Filed under: Gaming, Software, iMac, Universal Binary
Is World of Warcraft now Intel Mac Compatible?
Our own C.K. Sample III posted this morning on WOW Insider hinting at the fact that World of Warcraft as of today may be Intel Mac compatible and no longer require Rosetta. When he logged in this morning, WOW launched an updater to version 1.9.3.5059. Now the comment at the bottom of his login screen which used to mention Rosetta, now notes GCC Intel.
This news comes a few days too late for Blizzard's end-of-January World of Warcraft Intel Mac compatibility predictions. Though I'm sure those of you who play WOW and own an Intel iMac are jumping for joy at this announcement.
All realms of WOW are currently down for maintenance so we will have to wait with bated breath until 11AM PST for someone to actually test WOW on an Intel Mac.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mungler said 9:59AM on 2-07-2006
presumably you could do a Get Info on the executable and see what architectures it lists?
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Vadim Lozko said 10:03AM on 2-07-2006
Just downloaded the patch. Here are the notes:
Mac
- Added native support for Intel-powered Macs such as the iMac (Core Duo) and MacBook Pro. World of Warcraft is now a Universal Application. Be Advised that the minimum supported MacOS X version has been changed to 10.3.9; World of Warcraft version 1.9.3 and later will not launch on older revisions of MacOS X.
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John Laur said 10:03AM on 2-07-2006
Yes, it's a Universal binary. They said so in the changelog if anyone bothered to read it....
My AlBook is pretty sluggish on WoW -- maybe it's time for a new unit!
In any case, I expect that WoW will do a much better job on the Intel macs than it has on anything except the top end G5's if for nothing else than the video cards are pretty good compared to Apple's previous consumer-level offerings.
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Chris said 10:54AM on 2-07-2006
"Bated breath?"
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matt said 11:05AM on 2-07-2006
yup, the move was from v1.9.2.4996 to v1.9.3.5059 and it is now PPC and Intel native. the patch was 30.1mb. both the launcher and game executables show as being Universal in Finder. the release notes on the bottom of the game shows the move form CodeWarrior to GCC compilers for both PPC and Intel archs (went from 'CW ppc' to 'GCC ppc' or 'GCC Intel'.
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Kenny said 11:10AM on 2-07-2006
Yep, I just downloaded the patch too. Now, I'm just waiting for the Intel Powermacs to be released. Yowza!
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Sebastian said 11:24AM on 2-07-2006
Comparison benchmarks anyone anyone??
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James said 12:36PM on 2-07-2006
I've been using the Intel Mac client for a few days now, and I have to say, it runs great. On a 17" iMac, the framerate almost never drops below 30, and jumps up to 60 in smaller areas.
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Rob Barris said 1:32PM on 2-07-2006
Yes, that's the repeated lesson we keep learning about mentioning target release dates. The original plan was to have released a Mac-only patch for UA support prior to the end of January; that patch got merged with some upcoming holiday content, and the date moved back a week.
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Chris said 3:53PM on 2-07-2006
So do we have any idea how the UB performs on a new iMac compared to an equivalent PC? I don't really care much personally, but I'm trying to pry my brother away from his cursed FrankenPC and get a new iMac for everything (his G4 400 sits collecting dust since he's in WoW 24x7 it seems...).
I'm curious to see if we're finally going to see performance parity with equivalent PCs in the Mac gaming world now that we're on equal footing hardware-wise.
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