Playing MMorpg on Mac??

[melatoni]

Hello im new to using Macs and new to parallels and boot camp, i recently bought a new i7 8g ram 1 tb 27" Imac, and i wanted to know with using parallels or any other software is it possible to play my online mmorpg games like WoW ??

 

[VPrime]

Hello im new to using Macs and new to parallels and boot camp, i recently bought a new i7 8g ram 1 tb 27" Imac, and i wanted to know with using parallels or any other software is it possible to play my online mmorpg games like WoW ??

parallels is not meant for gaming. Games will run VERY slow,or not at all.

Use bootcamp for gaming. That being said there is WOW for mac.

 

[OderWat]

parallels is not meant for gaming. Games will run VERY slow,or not at all.

Use bootcamp for gaming. That being said there is WOW for mac.

Well Parallels is also meant for gaming at least since Parallels 5 .. they even have a Forum thread for people to ask for support of games which still do not work...

@OP:

I just registered... but may give you an answer to your question...

I bought a iMac 27" i7 with 8 GB RAM and because I am switching systems and being a gamer and Windows developer I bought Paralles 5 and VMWare Fusion 3 .. and tried CrossOverGames shortly.

My Experience is that you can use Parallels 5 for nearly all gaming purposes and don't really need bootcamp anymore!

I personally own, tested and found the following games very playable in Parallels 5:

- Risen (low shadows)
- Dragon Age: Origins
- GuildWars
- Batman Asylum (I am still impressed)
- The Void
- Left 4 Dead 2 (needs textures medium)
- Tropico 3 (cries for low shadows)
- Warhammer 40.000 Dawn of War
- Torchlight
- League of Legends
- King's Bounty
- Majesty 2

All of those inside a dedicated WinXP 32 Bit maschine using the Steam versions for most of them and playing full-screen native resolution.

Thing seems to be that loading data is a bit slower that on Bootcamp. Maybe it can get faster with more ram to the VM. I usually just give it 2 GB.

I also tested all of them (I moved Steam and the games on a extra virtual harddrive) with Windows 7 64 Bit inside Parallels 5.

All of them run even better on bootcamp but to me they are playable enough to play inside Parallels 5 and it is so good to have them in one space and use the mac for work and chatting and whatever at the same time.

I have to say that neither VMWare Fusion 3 nor CrossOverGames comes even close to the performance of Paralles 5. I did not try Paralles 4 (I originally bought 4 but upgraded to 5 on the first day)

Besides that there are more and more games available as Cider Ports which works quite well (See: http://www.transgaming.com/). That shows that there is not really a problem with games and that paralles still may get better and better.

I just got Sims 3 for my girlfriend and tested the native Mac version with great success on the Mac 27" i7. I checked EVE Online native too and it works well.

WOW should work without a problem.. I did not test it personally though.. but it is fairly simple from the technical aspect and I am pretty sure one off the "must work" things for the Paralles 5 gaming developers even when the native version exists for the mac.

What do you plan to play besides of that? I am going to test Champions Online before my account runs out in january.

- Hans

 

[CylonGlitch]

Most games play horribly inside any virtual machine, I have tried, most run, but it is like watching a slideshow. Use Bootcamp and you'll be much happier.

BUT that being said, WoW has a native Mac client so no need for any emulation; it just runs. I thought there were a few others that also had native Mac clients, EVE maybe?

 

[OderWat]

Most games play horribly inside any virtual machine, I have tried, most run, but it is like watching a slideshow. Use Bootcamp and you'll be much happier.

BUT that being said, WoW has a native Mac client so no need for any emulation; it just runs. I thought there were a few others that also had native Mac clients, EVE maybe?

What soft- and hardware did you use? I think you give outdated information with that statement! I use Fraps all the time and I have pretty good fps on all the game I listed and tried. I just found one game unplayable and this just because of graphical bugs (AllOdds.. which is closed beta anyway)

- Hans

 

[CylonGlitch]

What soft- and hardware did you use? I think you give outdated information with that statement! I use Fraps all the time and I have pretty good fps on all the game I listed and tried. I just found one game unplayable and this just because of graphical bugs (AllOdds.. which is closed beta anyway)

- Hans

It was run on a MBP with 4GB of RAM, 2008 model. Run with both Parallels and Fusion (abet not the latest version, just the previous version). OS was XP Pro. Games I tried were mostly old games, TR:AoD, CoD, WoW, and a few others -- it was sad, and I'm not very picky about frame rates.

 

[OderWat]

It was run on a MBP with 4GB of RAM, 2008 model. Run with both Parallels and Fusion (abet not the latest version, just the previous version). OS was XP Pro. Games I tried were mostly old games, TR:AoD, CoD, WoW, and a few others -- it was sad, and I'm not very picky about frame rates.

As I wrote... even VMWare Fusion 3 did not work for a lot of the games I tested. Actually the only playable was Dragon Age Origins (I tested initially with: Dragon Age, Batman and Risen).

I am sure Parallels 4 will not work as well as Paralles 5 does from comments I read in the past.

Try Paralles 5 if you can! It really works and I feel very well because I can play all the games I got new in this year on the mac... pretty cool!!

- Hans