I was running WoW, prior to prepatch DF, at mac ost 10.13. It was always smooth.
Was told I had to upgrade to mac OS 10.15 (catalina) in order to run DF and the PREPATCH, so I did that. I also got the latest software update for the OS in order to have peak performance.
WoW loaded and opened up fine. Had to set resolutions lower and adjust graphic settings and of course, I disabled / deleted ALL ADDONS and had non running.
The Problems:
- Load Screens take way longer than they have. Entering WoW (oribos) was a 10 minute ordeal. Trying to get into ZM was the same.
- FPS would say I’m at around 80ish, then suddenly have spikes of 2 fps or so. Would also temporarily freeze.
- I don’t see my character or any other toons for a while. I just see their mounts.
Some Solutions I’ve tried (reading following the forum’s advice):
- modifying the config.wtf line SET GxAllowCachelessShaderMode “0”
- scan / repairing WoW
- opening WoW in “low resolution” mode
- adjusting graphics to lowest possible settings
So far little to no improvement. Still only seeing mounts with no characters on them in oribos. Still having fps drops and freezes (especially when moving camera). And extremely long loading screens and even exiting WoW takes forever.
My Mac Specs:
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
Processor: 4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
Memory: 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2 GB
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I would say check activity monitor to make sure os isn’t still doing stuff (like md_stores/spotlight utilizing heavy cpu).
I’d make sure you’re using a low render scale setting (like 50% tops) and FSR instead of even trying to do native resolution on that ancient of a GPU.
Make sure you have plenty of free disk space and even consider reinstalling wow to “defrag” it so to speak, because over time performance of CASC (compression format wow uses) grinds to a halt over time on platter based hard disk drives without a clean install from time to time.
I’m also having a lot of trouble playing the game. I’ve set all my Graphics settings to their lowest setting or disabled and my game is really not performing. Aside from long loads, sounds and spell animations happen 5-10 seconds after casting and I can’t see a lot of in-game effects (eg: spotlight on Council of Blood fight Nathria raid). I do have Projected Textures enabled.
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Thank you for helping.
I’ve done the low render scale as well to 50% and it didn’t improve it much.
so far the cpu usage on my activity monitor has been very low. Regardless, I’ve stopped any of the activities you’ve mentioned and any that even seem remotely high.
So far no go. I’m doing a complete uninstall and will reinstall like you proposed and get back with the results. Thanks again!
Seemed to me that Ventura improved my FPS until the pre patch by 5-10fps. Now it’s dropped 10-15 frames.
seems like a lot of Mac users are feelin similar problems. Hopefully patches and reinstalling it works. All the other suggestions so far haven’t worked well for me.
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Set renderer to Metal instead of Metal legacy.
UPDATE!
Although I’ve never had to reinstall WoW while playing on my Mac… It’s the only thing that worked. FPS and loading screen issues gone. I can see everybody’s character and not just the mounts. Additionally, my addons work and don’t seem to slow it down.
I still played it safe and used lower graphics and resolution. I didn’t have the option to opt out of Metal Legacy but it didn’t seem to matter.
WARNING: I had no idea how long reinstalling would take but it took about 5 hours for me. I was DLing at speeds of 4-7 Megabytes / second. Obviously was worth it because now I’m able to play.
Appreciate the help Omegal! If all else fails (after trying for a few days) Reinstall!
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Prior to 10.0, my gameplay had no issues. Now, the game is unplayable.
Battlegrounds keep crashing, loading screens take an eternity to fully load. My character will disappear in game at times, the lag is so bad. I have messed around with a lot of the in-game settings, currently on some of the lowest graphic settings. Not to mention, no add ons. Tried to repair my game, no repair was needed. Considering I usually purchase a 6 month sub, this is hella annoying. Obvs, a reinstall as mentioned in prev comments, is a last resort but I’m open to any tweaks.
For ref: iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017), 3.5 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, 8 GB 2400 MHz DDR4, Radeon Pro 575 4 GB
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I am having exactly the same problems since 10.0 went live. Currently doing the reinstall in the hope that this works for me as well.
I have a 2019 Intel 27” iMac running Ventura maxOS 13 with a HDD.
Maybe only SSDs are supported now (as mentioned on the game spec page)
the game does perform badly on HDDS, reinstalling improves that significantly, for a while anyways…The underlying problem though is that the compression format wow uses is highly inefficient. Like to point calling it dog crap would be a compliment. the only thing that carries how slow that format is, is how fast SSD storage is. the problem is people not on SSD storage have loads of problems because of it. Reinstall sort of acts as a defrag but a bandaid at best.
Luckily ssds are a lot cheaper than they used to be. Planning on getting one soon
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UPDATE: After the re-install WoW is now playable again. But as Omegal has mentioned this may be a short lived solution.
Anyone here playing on an M1 iMac? How is that for you?
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This is the only app that crashes my Mac. Point of pride for Blizzard programmers?
I switched out running wow on an external SSD at the end of BfA since my HDD was slowly grinding to a halt. It was a game changer and prices have only dropped since then. I would highly recommend that even if you only put your games on the SSD.
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Yep that’s pretty much only answer for anyone still using a HDD.
WoW on HDD will have following problems
- ridiculously long loading screens
- Pop in and invisible spell effects and graphics everywhere
- More stuttering and hitching coupled with lower performance
- More crashes when the game just doesn’t have an needed asset fast enough.
As I mention earlier in thread, reinstalling on HDD defrags it some, but you need an SSD to reduce above problems. Let me be clear about one thing though. even on fastest NVMe storage, casc is so inefficient that I even reinstall on an SSD after major patches because it STILL gets slower over time and starts getting those 4 issues over time, just not to the severity of a HDD
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I was dealing with the same exact problems on my Mac. This post helped me massively.
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Placebo effect probably. That post is out of date and GxAllowCachelessShaderMode was disabled for all users 2 weeks ago.
Whatever actually made it better was probably related to restarting wow, your computer, or maybe background task that was tying up performance finished.
Or, nothing changed but your problem is only intermittent
From what I read that CVAR was merely set to 0 by default, which implies it is still able to be set to 1 by the user if desired. Not sure why anyone would, but unless there was a second hotfix after the one I saw on MMO-Champion, the CVAR still functions but is just turned off by default now.
I’m on macOS 11.5 or 11.6 and I haven’t noticed any difference since prepatch as far as performance is concerned.