Strangeness of Warcraft 3 on Macbook

[comictimes]

So I finally got around to installing Warcraft III on my Macbook today. This first issue was that every time I tried to open it the program would immediately crash. After some trolling online I found that apparently one reason this might happen was the Divx plugin for quicktime, so I deleted all my Divx stuff and it worked. Don't ask me why though...

So finally I'm able to start it up and I try to log into Battlenet to install all the updates and it tells me the "this battlenet server is invalid, etc". After checking that I'm logging into US West and trying a couple more times I try logging into US East. It works fine, and I am now downloading the updates.

Has anyone else had these problems and/or have any idea how to fix them?
Because I really would like to be able to have divx installed and be able to use the US West server...

[neo123195]

It wont let me even run WCIII, i tried it patched as well as unpatched - my intel macbook just cant do it un-universally...

oh - heres what it does, it opens WCIII, goes to black screen then crashes "unexpectedly".


WOW customers got a universal patch, why not the WCIII ones.. :(

[PekkaR]

I bought a 2.0GHz white Macbook. With the original 512 of memory Warcraft III was running just great for me, pretty much as good as on my (a little dated) Windows/Linux comp.

I installed WC3 and Frozen Throne expansion from their respective CDs, updated inside the game by clicking the battle.net choice and started playing.

I played quite a bit then. Since that, I've installed the QuickTime DivX plugin and upgraded my memory to 2 gigs. I just tried launching the game and starting a custom match, no crash despite the plugin. The starting menus seemed a little more sluggish than before (despite the memory!), but that might have been just because it was the first time that I have other programs running in the background while playing. It would probably take a while for Firefox and iTunes to stop grabbing any significant processor time.

Do either of you have Frozen Throne?

Warcraft III doesn't need the universal patch to run pretty even on intel Minis and Macbooks. It's also an older game than WoW. Those are probably the reasons we haven't seen one so far.

[ZildjianKX]

Blizzard could take some of the hundreds of millions they are making on WoW and put a little of that into porting WC3 over to a Universal... same for Starcraft... oh well, a guy can wish.

[bowens]

Blizzard could take some of the hundreds of millions they are making on WoW and put a little of that into porting WC3 over to a Universal... same for Starcraft... oh well, a guy can wish.

Starcraft doesn't need to be universal. It runs flawlessly on my Intel Mini under Rosetta.

[benyaimin]

i wish i actually had an intel mac

[QCassidy352]

i play war3 TFT on a macbook with 1 GB RAM; it runs flawlessly, as well as it did on my ibook G4 1.33 with 1.5 GB RAM. I have DivX installed and it's not a problem. No crashes, no complaints at all.

this game won't get a patch because it's so old that:
1) it's not making blizzard any money any more, so they're not going to spend the time and money to make it universal
2) it runs great on intel macs even under Rosetta, so there's really no need anyway

[ijimk]

can you tell any difference from running WC3 under rosetta as from a naitive PPC processor?

[QCassidy352]

no difference whatsoever. I'm sure it requires a lot more resources to run than it would require if it were universal, but all the intel macs (except maybe the core solo mini) so far exceed what the game requires that even with the additional resource drain from rosetta, it still runs flawlessly.

[rbarris]

If you run into interactions with War3 and standalone DivX package (crash on cinematic playback at game launch or during game) please contact macsupport@blizzard.com for more information about possible workarounds. We're working directly with DivX on that problem.

Thanks for all your feedback on the game, we're listening.

[MUCKYFINGERS]

The solution to playing computer games is... either use xp on the macbook, or if that doesnt work, get a PC ^_^ the way it was meant to be played