Today Apple introduced new Macs with new CPUs, no longer Intel CPUs, and I ordered one. Will WoW run on it natively? Or will WoW run on it in Rosetta 2 emulation? Do I have to figure this out for myself when my new Mac arrives or can Blizzard do me a solid and tell me if it will work? Blizzard has been very good at making most of its games work on Macs, and I am grateful for that, but will this continue to be a goal of Blizzard or will no future Blizzard products run on any new Macs? Has Blizzard informed us of its intentions yet?
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I guess I’ll have to answer my own question, having just done a little web research. A few days ago, the president and COO Daniel Alegre noted during an investor call that mobile presents a major opportunity to bring its properties to a larger audience. He said,
“We need to make sure that we’re enabling our franchises on the billions of mobile devices that are available right now. That’s by far our biggest opportunity, and we’re investing meaningfully to capitalize on this and to take all our franchises to mobile over time. That’s really, really important for us.”
This doesn’t directly answer the question I posed, but it’s an arrow in the right direction. The Apple Silicon Macs use nearly identical chips to the “mobile” devices he is talking about. Anything that can run on Apple mobile chips should also be able to run on Apple Silicon Macs, according to Apple. Furthermore, World of Warcraft for MacOS was updated in 2016 to replace its OpenGL code (which worked on both Mac and Windows) with Metal code (which runs only on Macs) for the Mac WoW client. This made the WoW client more Mac-compatible and also much easier to compile for iPadOS or iOS (and also Apple Silicon Macs) if Blizzard ever wants to do that.
If Blizzard wanted to, in my opinion, since it already uses Metal, it could fairly easily recompile the WoW client to work with Apple Silicon Macs and also on iPadOS where users have access to a mouse and keyboard. iPads are considered “mobile.” If Alegre wasn’t thinking about iPads, his statement above couldn’t have been too sincere.
And my last opinion is that since Blizzard has refused to acknowledge whether WoW will run under Rosetta 2 on MacOS for Apple Silicon, that makes me think that they don’t want us to think about using Rosetta 2 for WoW because they already have a native version of WoW being prepared for release. I’m speculating, but it makes sense considering Blizzard’s silence.
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i wonder if its 50k+ if you add in everything.
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50k users on Mac? Is that what you meant? Even if that’s what you meant, updating WoW to run on iPadOS could bring a whole new group of potential users.
Imagine being an apple cooonsumer 
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No 50k+ dollars.
Just looked it up. everything added max is 54k. for the mac pro.
Maybe so, but the cheapest Mac is $699. Why would anyone want to spend $54,000 to play a game?
to make it look really good. (or mega bragging rights)
Ok, fair enough.
The actual question is why anyone would spend 54 grand on a computer.
The short answer’s that their employer is probably paying for it.
But to speak in generalities, Blizzard is usually pretty good about keeping their software running on Apple products.
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I agree with you that in general Blizzard has been fairly generous to Mac users. In fact some of the features in the Mac Wow client don’t even exist in the Windows client.
There are 100 million Mac users and 1 billion iOS users out there, Blizzard would be foolish not to want to sell games to that group of people. And Warcraft is still one of their best games, and it hasn’t been ported to iOS yet, or iPadOS, or Apple Silicon (which is now iOS compatible).
I don’t know a lot of those 100 million Mac users, but it seems that one of the most popular games for Macs is WoW. Blizzard doesn’t have much competition in MacOS. If I were Apple, which I am not, I would just spend $58 billion of my $200 billion cash on hand to purchase all of Activision Blizzard outright, then use their ownership to ensure Apple gets the best treatment possible. In fact I would also make WoW come as a free client with all Mac computers.
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If only my employer was so generous.
Come to think of it, Apple has a monthly game pass and Apple should get WoW included as part of that monthly fee (whether or not they buy Blizzard.)
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Imagine coming into a thread just to make snarky demeaning comments just because you don’t like a certain type of computer.
They can’t tell you here. No one checks this forum. Have you tried the tech support forum?
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I didn’t check the tech support forum. I’m a noob here. I’m not even sure how to quote your words when I reply to your post.
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No worries!
Here’s the Mac Tech Support forum. They might have some answers, hopefully.
When I started working at my current employer, my laptop was the one my predecessor used, which itself was a hand-me-down, and from there was a refurbished laptop to begin with.
When the company’s CFO started working, he got a brand new laptop, exactly what he wanted.
You know how important you are in a company based on whether or not they let you negotiate computer hardware in your contract.
Blizzard curated a strong fan loyalty from mac users because games like Warcraft 2 and Starcraft had mac compatibility from word go. No years-later port, no segregated multiplayer, full support.
You probably don’t see it on IOS because of the mobile processors they use. That, and some questions about playability for some classes.
Probably because they’re just not particularly computer enthusiasts and might find the elitist attitude tedious. I mean, I build my own computers and I encourage anyone who is serious about playing video games to learn how to do it themselves unless they need the portability and form factor of a laptop.
But I also know exactly why many people simply don’t want to.
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There’s a very long thread about Apple Silicon on another post here:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/newly-announced-m1-cpu/714994/11
There’s the usual bunch of opinions: Apple is bad, Blizzard hates Apple, etc. But a few posts have useful opinions.
tell that to OW players
There’s plenty of political reasons to hate Apple but I get that many people simply do not care. And even outside the political issues, Apple does essentially ask a premium price for something that isn’t really a premium product.
But yes, the fan boys are tedious.
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