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rMBP 15" and World of Warcraft

Z

Zodiac.mj

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 10, 2013
85
10
Hello!

This is my second retina machine (Haswell maxed out) and I just love it. Bought it mostly for work, but I play from time to time. The thing is, I play only Blizzard games and most of the time it's World of Warcraft.

So many people wrote how unplayable this game is on OSX. Well, setting up my BTO (arrived today), I installed WoW and tried it out.

First impression - disappointment. Fullscreen gives low frame rates, becouse it runs in native res, no matter what I choose. 10-14 fps was max. But what the hell, even on my desktop I don't play the game in more than 1600x something (always in windowed mode), so in for retina native res, 1280x800 windows would be all I need. And with maxed out details, it runs 40-60 fps in that mode.

But running this with default app settings, makes the game window look so small, I can't barely see anything. Solution?

Right click on WoW 64 bit binary (Applications/World of Warcraft), choose Get Info and check "Open in low resolution". Voila, you can use native res WoW (1440x900 would be a full screen for 15") and have maxed out everything and great frame rates.
 
i play WoW on the same machine as you and when i saw it on the retina display it completely threw away everything that most video game players say

i run it on minimum settings with a few things (personal taste) turned up to ultra and it looks so much better than any top spec gaming PC

seriously 2880x1800 on low settings > 1366x768 on ultra, any day

just my 2c
 
I see it completely the other way around.

High res (2880x1800) is unplayable, and I see no point playing in that res. Especially on low details, that's the opposite of "quality".
 
I'm running it at the moment on a 13" Retina with the Intel Iris graphics. At 1680x1050 on external display in Windows 8. Getting about 50-60 fps constant, but it still looks nice on "Fair" settings hehe XD
 
Adam552 said:
I'm running it at the moment on a 13" Retina with the Intel Iris graphics. At 1680x1050 on external display in Windows 8. Getting about 50-60 fps constant, but it still looks nice on "Fair" settings hehe XD
Click to expand...

Yes it is, I was playing on low/medium on my Haswell Air while waiting for new rMBP. Old one (first gen maxed out) was overheating and throttling while gaming, had to get rid of it. This one gets hot, but after 60 min WoW session it still works full speed. 1st gen heating problems are gone, I suppose :)


jondunford said:
typical gamerz
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You mean: wise, experienced and technical aware? If yes, you're just about right ;)
 
Why not run fullscreen 1680x1050? Both the performance and the IQ should be good. Note that running games in window mode reduces performance.
 
leman said:
Why not run fullscreen 1680x1050? Both the performance and the IQ should be good. Note that running games in window mode reduces performance.
Click to expand...

You can, of course. But I can't, need to work (from time to time). So only windowed mode does the job for me.
 
I'm running it mostly to 24" Cinema Display at 1900x1200. Most things are on ultra, 4 AA, no sunshafts. I've limited it to 40 fps and the game rarely drops below 35. Haven't had the fans ramp up yet even. Plays cool and quiet. Pretty decent!

Might give it a whirl on the retina display just to try it out.
 
In order to run things on high, I had to put it down to 1440 x 900 resolution. I still got low fps, ~40. Above my keyboard got so hot it wasn't safe to touch. I was really disappointed, but I have a desktop for gaming, I just wanted to try it out.
 
Any more input regarding the retina Mbp and WoW. I read and heard from friends that it ran fine on the previous 650m, so this one should be more capable. But I have seen some benchmarks comparing the 650m and 750m on the retina MacBook Pro and the 650m did better. I think it is due to a driver issue. All you WoW players, post your resolution, settings and frame rate :)
 
Zodiac.mj said:
But running this with default app settings, makes the game window look so small, I can't barely see anything. Solution?

Right click on WoW 64 bit binary (Applications/World of Warcraft), choose Get Info and check "Open in low resolution". Voila, you can use native res WoW (1440x900 would be a full screen for 15") and have maxed out everything and great frame rates.
Click to expand...

This was brilliant. I don't play anymore. but I was so ***** angry trying to play on my rMBP last year. It was such a regression from my previous cMBP. Thanks for a very intelligent suggestion. It's a pity that when I hassled Blizzard people on the forums and they talked to the developers, their answer was, "Working as intended" rather than a constructive solution such as this.

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Lord Flashheart said:
Any more input regarding the retina Mbp and WoW. I read and heard from friends that it ran fine on the previous 650m, so this one should be more capable. But I have seen some benchmarks comparing the 650m and 750m on the retina MacBook Pro and the 650m did better. I think it is due to a driver issue. All you WoW players, post your resolution, settings and frame rate :)
Click to expand...

I don't think it ran "fine" under the 650M. There were zones of painful lag in Pandaria, and competitive arena and RBGs were downright painful sometimes.

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leman said:
How about separating your work and play times? :p
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"Booooo" to this suggestion. I adored Windowed mode. I had no desire to completely separate my work and play, and I had a whole bunch of stuff—like Adium, which I used to talk to friends and coworkers alike—in the middle.
 
Brocksley said:
In order to run things on high, I had to put it down to 1440 x 900 resolution. I still got low fps, ~40. Above my keyboard got so hot it wasn't safe to touch. I was really disappointed, but I have a desktop for gaming, I just wanted to try it out.
Click to expand...

I think something is wrong with your computer.
 
leman said:
How about separating your work and play times? :p
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I'm a co-owner and CTO in medium-sized IT company in EU, so unfortunately I can't. There is always something I need to take care of, and WoW has to wait. That works great with windowed mode :)
 
I expect updated nVidia and Intel drivers for their respective GPU's coming sometime, especially nVidia, to fix some of these FPS issues in games that shouldn't be having them.
 
Zodiac.mj said:
I'm a co-owner and CTO in medium-sized IT company in EU, so unfortunately I can't. There is always something I need to take care of, and WoW has to wait. That works great with windowed mode :)
Click to expand...

This was almost exactly why I gravitated toward windowed mode too. It's really perfect for this sort of thing.

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mthos said:
I expect updated nVidia and Intel drivers for their respective GPU's coming sometime, especially nVidia, to fix some of these FPS issues in games that shouldn't be having them.
Click to expand...

I don't. This isn't a new issue with the 2013 models. It's been ongoing since the first rMBPs 16 months ago. This is "working as intended," unfortunately.
 
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