’ll post results tomorrow from both. I have an 27" Dell UltraSharp i can plug into the Air for some additional info.
I’m super curious to see what the real-world differences are between the M1 and the Vega 56.
I mean I am floored. I just played a little BFA on my shammy. Resolution 2560 X 1600 – everything “high” some “ultra”. Detail and visibilty jacked up to 10, 10, 10. Getting avg 50fps - 60fps – depending on the zone. In true game play its usually sitting at 60fps. (FYI I have it set to vertical sync set to enabled). Im just floored. gaming with barely a noise from fans is an unreal experience. Im using a MBP 13 16GB M1 machine. Thanks Blizz and well done!
I’m curious - if you have the time, would you please do some testing for me? I’m really trying to decide whether I should order a mini on Friday. 
I use the WoD garrison to do framerate testing - normally I stand on top of the stair, with my camera level and facing out toward the garrison (town hall behind me).
My machine:
2012 2.3GHz i7 Mac mini, 16GB RAM, RX 580 8GB video card.
2560x1600 is 4096000px. As my monitor is a different ratio, I rendered at 2694x1516 for 4084104px resolution.
Resolution scale of 100%
MSAA 8x
Vsync off.
Windowed. Waited about a minute for all assets to load.
Full UI reset performed beforehand - renamed interface, WTF, deleted cache.
UI elements on or off (the second number is with the UI off)
@ Graphics quality 10 I get:
18, 18 frames per second
@ GFX 8
30, 31 fps
@ GFX 6
35, 36 fps
@ GFX 4
58, 60 fps
I do have Hallow’s Eve ghosts which may result in slightly lower performance, but I’d expect it to be close to negligable.
I will try this tomorrow with a 2nd monitor but I am going to tell you without hesitation - the M1 Mac mini will blow the above out of the water. I have been playing all night…I am stunned. I don’t know what Apple has done here but its some voodoo stuff inside this laptop.
To put this in perspective - I have played on a Dell XPS 15.6 with an Nvidia 1650 AND a MacBook Pro 16 with the AMD 5600m. I have all of these machines… this 13 inch crushes the Dell. While I can crank the 16 inch up to all Ultra settings using the AMD 5600M the laptop runs fire hot and the fan is louder than a jet. I would choose this 13 inch over both of them. 60 - 65 fps…is what I am doing in BFA over water with mountains. I have SSAO off - everything else high.
I finally got WoW running in native M1 mode on my new Mini. I set the quality settings to MAX, using the default 1680x1050 resolution, and went into a busy city with 100 people in sight, and the frame rate is generally at 59 FPS, with brief drops to 45 FPS for no apparent reason.
Then I upped the resolution to 3360x2100 (I think that is the max) which is a little under 4K resolution (my 20 year old monitor is not 4K, I think it’s just 1080P) and then the FPS dropped to 22 FPS, but when I changed the quality settings to MEDIUM the rate rose again to 37 FPS.
This is not bad at all. This is very good. The last numbers I provided show that this performance is not as good as a decent, discrete GPU, but wow, this is still really good. And it will probably improve as Blizzard improves its support over time.
I’ve never been fussy about getting high FPS rates for WoW, but I do care about resolution. I think this is enough to justify me going out to buy a 4K monitor for my Mini now. I’ll probably set the game’s quality to something that will get me between 40 and 50 FPS.
Just like 8.3. Was months behind the rest.
I have half a terrabyte in my iPhone.
This is very welcome news. I’ve played Blizzard games on a Mac since Orcs and Humans was released. Thank you.
Zenimax’s stand is also what I had just read. To me it simply said we’re lazy and so goodbye Mac players. Now I don’t play on a Mac much but Zenimax’s stand is basically writing off a new platform that isn’t going to pop up one day and disappear the next. But there’s lots about them that is pure laziness.
Maybe their mac base isn’t big enough to bother with. You can still emulate. Idk. 
As promised from yesterday here is a little informal testing against my iMac Pro. Apologies for the long post but trying to include as much detail as possible.
Common:
Notes:
For WoW Testing:
iMac Pro (2017)
GeekBench 5 –
CPU (Single Core): 1099
CPU (Multi-Core): 8297
Compute (Metal): 53632
Computer (OpenCL): 52709
WoW (No Addons) –
Windowed - 5106x2138 - Level 7 - 60FPS steady
Windowed - 5106x2138 - Level 10 - 30-45FPS variable
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 5120x2880 - Level 10 - 35-41FPS variable
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 2560x1440 - Level 10 - 60FPS steady
Macbook Air
GeekBench 5 –
CPU (Single Core): 1703
CPU (Multi-Core): 7308
Compute (Metal): 20342
Compute (OpenCL): 18123
WoW (No Addons) –
Laptop Screen
Windowed - 1440x900 - Level 7 - 60FPS steady
Windowed - 1440x900 - Level 10 - 60FPS steady
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 1440x900 - Level 7 - 60FPS steady
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 1440x900 - Level 10 - 60FPS steady
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 2560x1600 - Level 7 - 45-55FPS variable
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 2560x1600 - Level 10 - 30-36FPS variable
External Monitor
Windowed - 2560x1440 - Level 7 - 52-60FPS variable
Windowed - 2560x1440 - Level 10 - 35-39FPS variable
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 2560x1440 - Level 7 - 49-57FPS variable
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 2560x1440 - Level 10 - 32-37FPS variable
These are mostly just for reference…certainly not playable.
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 2560x1440 - Level 5 (200%) - 16-18FPS variable
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 2560x1440 - Level 7 (200%) - 15-16FPS variable
Windowed (Fullscreen) - 2560x1440 - Level 10 (200%) - 8-12FPS variable
Thank you, Clexea. I’m sure that was time-consuming and the numbers are greatly appreciated!
No problem! I think I mentioned this in another thread but the one thing I did notice after some more extensive testing is that the Air did get quite warm (obviously no fans to help with cooling). I think anyone looking to game should consider either the Pro or the Mini.
Looking at memory usage during testing, and looking at some other threads/testing/reddit, I also think that the 16GB RAM models are going to be the sweet spot for gaming. I get the arguments against it and I wouldn’t hold it against anyone for getting the 8GB model but the extra RAM does give the system a little more room to breathe.
What is with all the lag Blizzard making millions of dollars a month and cant run the game lol buy better switches and servers
Thank you! I was worried that, once I was able to afford a new Mac running Metal, I wouldn’t be able to play WoW anymore. This is awesome news, and I hope to see continued support in the future. Especially since WoW is the one game I’m interested in or able to play anymore due to work hours.
THANK YOU so much. I have got rid of all my other really really old computers and now have a M4 Mini and M4 Macbook Air. I migrated (copy and pasted) the old folder to the new machines and I believe they did a small update for ARM? I notice when I “get info” on the actual application it has an option to run in Rosetta (It’s not checked so I assume its running on native ARM). Wow - indeed - it’s so fast and responsive. There was an issue with the pet battles but I believe that is being fixed for M1. Otherwise I’m stunned. I really thought that WoW might not run or it would take YEARS to get the M1 version. But nope, it’s here and it’s beautiful. I thought Shadowlands was exciting but this, this is another world. Thank you! xxx <3
I dunno why it changed to M4. M1 is what I meant.
Getting an existing macOS app to run on the M1 does nothing toward getting it to run iPads. They are different operating systems, with different code frameworks. That is changing going forward, so new macOS or iOS/iPadOS apps that are written in Apple’s new SwiftUI framework will be a lot easier to port between those platforms. But, any code using the older frameworks (on macOS or iOS) will still take a ton of work to port properly.
I did some benchmarking of the m1 mini at 4k.
Viewable at:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/quick-m1-mac-mini-vs-2012egpu-benchmarks/796697