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rmpstudio

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 15, 2009
81
0
Well.. all my friends told me that i could buy a PC for half the cost and get a better gaming machine for Lotro or whatever but i told them that i wasn't getting a MAC just for the gaming. I need it for my Photography business and maybe 10% for gaming and besides,... Macs are better!

Well, now i got the best of both worlds. I can't wait for them to come and see Lotro on ULTRA-HIGH settings (that's maxed out btw) on my new MacPro 2.26 Octo. For those who play Lotro; quick loads, no glitches, smooth gameplay, even in Bree and busy areas.

My MacPro has the ATI graphics card and 16gb of RAM and i'm sure both of them help.
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,395
26,519
The Misty Mountains
You do have the best of both worlds, and you only have minimal exposure to Windows and only when a gaming fix is required. Sounds like win/win. The MacOS is so superior to Windows there really isn't any serious comparison for a friendly day to day computing environment. :)

Hows LOTRO? I played the beta and much preferred WoW.
 

rmpstudio

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 15, 2009
81
0
You do have the best of both worlds, and you only have minimal exposure to Windows and only when a gaming fix is required. Sounds like win/win. The MacOS is so superior to Windows there really isn't any serious comparison for a friendly day to day computing environment. :)

Hows LOTRO? I played the beta and much preferred WoW.

Minimal is right. I only lost 80gb of my hard drive space and most of that is for Lotro. Funny too.. i installed Vista Ultimate and for all the press it got,.. when you turn down the settings,... it's just a glorified XP haha.

Having never played WOW, only watched my much younger siblings dominate the game, i wanted (pardon if i offend) something more challenging and a little less hack-n-slash. I enjoy the less cartoony approach of Lotro and the lore (story line and characters) and the more "mature" age of the players - 60% of my kin is over 30 (that doesn't mean they're all "mature" though :)
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,395
26,519
The Misty Mountains
Having never played WOW, only watched my much younger siblings dominate the game, i wanted (pardon if i offend) something more challenging and a little less hack-n-slash. I enjoy the less cartoony approach of Lotro and the lore (story line and characters) and the more "mature" age of the players - 60% of my kin is over 30 (that doesn't mean they're all "mature" though :)

Not to be disagreeable, but the LOTRO beta environment was very much like WoW in the hack and slash department. As far as maturity of players, most of the time I'm questing with non guild members and most of the time it's a positive experience at least when it comes to 5 player dungeons. :)

well no actually it's mac/win.

:D
 

PurpleCliff

macrumors regular
Feb 23, 2009
160
0
Australia
I've never played it - but I've heard and read that LotrO is very good, with an excellent community. Like a smooth-running more-peaceful WoW. Highly underrated I'm told ...
If it were on Mac I'd probably try it! Last time I tried installing Windows on my Mac I got about 200 viruses on the first day!~? lol I know that probably wouldn't happen again but windows xp takes about 3 hours to fully install and download updates ... so I can't be bothered.
:) Good job on your Mac Pro!
 

giantsquid

macrumors newbie
Aug 15, 2007
6
0
I've been playing LotRO on my Mac Desktop Pro as well, and it's been great...no problems at all.
 

Winni

macrumors 68040
Oct 15, 2008
3,207
1,196
Germany.
i installed Vista Ultimate and for all the press it got,.. when you turn down the settings,... it's just a glorified XP haha.

Vista compares to XP as Leopard compares to Cheetah. The guys at Microsoft spent more than five years into overhauling the entire foundation of their operating system. Unlike the developers at Apple, who break compatibility and drop 'legacy support' with almost every new release of their OS, the folks at Microsoft managed to still support most legacy apps on their new system.

Microsoft is about consistency. That's something that you quickly learn to appreciate in an environment where you not only have to support your mom's, dad's and aunt's little web browser computers for storing cooking recipes or small photo collections. And try finding a "so much better" Mac in a server room anywhere.

But, yeah, Macs are so much better nowadays than PCs. Guess what... You can now even install Windows on them to play games. Or in other words: You can turn the so-much-better Mac into an ordinary PC. And the sad thing is that you quite often have to do this to make the Mac useful for several tasks.

The folks at Microsoft in Redmond must be laughing their asses off. That's what I call a flawless victory. The more versatile system clearly won.
 

FRKT

macrumors member
Apr 24, 2009
64
0
Vista compares to XP as Leopard compares to Cheetah. The guys at Microsoft spent more than five years into overhauling the entire foundation of their operating system. Unlike the developers at Apple, who break compatibility and drop 'legacy support' with almost every new release of their OS, the folks at Microsoft managed to still support most legacy apps on their new system.

Microsoft is about consistency. That's something that you quickly learn to appreciate in an environment where you not only have to support your mom's, dad's and aunt's little web browser computers for storing cooking recipes or small photo collections. And try finding a "so much better" Mac in a server room anywhere.

But, yeah, Macs are so much better nowadays than PCs. Guess what... You can now even install Windows on them to play games. Or in other words: You can turn the so-much-better Mac into an ordinary PC. And the sad thing is that you quite often have to do this to make the Mac useful for several tasks.

The folks at Microsoft in Redmond must be laughing their asses off. That's what I call a flawless victory. The more versatile system clearly won.

Heh. Funny post.
 

Mackilroy

macrumors 68040
Jun 29, 2006
3,906
539
He's a troll. Ignore him.

I played LOTRO back during the beta, but it's been a while for me - I might have to restart my subscription sometime.
 

rasmasyean

macrumors 6502a
Jul 11, 2008
810
1
I played LoTRO beta too. I didn't like it as it was like WoW but without many of the features of WoW. It was a WoW lite with nice graphics but poor art.

But it went DX10 so it looks a lot nicer now I hear on Vista but I've only seen screen shots and haven't seen it in action. It must be pretty cool. I don't know about the gameplay though.
 

rmpstudio

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 15, 2009
81
0
Vista compares to XP as Leopard compares to Cheetah. The guys at Microsoft spent more than five years into overhauling the entire foundation of their operating system. Unlike the developers at Apple, who break compatibility and drop 'legacy support' with almost every new release of their OS, the folks at Microsoft managed to still support most legacy apps on their new system.

Support? If you own a Mac, you don't need support. If you own a PC, you can't live without it! Next.

Microsoft is about consistency. That's something that you quickly learn to appreciate in an environment where you not only have to support your mom's, dad's and aunt's little web browser computers for storing cooking recipes or small photo collections. And try finding a "so much better" Mac in a server room anywhere.

Consistency? My mom, dad, and grandmother all have PC's and they have to buy new ones every 2yrs because something breaks or gets infected with too much spyware/malware/wareware. PC's are consistent alright, consistently user-UNfriendly. Next.

But, yeah, Macs are so much better nowadays than PCs. Guess what... You can now even install Windows on them to play games. Or in other words: You can turn the so-much-better Mac into an ordinary PC. And the sad thing is that you quite often have to do this to make the Mac useful for several tasks.

Yes, Macs can now run windows. And Apple developers are laughing their arses off because Macs can run XP/Vista FASTER than a PC! Next.

The folks at Microsoft in Redmond must be laughing their asses off. That's what I call a flawless victory. The more versatile system clearly won.

Flawed.. oh so flawed... much like your feeble attempt to bash Macs.
 

rasmasyean

macrumors 6502a
Jul 11, 2008
810
1
Yes, Macs can now run windows. And Apple developers are laughing their arses off because Macs can run XP/Vista FASTER than a PC! Next.

That's not true all the time. Most of the time, gaming PC's are both faster and better performers for games than Macs. You can have a higher speed CPU, better GPU (or 2), and more RAM sometimes cheaper as well. You can do SLI / crossfire and have super FPS at maximum graphics. Apple is a bit more restrictive on what hardware you can use on your Mac.
 

SilentPanda

Moderator emeritus
Oct 8, 2002
9,992
31
The Bamboo Forest
I decided to try if LOTRO would work with Parallels 4.0. It works wonderfully which surprised me.

The relevant specs - Mac Pro Quad 2.0, 6GB RAM, ATI 3870 (I think), 30" monitor.

I am using XP SP3 32 bit. I allocated 2 processors to the VM, 2048 MB of RAM, and 256 MB video ram. I upped them later but the game ran crappier. Play with those numbers as you wish.

Once I loaded LOTRO I let it choose the settings based on my specs and it chose "High". Also note Parallels 4.0 does not support DX 10 so don't enable that in the game!

There are only two things I can't get working for whatever reason...

1. The game will not run at 2650x1680. It runs fine at any resolution below that. Not exactly sure why but I'm okay with it.
2. While you can use your right mouse button easily to rotate your char/camera for some reason rotating just the camera with the left mouse button causes the camera to kinda just... do whatever it wants. If you reduce the sensitivity to the lowest, rotating the camera works fine but rotating your char/camera is sloooooow. I may contact Turbine about getting two settings for that.

I must say I was dissuaded from trying gaming in Parallels after 3.0 since most of the games I tried failed miserably, but with 4.0 I'm quite happy with this game at least.
 

Huntn

macrumors Core
May 5, 2008
23,395
26,519
The Misty Mountains
I've never played it - but I've heard and read that LotrO is very good, with an excellent community. Like a smooth-running more-peaceful WoW. Highly underrated I'm told ...

More peaceful WoW? Hmm, I find WoW very peaceful but I'm on a PVE server. I don't remember if LOTRO offers both PVE and PVP (player vs player) servers or not. Are you referring to the average maturity of players?


If it were on Mac I'd probably try it! Last time I tried installing Windows on my Mac I got about 200 viruses on the first day!~? lol I know that probably wouldn't happen again but windows xp takes about 3 hours to fully install and download updates ... so I can't be bothered.
:) Good job on your Mac Pro!

Your not prone to exaggeration are you? ;) (200 viruses the first day). If you use windows, you must use a anti-virus program and if you only use windows to play games, you should not really be bothered by them. I have a PC with an anti-virus program and I don't ever remember it giving me a virus alert, however, keep in mind, all I do is play games, not much surfing, and no email programs on it. And I've never had a virus on my MBP running Vista, but again, no email there either.
 

giantsquid

macrumors newbie
Aug 15, 2007
6
0
if you only use windows to play games, you should not really be bothered by them. I have a PC with an anti-virus program and I don't ever remember it giving me a virus alert, however, keep in mind, all I do is play games, not much surfing, and no email programs on it. And I've never had a virus on my MBP running Vista, but again, no email there either.

I agree with you there. I use my PC for gaming and have had very few issues with security, maybe some cookie problems here and there (spyware), but Norton takes care of those. And these were due to me surfing for game patches and such. Sadly, if you use Windows for anything else, you get security issues! Doesn't it seem like Windows PC's used safely are basically very expensive X-Box 360's?
:)
 

rasmasyean

macrumors 6502a
Jul 11, 2008
810
1
I agree with you there. I use my PC for gaming and have had very few issues with security, maybe some cookie problems here and there (spyware), but Norton takes care of those. And these were due to me surfing for game patches and such. Sadly, if you use Windows for anything else, you get security issues! Doesn't it seem like Windows PC's used safely are basically very expensive X-Box 360's?
:)

Most of those "200 viruses the first day" are not viruses. The “security suites” detect like everything including cookies and "spyware". Most of this stuff is harmless and they’re like things that install themselves "legally" on browsers and such that they allow them see your browsing pattern on certain sites and to target advertisements for specific behavior habits. If you accumulate enough and you have a really old computer, it might slow it down, but that's the only "danger".

It’s a continual argument on where to draw the line in “privacy” or whatever, but some argue that it’s better to know what to try to sell you than to flash random ads that you might not even care about.

But anyway some security software are way too sensitive…plus they want people to think that they are working so that’s how they stay in business. If you tell your friend that “OMG! You need to buy this bundled mega package because I just got 200 viruses!”, then that friend will prolly contribute to the health of the corporation. I mean, you SHOULD have protection regardless of Mac or PC in case anything drastic happens because the law of averages state that you WILL get a virus if you use any computer long enough. Though, not all are harmful. There are free detectors (without rich feature sets) so you have no excuse not to have one (Mac of PC or Linux).



Also, you are subject to a lot of threats if you use “common” software, like Office and the Adobe Suite (even on a Mac). More on Windows because there are more users out there as well as more opportunities to do mischievous things such as spying and stealing money. Plus Windows users comprise of much more business use so that’s where the brunt of the money is to be siphoned. But Vista solves a lot of those problems so it's actually better these days since that was their primary consideration in the 6 billion dollar development of the OS.
 

dalinian

macrumors newbie
Aug 29, 2010
9
0
LotRO via 'CrossOver Games' on my MBP

@PurpleCliff – don't blame you at all for a "I can't be bothered" attitude to the bloated and insecure Windoze: I spurn it like the plague myself; BUT... I'm thoroughly enjoying LotRO WITHOUT all the bloat and infection headaches by playing it inside 'CrossOver Games', a game-centric emulator from CodeWeavers (sitting on the shoulders of giants: the Wine Project), via 'PyLotRO', a launcher for LotRO.

• CrossOver Games – "you can run many popular Windows games on your Intel OS X Mac or Linux PC."
» 7 day free trial available – http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/
» Compatibility – Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood – http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=2869

• PyLotRO – "allows Mac OSX and Linux users to patch and launch [LotRO] using Crossover Games"
» freeware – http://www.mcgillsociety.org/PyLotRO/index.html

For the curious, my specs are:
• MacBook Pro – OS X 10.5.8, 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (4 GB RAM), GeForce 8600M GT (512 MB VRAM)
• CrossOver Games – v9.1.0
• LotRO – Siege of Mirkwood, free European 14 day trial version – http://www.lotro-europe.com/
• Overall graphics quality: High, and Windowed Resolution: 1900x1178 (effectively full screen, but so I can switch apps for music, note-taking, etc.)

@rmpstudio and SilentPanda – pleased to hear you have LotRO working in Bootcamp and Parallels 4.0 respectively. But... "I only lost 80gb of my hard drive space and most of that is for Lotro"??? :eek:
My 'CrossOver Games' bottle called 'LOTRO-EU-ENGB+PyLotRO' takes up only 12.35 GB :p – which I think demonstrates an admirably parsimonious approach to running 'Windoze only' games by CodeWeavers Wine bottle. :cool:

I've also downloaded Howard Shore's masterful 'The Lord of the Rings' film trilogy soundtrack from the torrent cloud, which makes perfect background music while playing in iTunes. And as a Tolkien aficionado of three decades standing, I find the Tolkien-legendarium-enriched LotRO environment way more engaging and immersive than WoW.
 

0098386

Suspended
Jan 18, 2005
21,574
2,908
@PurpleCliff – don't blame you at all for a "I can't be bothered" attitude to the bloated and insecure Windoze: I spurn it like the plague myself; BUT... I'm thoroughly enjoying LotRO WITHOUT all the bloat and infection headaches by playing it inside 'CrossOver Games', a game-centric emulator from CodeWeavers (sitting on the shoulders of giants: the Wine Project), via 'PyLotRO', a launcher for LotRO.

I have to commend you for using text formatting, it's beautiful in its own way!
However no, I've had a few iMacs since the Intel switch and I've had Windows on each and every one of them (XP, Vista and 7). I only use that partition for Steam gaming and never have I encountered a virus, never have I had any problems with any OS (except my iMac's odd habit of turning itself on after I shut it down from OSX).

It begs the question - what are you guys doing with Windows? ;)
 

chrono1081

macrumors G3
Jan 26, 2008
8,446
4,146
Isla Nublar
Well.. all my friends told me that i could buy a PC for half the cost and get a better gaming machine

You must have my same friends! Funny how as all my friends constantly tell me, who is a windows tech by trade, how much better win is then mac yet they are always needing me to fix their machines...hm...lol.

Congrats on the purchase though :D I'm excited that I too can play some computer games that I've always wanted to.
 

Winni

macrumors 68040
Oct 15, 2008
3,207
1,196
Germany.
Well.. all my friends told me that i could buy a PC for half the cost and get a better gaming machine for Lotro or whatever but i told them that i wasn't getting a MAC just for the gaming. I need it for my Photography business and maybe 10% for gaming and besides,... Macs are better!

Well, now i got the best of both worlds. I can't wait for them to come and see Lotro on ULTRA-HIGH settings (that's maxed out btw) on my new MacPro 2.26 Octo. For those who play Lotro; quick loads, no glitches, smooth gameplay, even in Bree and busy areas.

My MacPro has the ATI graphics card and 16gb of RAM and i'm sure both of them help.

Yeah, sure. I also bought a Porsche to do my grocery shopping. It makes so much sense.
 
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