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Role Playing (Games) Businesses Apple

WoW Supported On New Intel Macs 97

Posted by Zonk from the now-they're-officially-usable dept.
If you were worried about your Azeroth fix on the new Intel Macs, worry not. Ars Technica reports that World of Warcraft is officially supported on Apple's newest toys. From the article: "What Blizzard did today was pop the cherry on Mac gaming with Intel inside Azeroth. Apple was cool enough to provide a prototype iMac, and Blizzard was cool enough to have been working overtime on the Intel version of Warcraft. WoW for Intel will be publicly available in about three weeks--for free! As if people wouldn't take a Krol Blade to their non-mousing arm in payment for a real FSB for 3D."
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WoW Supported On New Intel Macs More

WoW Supported On New Intel Macs

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @12:42AM (#14474383)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Let me just start off by saying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore@@@gmail...com> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @12:50AM (#14474413) Homepage Journal

    As if people wouldn't take a Krol Blade to their non-mousing arm in payment for a real FSB for 3D

    Thanks for paying attention, but the G5 FSB kicks, has kicked, and still kicks the Intel FSB ass. The high end G5 sports a 1.25 Ghz bus per CPU; and even the iMac G5 had a 667 Mhz bus. So the only real advancement in this regard is on the lousy bus of the PowerBook. So big deal.

    It is nice that WoW has announced for the IntelliMac, but going to Intel isn't going to change everything overnight because the G5 didn't really suck that bad.

    • I would say that the heat dissipation of the G5 processor also kicks ass, I didn't need a furnace this winter. On the down side, if I put a heavy load on it long enough, the fans hit a pretty annoying pitch and amplitude, far more annoying than the very quiet 2GHz Xeon systems I had.

    • Re:Let me just start off by saying (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15, 2006 @03:06AM (#14474753)
      The bandwidth of the G5 memory bus is pretty high as you've noted - however if you have a close look at any random fetch latency benchmarks, you'll soon find that the Intel chipsets score a lot better (as in, 80-90 on Intel vs 150-160 ns on G5). One can find access patterns that favor the G5 or the Intel; my assessment is that WoW has more of the latter.

      Also, take note of the fact that G5 chips prior to the latest dual core parts in the PCIe towers, only have 512KB L2. The new Intel Core Duo has four times that amount. While shared amongst two cores in the Intel chip, it's pretty well known that WoW is only partially multithreaded, i.e. it will max out one CPU and use 10-20% of the other one.

      Finally, be careful when comparing frequencies of buses - the G5 bus has 32 bits of read and 32 bits of write "pipe" clocked at 1GHz+ speed; the Intel part doesn't have such high frequency but has 64 bits of data path that is bidirectional. For code that is doing a steady stream of reads or writes, the available bandwidth is comparable. At max read throughput the G5 you cite can move 5GB/s up the read pipe; the Intel can hit 5.3GB/s. One can argue that the G5 can be reading and writing at the same time by virtue of its split pipes, alas, the DIMMS at the other end of the channel are not similarly endowed.

      There must be some set of reasons why the iMac Core Duo is in fact outperforming G5 tower systems costing twice as much when running WoW; the factors above are likely to be significant.

  • I can see it now (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xeirxes ( 908329 ) <xeirxes@gmaOOOil.com minus threevowels> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @12:51AM (#14474415)
    ...a new generation of Slashdot. Gone is "Will it run Linux?" and here to stay is, "Will it run WoW?"
    • Speaking of Linux and WoW, people should sign the petition [blizzpub.net]. WoW runs fairly smoothly with WINE, once you patched the cursor bug, but it's not as smooth as it could be.

  • Pop the cherry? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15, 2006 @12:53AM (#14474421)
    What Blizzard did today was pop the cherry on Mac gaming with Intel inside Azeroth.

    This is World of Warcraft we're talking about here. Owning this game would seem to preclude any actual cherry popping from taking place...

  • Needs a video upgrade (Score:3, Informative)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @12:54AM (#14474424) Homepage
    It's a shame that they are using the X1600. It's one of the worst video cards of this generation. The iMacs would be better served with a 1800XL/XT or 7800GT/GTX.

    • Re:Needs a video upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @05:31AM (#14475051) Homepage
      I just resisted the temptation to get very snarky. No applause, please; the warm feeling inside is enough.

      Anyway, you're talking about top-of-the-line video cards, cards that are $300 to $500 when they're NOT sold by a company that places a premium on style and raises their prices accordingly. It's also worth noting that the x1600 chipset is going to run cooler than those you mentioned, which is vital for a small all-in-one (even the power supply is in there - no outboard brick) unit.

      Anyone who buys an iMac knows that they're not getting a gaming powerhouse. If someone wanted a top-flight gaming PC s/he would buy an x86 system with a serious graphics card or, if a Mac aficionado, a PowerMac - perhaps holding off until the Intel chips get in the latter, on the off-chance that running Windows and getting THAT gaming goodness would be possible.
    • First off, while the X1800XL/XT and the 7800GT/GTX would be faster they put out way too much heat, require too much power and have memory busses that would require a PCB with too many layers to be cost effective.

      I disagree with the statement that the "[X1600 series] [is] one of the worst video cards of this generation". While the mid-range X1600 is not as fast as the high-end members of X800 series, as one might expect, the X1600 is still no slouch, it is faster than the 6600 and the X700 from the last gen
      • The reason the x1600 architecture is the worst of the next generation is because ATI tried to build a 6600, and failed because they got too greedy.

        The 6600 architecture was risky. 8 fragment pipelines, but only 4 ROPs meant the chip would be marginal at REALLY old games (just see how badly it scores in 3dmark 2001), and be excellent for newer games.

        One of the benefits of the architecture is "free" anistropic filtering (compared to other architectures), because those 8 fragment pipes are never fully utilize
  • <dork>
    Blizzard should be working overtime to fix the truckload of bugs they introduced with the 1.9 patch rather than worrying about whether WoW will run on the new Macs. Who wants to play a game that's half broken?
    </dork>

    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of me reaching a new personal low. I need to stop playing WoW.
  • What is "for free" supposed to mean? They'll be giving MacIntel binaries out literally for free? Or does that just mean "if you already own it, we'll give you this version for your Mac for free"?
    • When you buy World of Warcraft, you're essentially given a serial number that lets you create a single account.

      Therefore, it's the "if you already own it, we'll give you this version for your Mac for free" type of free.

      • Re:"Free"? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by drmarcj ( 807884 )
        At $15 a month to play online, it's anything but 'free'! It's never been clear to me why they don't give away every copy in the first place.
        • It's never been clear to me why they don't give away every copy in the first place.

          Considering the fact that I've seen videos previewing WoW from 2001, I'd say the $50 price tag for the box is to recoup the 3+ years of development costs. The $15 per month is paying for server bandwidth and continued development on the game.

          • Considering the fact that I've seen videos previewing WoW from 2001, I'd say the $50 price tag for the box is to recoup the 3+ years of development costs. The $15 per month is paying for server bandwidth and continued development on the game.

            Nowhere in there do you mention profit, something I'm sure is present in both the box and subscription prices. :)
        • It's never been clear to me why they don't give away every copy in the first place.

          Lots of reasons:

          1) They don't have to. With a million-plus people buying it, and lag/over crowding being one of their major challenges the last thing they needed is more players. The price on the box kept the influx of players at a (barely) containable rate.

          You'll note that many of the older smaller mmorgs *do* now offer the game for free (at least the base game, possibly with some of the earlier expansions). Partly because t
    • When the universal binary is complete, it will download like a regular patch and replace the ppc-only binary currently found on all Mac WoW installs. It will be just like any other client patch that replaces the binary.

      According to the WoW Mac Tech Support forum, you can install WoW for Intel-based Macs by two means:
      1. Copying your PPC-only installation to the Intel-based Mac, running WoW (in Rosetta) and patching to the universal binary.
      2. Install the game on your Intel-based Mac from your original di

  • Pure evil (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15, 2006 @02:56AM (#14474734)
    All I can say is damn you Apple and damn you Blizzard! I'm never going to get off this game!
  • One more ignorant article :(
    Decent FSB - doh... and please don't confuse it with memory latency, which is improved btw in the latest g5s.
    Speedier etc? I am tired of hearind those uninformed statemens. "Like real gaming on PC?" Doh doh doh!!!!!!!!!
    I have been running wow at my dual g5 2.0ghz since its introduction and never had performance issues. Yes, I do own a gig of ram and a geForce 6800 ultra :)
    All these people who state these new iMacs are soooooo much snappier etc never used a g5 one. And just h

  • Linux support? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StonedRat ( 837378 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @09:38AM (#14475497) Homepage Journal
    So, if WoW runs on a unix system on an intel cpu, how much work would it be to get it running on linux?

    • Re:Linux support? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lowmagnet ( 646428 )
      Yes, because blizzard WANTS TO support all the distributions out there. I bet if there was only one Linux there would be WoW for it. It's not FUD to say that Linux is fractured among two main desktop environments, two major X11 implementations, and more distros than I can count. Mac OS X is supported because there is only one.
      • Actually, that IS fud. Binaries in linux are pretty much universal, and libraries could be linked statically and/or provided locally to the game. All of this could be packaged in a loki installer a-la UT2004. it works, i've seen it.

      • Re:Linux support? (Score:5, Informative)

        by netfunk ( 32040 ) <icculus@@@icculus...org> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @02:30PM (#14476744) Homepage
        Yes, because blizzard WANTS TO support all the distributions out there. I bet if there was only one Linux there would be WoW for it. It's not FUD to say that Linux is fractured among two main desktop environments, two major X11 implementations, and more distros than I can count. Mac OS X is supported because there is only one.


        Oh, stop saying this. It didn't stop me from shipping Unreal Tournament 2004 without a single line of code that is Gnome, KDE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, or Suse (or whatever) specific. I figured (at least, I hoped) if there WERE issues in a given desktop or distro, the distro would make changes to support a popular game, but in practice, this never needed to happen. We used SDL (which is really the Gold Standard on Linux now, like DirectX would be on Windows), and OpenAL, which hid all sorts of other platform differences under the hood. Loki_setup handled installation across all distros for us, and we didn't worry about package managers.

        UT2004 was probably my most popular endeavor, but there are lots of other games I've shipped with similar experiences.

        People don't support Linux for a number of reasons, and while one of them is almost certainly the belief that Linux is terribly "fractured," in reality, it's not even remotely a problem...at least not in terms of shipping a game.

        So stop spreading the belief.

        --ryan.

    • So, if WoW runs on a unix system on an intel cpu, how much work would it be to get it running on linux?

      The exact same amount as when Mac OS X only ran on PowerPC. The new Intel based Macs change nothing. The problem is that Mac OS X apps are not really written to a "unix api", they are written to Apple proprietary APIs, carbon or coacoa. Mac ports in general get you closer to Linux than Windows-only games, OpenGL is required and things like DirectPlay are avoided, but this is true whether the Mac target
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ... there's a Windows version of WoW?!?
    huh. learn somethin' everyday.
  • I think that anyone that plays this game thinks the same at the moment... With the world servers overloaded all the times (it's already fragmented in 50+ small ones in europe), and recently even crashing every other day (EU-Neptulon, thu 2100, today at 1700 till now), Blizzard really need to start fixing stuff instead of dreaming about expansions and new features. I wonder if they are paying any attention, because today, it's one of the two continents that have crashed on my realm. About everyone and his d
    • there was no reaction from Blizzard till 3 hours later

      God forbid you go outside and take a walk in the park or read something in a nice cafe somewhere for a few hours.
      • Yea, no shit, we wouldn't wanna have to play WOW for only 22 hours a day. Why spend money porting it to Mac, when you can use all your money making bigger crazier instances (then you need better hardware), more levels, more guaranteed revenue, and more spyware to take over your already pretty bogged down smokin computer. (then you just HAVE to buy a new one so the gaming experience doesn't suffer)
      • "God forbid you go outside and take a walk in the park or read something in a nice cafe somewhere for a few hours."

        What a delightful bit of snobbishness fuels this troll's post! I think this simpleton imagines every WoW subscriber hunched in front of a computer, waiting for Blizzard's technical staff to permit them to be entertained.

        Most folks, the employed-adult majority of WoW players included, have a limited amount of time with which to entertain themselves. When this time presents itself, the
      • Doh. It's a *multiplayer* game, and people make appointments to get 40 friends together to do the challeging parts of the game. And generally, it's planned on Sat / Sunday, because people don't have to work.

        After the little crash, most of us went away for food, shopping etc, be back at 21:00 and hope that someone noticed that the server needed a little restart. It's a good thing you have voice comm instead of only the ingame chat.

  • NSFW? (Score:3, Funny)

    by /dev/trash ( 182850 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @02:25PM (#14476711) Homepage Journal
    Pop a cherry? Sexist pig.
  • I really not see a reason why Blizzard cannt/wont port games like WoW and WC3 to Linux. If anything is programmed right it will work fine on Linux, Mac, and Windows without much change in the code. This new version for Mac should work fine on Linux, they probably just need to recompile it.
    • I really not see a reason why Blizzard cannt/wont port games like WoW and WC3 to Linux.

      Why do you think Blizzard has something against Linux? It may simply be a sound business decision. Even id has said that supporting Linux clients do not make business sense, they just do it because they think it is cool [old Game Developer Magazine interview].

      It is really that Linux gamers offer Blizzard very little. Linux gamers generally dual boot or emulate, so they are already customers. Offering a Linux versio
      • For awhile I did some graphics programming in OpenGL with GLUT and SDL. I did all my development on Linux but I was about to sit down at a windows machine open up MS C++ 6.0 and compile it with no problem. The only reason why I brought up the Intel Mac is because some games use asm in their code. It is really that Linux gamers offer Blizzard very little. Linux gamers generally dual boot or emulate, so they are already customers. Offering a Linux version would generally not produce a new sale, it would repl
        • For awhile I did some graphics programming in OpenGL with GLUT and SDL

          But that often leads to a least common denominator approach. It probably is best for major titles to go with best of breed APIs on their repsective targets and to use platform specific features that enhance the user experience.

          "Linux gamers generally dual boot or emulate, so they are already customers. Offering a Linux version would generally not produce a new sale, it would replace a Windows sale with a Linux sale, there is no new
          • Mac gamers have a proven track record of spending money

            This, I think, is not brought up enough. Mac users have a long track record (I remember reading an article in MacWorld or MacUser, back during some of the really bad years, that quantified it) of being ready to plunk down money for just about anything. It's no surprise -- until the Mac Mini, every Mac user had paid close to a thousand dollars for their computer by itself, and probably more for accessories: they're used to spending money on stuff.

            Mac use
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • While I imagine their codebase is reasonably portable, it is still going to be a lot more than just a recompile to get a game to Linux. All the system level stuff (input, sound etc) would have to be redone, probably using SDL. Then they have to test, develop an installer, distribute etc.
      Given that cost, the size of the intersection of Linux users who want to play WoW, have a fast enough computer, have a supported 3D card and can get the drivers installed, don't already have a Windows/Mac install and would b
      • Mod parent up.

        the size of the intersection of Linux users who want to play WoW, have a fast enough computer, have a supported 3D card and can get the drivers installed, don't already have a Windows/Mac install and would be prepared to pay for it

        That, ladies and gentlemen, is the best summary of the reason why you don't see a Linux version.

        Many -- if not most -- Mac users don't have a PC. Therefore if there's no Mac version, they don't play or buy the game. However a lot of Linux users either dual-boot or ow

  • The issues I've seen with WoW on a Mac were more to do with the video codec not coping in high end instances (imps in MC, Razorgore, Vael, etc...) where there were too many items to render. I'm not sure how the intel processor is going to address the OpenGL problems.

    Of course, Proudmoore would need to stay live for more than an hour at a time for this to be important at the moment...

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