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WoW have to buy again?

L

leehal

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 30, 2009
73
7
I have played World of Warcraft on my PC for years and now finally have an iMac and want to migrate on to playing the game on there.

What is the easiest way to obtain the game? I am assuming my PC licence will not work anymore or is it linked to my account?

Are there any trials to download and then pay for the game or do I need to buy all the discs including expansions again?

Not trying to do anything illegal here by the way, I would like to know the simplest way to move my game playing to my iMac.
 
Last I checked when WOW was given to me as a gift (the battle chest) it was Mac & PC in the same box, same license. No?
 
You can download all the data for the game for free from their website.

'Registration' is linked to the account you use to play with, which can be billed via game cards you buy from shops, or via payments online.
 
Either put the discs into your Mac and install or log into battle.net and download the Mac client from there.

Blizzard now lets you download all the games you've registered from battle.net. Except for Diablo and WarCraft 1 & 2. :(
 
If you don't want to download a lot of data, you can go find a WoW demo disk, if they are still around (places like Best Buy), but the problem is the demo only covers the original version of the game. Downloading might be the best way to go.

I wonder how feasible it would be to transfer most of your data from your PC to your Mac? I believe that 99% of the data is the same on the Mac version as it is on the PC version. It's the 1%, things like the application, that would cause complications.
 
Your registration key/code is account bound, so no worries there, you can install it on how ever many machines you want.

The best way to get the game installed on your iMac is to download it from blizzards servers... really.

Even if you had a demo or game disc it still will have 'LOADS' of patches to download... you will be looking at close to a day downloading upwards of 16GB.

The other solution may be to copy the files from another mac that has the updated game installed although I have experience that that isn't always as successful as we'd like it to be.

My advice download the game agent/client and get it started, fly to destination of your choice make a day of it in Vegas or something, fly back the next day, and then you should be ready to get back into the WoW. Of course depending on your connection speed, you could also just spend a week in Orlando (if you had too).
 
So if he downloads from Blizz, is that just the downloading client to get things rolling?

If it is, and he obviously won't be playing during the download, then he can set the preferences so that all the bandwidth is used for downloading so he gets the files quicker.

Just a thought.
 
QuantumLo0p said:
So if he downloads from Blizz, is that just the downloading client to get things rolling?

If it is, and he obviously won't be playing during the download, then he can set the preferences so that all the bandwidth is used for downloading so he gets the files quicker.

Just a thought.
Click to expand...

Blizzard has a "download as you play" downloader for both Mac and Windows, not sure how it works, but it will download a few major files, then you can play while it downloads the rest. I didn't notice any difference in performance either.
 
leehal said:
I have played World of Warcraft on my PC for years and now finally have an iMac and want to migrate on to playing the game on there.

What is the easiest way to obtain the game? I am assuming my PC licence will not work anymore or is it linked to my account?
Click to expand...

Your game license is PC/Mac interchangable. No need to get another. Your account is linked at the server regardless if you connect via iMac or Windows PC. Your safe there.

leehal said:
Are there any trials to download and then pay for the game or do I need to buy all the discs including expansions again?

Not trying to do anything illegal here by the way, I would like to know the simplest way to move my game playing to my iMac.
Click to expand...

If you already have the disc's (assuming you do) they include the Mac version in them. You can re-download the client from blizzard or install from the discs you already have and let it run through the patch processes.

Blizzard has been dual formatting their discs (PC/Mac) for a long time. WoW is definitely one that contains both clients Mac and PC.
 
StopSign24 said:
Blizzard has a "download as you play" downloader for both Mac and Windows, not sure how it works, but it will download a few major files, then you can play while it downloads the rest. I didn't notice any difference in performance either.
Click to expand...

This is only for the next update. To get INTO the game you have to have the latest version of the game. When a new patch is going to come out, they release it early to the servers and as you're playing it download it; and then when the next patch is released, you already have it. It makes getting the patches much less painless because you're playing while it is downloading. BUT if you are not at the current version, you still have to download the latest version to get in, you can't be playing with a year old version while the newest version downloads.
 
CylonGlitch said:
This is only for the next update. To get INTO the game you have to have the latest version of the game. When a new patch is going to come out, they release it early to the servers and as you're playing it download it; and then when the next patch is released, you already have it. It makes getting the patches much less painless because you're playing while it is downloading. BUT if you are not at the current version, you still have to download the latest version to get in, you can't be playing with a year old version while the newest version downloads.
Click to expand...

Actually it's just for the trial version, so your best bet would just to make a trial account to download the download-as-you-play version. Like I said, I'm not sure how it works, but I used it before and it worked just fine.
 
StopSign24 said:
Actually it's just for the trial version, so your best bet would just to make a trial account to download the download-as-you-play version. Like I said, I'm not sure how it works, but I used it before and it worked just fine.
Click to expand...

Ah could be, I have not played in a few years. I know that patched load in the background as you play so that you have them on patch day. But having the trial do this for the full version is a good idea. The trial is very limited on what you can do and where you can go; thus it can have an older client. Makes sense. Almost all of the restrictions are server side, so changes are minimal, and just applying the full version patch after the trial is converted to a full version should allow it to work right.

I wonder if it causes problems if your account isn't a trial account?
 
Well the trial client is the same as the full client, the only reason that you would have a restriction on what you can and cannot do is because you are on an actual trial account, if your using the trial client with a full account then it doesn't matter.
 
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