Mojave 10.14.X and WoW Issues

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I get that Blizzard isn’t able to do very much about this, because Apple and Nvidia are at odds over this. One report I read seemed to imply that waiting until 10.15 (whatever comes after Mojave) will be the thing that allows Nvidia to start working with Apple again, but I don’t hold much hope for that. It’s just an unknown, and we don’t know who at Apple is being hard-headed about this. So the suggestion - not just here, but also for some other programs - is that we should downgrade to High Sierra.

I am willing to do that, if it works. But since it’s a lengthy procedure that will wipe my hard drive and I’ll need to reinstall everything else that I’m using, perhaps you at Blizzard could tell us if it is known to fix the problems we’ve been having. Your “minimum requirements” for WoW on a Mac indicate that 10.12 (Sierra) with Nvidia cards are good. If you might have any data or reports that downgrading does work for us with Nvidia problems in either 10.12 or 10.13, could you let us know? I’d really not be happy if I downgrade, wipe my drive, start over and reinstall everything, and it will still end up having problems like I’m seeing here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4jPdUaHzUo&t=11s ) on my test of the WoW 8.2 PTR. It’s literally unplayable. I get that you can’t guarantee anything, but I’d like to hear one or two success stories before I make the downgrade jump. Please with a cherry on top? (Again, the reason I’m asking about this, is because Katnificent above in the thread says they are using 10.12.4 and it’s still leading to visual glitches… so I’m very hesitant to downgrade if it’s for nothing).

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what you also could do is install High Sierra on an external disk and run wow booting from the external disk…

just a thought

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It is not ‘out of your hands’ because the same OS worked just fine prior to 8.1.5. In the same zones post-8.1.5, we get graphics bugs. I did not upgrade an OS, I upgraded WoW.

Blizzard is perfectly capable of rolling back to however graphics were being dealt with prior to 8.1.5, but is not doing so. There may be good reasons for this… who knows? But to continually repeat that there is nothing Blizzard can do seems disingenuous.

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Okay, I had yesterday off and just decided to go for it. I guess because YOLO, and I kind of wanted to clean up my file system anyway. So I made the jump and downgraded from 10.14.5 back to 10.13.6 (High Sierra). Long story short, I think it worked, not just for live but also for the 8.2 PTR. I will keep playing around with both live and the PTR, but for the first time in months I had no graphical issues whatsoever. It was smooth and I didn’t notice any ground clutter flashing or skybox issues, and not any weird graphical issues or colors, nothing with the map, it was back to normal play like I had experienced in Legion and at the beginning of 8.0. I’m not saying it’s totally fixed, but for now it’s playable again for me and that was worth doing the downgrade.

The long story follows, with all the details of what I have and what I did, in case it’s useful to others who might want to try downgrading:

First, I have to give props to Omegall in both this and the other thread, because his was the one post that said he had success and gave me the initiative to try something close to what he did. I couldn’t match his method exactly, but his involved downgrading to 10.13.6 and also installing the Nvidia web driver (he installed WebDriver-387.10.10.10.40.127 after downgrading to 10.13.6). Mine differs from his in that although I downgraded to 10.13.6, my “build” of 10.13.6 did not match that web driver and it wouldn’t install. What did happen for me is that after I installed 10.13.6, I saw that there was a security upgrade - which I installed - and only then could I install a later version of the web driver: WebDriver-387.10.10.10.40.128 because that one matched my 10.13.6 build). I hope that all makes sense. I found that web driver at Insanely Mac:
www (dot) insanelymac (dot) com /forum/topic/324195-nvidia-web-driver-updates-for-macos-high-sierra-update-may-15-2019/
(sorry it wouldn’t let me post the link directly), and there are other Nvidia drivers there as well, each for specific builds of 10.13.6.

Also, for whatever reason, on my machine I had to wipe the hard drive, use Internet recovery to install the OS that it was shipped with (Mavericks), and then it finally let me “upgrade” from there using my memory stick which had High Sierra (10.13.6). I installed the one security update available, directly from Apple’s built in software update/App Store, and then I installed the newer version of the web driver which matched my build. Afterwards, I immediately turned off automatic updates, so it wouldn’t overwrite with anything new.

My thoughts on this are that it was a fairly arduous process just for one game, but so far it seems worth it and more importantly it seems like it’s going to work for 8.2, at least how they have it built on the PTR. Given that there’s no ground flickering or other graphical issues at all that I’ve seen so far, I’m going to call it a success. It may not last through 8.3 or 9.0 if Blizzard does more code changes, but I’m pleased that it’s working so far. I’ve flown around flight points in Nazmir, rode around on the ground, taken the taxi back and forth to different places, and when I had 10.14.5 usually I’d get graphical errors and flashing within minutes on live and immediately on the 8.2 PTR.

I also want to thank the Blizzard support team, as I know that their efforts in 8.0 for a workaround allowed Apple and Nvidia to stop their fighting and fix things… but they didn’t, and it’s unclear if or when Apple will relent and approve the things Nvidia has sent them for updates. As for why a lot of people with 10.12 and 10.13 said that downgrading didn’t work, my guess is that they didn’t know about the web drivers. Or who knows, maybe there is something specific to their system build. All I can really say is that for now this seems to have worked for me.

My system specs:
Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.6, build 17G7024 - WITH the ‘128’ version of the Nvidia web driver
iMac 27-inch, Late 2013
Intel Core i7, 3.5 GHz, with 16 GB 1800 MHz DDR3 RAM
NVidia GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB

I will report back if I start seeing graphical issues crop up again. For now, it looks like it’s smooth sailing and I hope I can finally get back into raiding. Hope this is helpful.

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GUH sorry that last post was me… I don’t know why it changed my character, but I didn’t notice it before posting.

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This is definitely an issue that will need to be dealt with by Blizzard. It is definitely not a lack of resources issue. My build:

iMac 27" 8 core i9 with 5 GHz boost, 40GB DDR4 2666, 8GB AMD Pro Vega graphics (Not Nvidia) running the latest version of Mac OS. This system is about 2 weeks old.

The game has a wildly fluctuating frame rate, but even when fluctuating between 30 and 60 FPS, there is still a 2-5 second hitch in smooth motion about every 10 sec (often less) of smooth play. It is very disjointing and as others have noted, the graphics of this game are really not that challenging to high end systems, but it is only here that I experience this issue.

Hopefully there will be some kind of update soon that addresses the problem. At the very least let us know you are all not just crossing your fingers hoping some future version of the OS will solve the problem for you.

My older iMac runs the game smoother with far fewer resources.

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I have mac/mojave, and these days , even though i have no lag and good frame rate, i have to wait several minutes, anywhere i go, for npces to load, for my mount to load and see myself, for the champion/islands tables to load… smooth game play seems to be gone for good. sad really. SO sad, I am thinking of converting to windows machines as soon as this computer starts to die

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UNBEARABLE lag since 8.2 patch - #18 by Omegall-stormrage is problem, and solution.

TL/DR, dag data folder to trash while wow and launcher are closed, empty trash. open launcher, hit update, wait for it to redownload the data. it’ll run much better

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I decided to spend $5300 on a new iMac and since then, no problems at all.

As the OP, this thread can now be closed. Thank you.

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I believe I was having the same or similar issue since 8.1.5, but I attributed it to my addons and seldom played (for other reasons). It happened every time I tried mounting in a new place after hearthing or landing from a flight path, whenever I was crafting, in combat, or when interacting with an NPC. I noticed that when it occurred while mounting, I could still move my character, I just wouldn’t see it visually until the graphic caught up. In combat, crafting, or talking to an npc I noticed that if I spun or stutter stepped back and forth, my graphics wouldn’t lag.

When Classic launched, everything was fine (or I was attributing the lag to being around 100+ other players). Later launch night, when barely anyone was on I really started to notice it. I deleted my data folder (as Omegall I believe stated in another thread), but that didn’t solve the issue. I went back in game today and was talking to a friend of mine also playing on a mac, and he wasn’t having any issues. We went through the graphics and advanced settings and found a difference. My graphics card was set to auto detect, once I changed it to the nvidia card directly, the issue seemed to stop. I haven’t experienced any drop in video since.

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Crashing, freezing, and stuttering after 8.3