Strange video artifacts in 8.1.5

Mojave 10.14.5 is out and I can confirm that the issues are NOT fixed. This Apple Update came out today and all the issues that were present in WOW 8.1.5 are still there on this Late 2013 iMac.

Hopefully Blizzard can figure it out soon. This is the only App that I have that has a graphics issue.

Hope this info gets this thread going again.

Support.apple. com
1800-myApple
Just remove the space between the . And c in the link.

I, frankly, find the explanation that Mac WoW users have to wait for Apple/NVIDIA driver updates, perhaps indefinitely, unacceptable.

What was working in 8.1.4 is broken in 8.1.5. I did not upgrade an OS in that time, I upgraded WoW.

My suspicion is WoW is using new APIs or something in 8.1.5 that are broken in the NVIDIA/Apple graphics driver. I understand from Blizz’s perspective the driver itself is broken. I’m sure that’s true. But it is the new usage of whatever it is in 8.1.5 that is broken from my perspective.

If Blizz can’t get Apple to support its latest drivers properly and in a timely manner, then it should roll back the changes to an 8.1.4 level. Blizz’s “Not my problem” answer is unacceptable.

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Yeah this has been my feeling for a while as an issue that has been going for months now. Even if they are working with Apple / Nvidia on the issue it’s been dragged out too long while they continue w/e testing / work they’re doing on it.

Roll it back in the meantime because it becomes unplayable and even system crippling for us at times even if it’s not ideal solution for the devs

There are two major issues at work here. The first is Apple deprecated OpenGL in favor of their own Metal graphics libraries. Blizzard switched to that for this expansion and you might expect it to be a “little rough around the edges” for a while. Couple that with the fact that Apple’s support for nVidia GPU’s is very limited given that they switched to AMD chips a couple of years ago and you get the situation we’re currently in; people with older hardware are not supported very well. That’s why I downgraded from Mojave to High Sierra. At least that way I’m getting driver updates from nVidia that have fixed all of my problems.

My husband and I have the same configuration and we too have the same issue. I went as far as restoring my iMac this morning and the screen flashing is actually worse! !!!
I launched the game after fresh download and I can’t see anything normally. Everything is flashing worse than before. I tried to restore down and it didn’t help.

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac14,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 3.5 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
Memory: 16 GB
Boot ROM Version: 137.0.0.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.15f7
Serial Number (system): D25NJ031F8JC
Hardware UUID: E00A82D3-52E5-50F0-939E-A731DABA4A58
System Version: macOS 10.14.5 (18F132)
Kernel Version: Darwin 18.6.0
Boot Volume: Macintosh HD
Boot Mode: Normal
Computer Name: My name’s iMac
User Name: My Name
Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled
System Integrity Protection: Enabled
Time since boot: 2:16

Hello, Same issue here

iMac
16GB DDR 3
i5 cpu
Nvidia GTX 760
Mojave 10.14.2

Any updates? Anything official from Blizzard as to why this happened in the 8.1.5 update, but was fine to that before (on Mojave, was fine in 8.1). Was it that they included older versions of DirectX and broke it for Mac Users with Nvidia cards? Something happened between 8.1 and 8.1.5 and it hasn’t been fixed. It’s been a long time and we are paying to play a game that is sub-par at best. Please fix this issue!!!

I explained all that in another thread in great detail. You’d have to find it because I don’t have it off hand.

There is another new 8.2 ptr build that should have the more aggressive work around to nvidia driver bug in it, if you want to test it out.

I actually tested 8.2 a bit to see if blizzards new work around attempt works. it actually makes issue MUCH worse.

It’s pretty hard to work around someone elses bug, especially one that’s so low level (a bug at driver level is about as low level as an issue can get).

What confuses me… Is that the driver and Mojave worked fine with 8.1. So if the Nvidia driver didn’t change and it worked fine in 8.1, why in 8.1.5 is it a driver issue? Nvidia didn’t change the driver between 8.1 and now… It’s the same driver that worked on 8.1, right?

Because blizzard had a work around for the issue as far back as 8.0. It’s been broken a lot longer than what you’ve seen, but blizzard puta work around in during the 8.0 beta. That work around just stopped working in 8.1.5 because there had been so many changes to engine in 8.1.5 that the old work around no longer worked.

anyone who played beta can chime in if you think i’m making this up. Only nvidia users saw blacking out, tearing and other things in beta, then suddenly issue went away? Yeah, that issue. Same issue, well in part. There were validation issues too that were blizzards fault (it was a beta after all, and beta did it’s job and found/fixed those), but after all those were were fixed some issues that were unexplained remained, such as flickering/blacking out mountains at distance. That was the driver bug.

I am STILL getting terrible graphics as well as game freezes where my MS is fine, no lag, but like I have been DCed. I also get DCed. Now my loading screen’s caste is pixelated and trashed. no idea what is happening here

Still experiencing this issue. Still waiting for a fix. Or a response.

Anyone try the macOS Catalina beta yet?

the build of 8.2 PTR that went out today, has blizzards latest work around to nvidia driver bug for all users. So whether you are on 10.12 or 10.14 and didn’t have access to 10.13.x web driver with nvidia’s fix, or you’re on 10.13.x and choosing to use stock driver instead of web for some reason, the game should play correctly for all users in 8.2 and you can test this with the PTR update that went out today.

“well why didn’t blizz do this sooner”. they did, in 8.0. They just had to get more creative after 8.1.5 broke their work around and had to get more aggressive (as well as do a LOT of testing, trust me, there were some misses :D)

Very good to hear, thanks for keeping us up to date, Omegall. Do you by chance know if I would still need a web driver, or anything additional if I have 10.14.5? I didn’t download the web driver before because I was already in 10.14. I will test on the PTR later this afternoon and report back.

10.14 has no web driver, so you can’t download one anyways

Well, unfortunately the 8.2 PTR seems a lot worse. It hasn’t frozen or crashed to desktop (yet), but with the frequent random visual artifacts and slicing, it’s just unplayable. I uploaded a video example on youtube: https://youtu.be/e4jPdUaHzUo

Oh that’s a different issue, and maybe that fix isn’t merged in yet, I thought it was. I’ll pass it on. that one wasn’t nvidia driver issue but caused by a regression in copy queue code.