I ordered a Mac Mini and I share your hope, however as far as I can tell the current WoW Client uses Intel SSE instructions which are currently not supported in the Rosetta 2 emulator so WoW can’t work in emulation mode or native mode until Blizzard makes changes.
I’d love to know an answer to this. Do CMs still comment on threads?
I found an MVP user on this website who told me he would ask the people he knew in Blizzard and report back to me. That’s almost as good.
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According to Random Person on Twitter, the first public ARM client is being pushed. Can’t verify myself at the moment, but I linked the tweet in the Mac Support thread if anyone cares to look further.
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According to this interview, apple has tested that it runs under Rosetta: https://youtu.be/2lK0ySxQyrs?t=1503
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That is awesome (that Apple has tested WoW on M1 Macs with Rosetta 2.)
The good news is that it would run even faster if Blizzard decides to compile WoW to run natively on M1 Macs. I won’t say it would be easy but they already compile to the MacOS Metal API so most of the work has been done.
The bad news is that Blizzard might decide not to compile natively for M1. At first, this won’t matter a whole lot because it will still run in Rosetta Emulation. But after a number of years (maybe 5?) Apple is likely to discontinue support for Rosetta which means emulated apps will stop working.
My opinion is that Blizzard will choose to compile natively to M1. That’s because the COO of Blizzard declared a week ago that getting all Blizzard apps to “run on mobile” was Blizzard’s top priority. Of course M1 isn’t “mobile” (the “M” probably stands for “Mac”) but it shares the same instruction set as the A-series chips which are mobile chips, so if Blizzard’s focus is on Ax then Mx will probably benefit from that effort. For example, Blizzard may decide to let WoW run on the iPad Pro, which has the necessary power and hardware to do that. However if it did, it would also run on M1 chips since anything on iPad can also run on M1 Macs.
According to someone on another thread, Blizzard already has M1 native code in a beta release and in a PTR release. Let me take this opportunity to thank Blizzard for doing so much for Mac users over the decades.
Check out this thread.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/newly-announced-m1-cpu/714994/123
With iOS13, which just came out, iOS also now supports (Bluetooth) mice rather than just keyboards. While iPadOS has always supported mice and keyboards, this is a first for iOS. It means that games which require mice and keyboards, like WoW, could also be “ported to mobile” now. Personally I would not consider playing WoW on mobile because I like the big screens of desktops.
In my mind, the thing that might hold Blizzard back is that the mobile app stores for iOS and iPadOS are controlled by Apple who takes 30%. However when it comes to subscriptions (which is where Blizz makes most of its money) I think Apple takes only 15%. I think Blizzard could probably live with 85%. The main problem I see is the functionality of the software update system in Battle.Net has to be somehow replicated with iOS. This is an area where Blizzard currently does better than Apple. But we can probably live without Battle.Net.
I received my new M1 Mac Mini 2 hours ago, but have been unable to download the Blizzard installer for the entire duration. I’ve read ALL the troubleshooting advice on this. Nothing worked. I have a ticket open. I’m not hopeful getting a response any time soon.
Can confirm. I’ve been playing on Linux since two years and it seems to me that I’ve had less issues than Mac users, even when they do have a native version. Btw, there are ARM versions of some distros like Manjaro, perhaps you can dual boot Linux ARM and play wow using Lutris as a last resort? In case they don’t add Apple silicon soon enough…
I just started playing on Windoze for the first time. My Mac was slower, but the client was a lot less buggy. I still play on both. Yesterday my Winbox had me flying upside down and backwards over Ice Crown. This is a bug I’ve NEVER seen before, not in 11 years. And my Mac didn’t drop connection 2-3 times a night either.
They used to make a good machine for print and design work.
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I managed to find another Mac in my house that was able to download the Blizzard installer, and I physically transferred the installer file to my M1 Mac Mini, which means I could start the download of WoW. But my WIFI connection to the Apple Airport router means it will take 2-4 hours to install 72 GB of WoW.
Sounds like a problem with your internet, not your hardware.
If it was a problem with my internet, why would it work from some Macs but not from others? What would stop it from working on a new virgin Mac that has never had any software added or configuration changes done to it?
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.
My current iMac is 3.5 years old and beginning to show occasional hardware crashes, which I think are related to the Intel CPU or memory. I think this new Mac Mini will be my replacement, as soon as I get a 4K monitor. I will miss the 5K monitor of my iMac, but I can settle for 4K.
I wonder why the max resolution of Wow on M1 is 3360x2100. That’s not a number I’m familiar with. Can anyone explain it?