WoW

Still not sure I got a consensus. If I get a Mini with all of the top specs, but unfortunately with the GMA950, can I play WoW? I am not looking for the highest graphics settings, but I would like to be able to play. Can anyone say for sure? Thanks!!

The Mac Mini has an Intel Core Duo, so if you have the universal binary version of WoW, then it will run just fine. Supposedly the Intel Core Solo itself should be faser than a G5, and you got two of them here.

Yes, You can play WoW on an Intel Mac, as soon as you load it on I think there's a patch you have to download for Intel Macs but other than that yes you can use WoW on your mac.

you need t pay for an account to use world of war craft online correct?

yep, $15 a month. And that's the sole reason why I don't own or play WoW.

While a mini will technically run WoW, I wouldn't count on it being playable. The GMA950 is not meant for gaming in any way. I would do a quick search for Intel GMA 950 on the World of Warcraft forum and see what turns up.

As for paying $15 per month, I used to be in the same camp, but then I played the game through a free trial and loved it. I used to buy a new game about every month to month and a half. I have been playing WoW since November and have yet to purchase another game since. So since the I have spent $75 for 5 months(first month free) vs at least $150 I would have spent on other games. In the end, for alot of people, WoW actually saves you money.

Would anyone be able to answer this through personal experience? Becuase I'm wondering how it'll turn out on my duo neye:

I think the real question is how well will the Mini's graphics capabilities work with the game?

It's not pretty, count on about 10 frames/second in resonably populated areas at 1280x1024 with all detail on the lowest settings.

I tried this out of curiosity not long after my mini arrived. Yes this was with the universal patch for WoW, although not with the latest version of Tiger that came last week, suposedly there were some OpenGL improvements.

Interestingly going up to 1680x1050 (Dell 2005FPW) doesn't affect that framerate much but lets face it, it can't get much worse.

Ya, 10 frames is pretty much unplayable. How is it outside of the cities. Did you test it out in the open?

Yes it can go up from there when out in the open, it all depends on what else is around you. I've had upwards of 55 frames/sec out of the mini in a building with no line of sight to the outside world and a single NPC in there but that's not a typical situation.

I actually do play WoW on the mini when I just fancy a quick game on one of my low level characters. In end game instances (Ahn'Quiraj) the ATI X850 PE in my games PC gets pushed a bit though so I've never dared try the mini in anything higher level.

I take it since we are saying mostly that it won't run well on a mini that it won't run very well on a 2.0g macbook either, is this assumption correct?

Kuturagi said:

I take it since we are saying mostly that it won't run well on a mini that it won't run very well on a 2.0g macbook either, is this assumption correct?

Click to expand...

Faster, but on low graphics I'd assume. The minimum requrements is 32MB, but it was 64 for maximum. So if you ever run anything on minimum requirements, it is never going to be great. For you it will be okay to play it, I am assuming. On my iMac G5 2.0GHZ, 128MB Video Card, 512MB RAM, it runs GREAT. The only time it lags is when it's the server's fault.

When it arrives Saturday, I shall be playing WoW on my iMac 2.0 GHz, 256 video RAM, 2 GB system RAM! Woohoo!

Playable is so subjective. I wouldn't want to play on a mac mini.

I'd actually try running it under Windows XP as well...

It should be a bit better due to the fact that windows uses more RAM for the graphics card and the card actually runs faster too (at least on the macbook).

ya, i was thinking or getting a ext. hdd for parallels and windows xp, but i got 2gigs coming for my ram so it should do a little better in the macbook now. I will have to install it and see what it does for me, just too bad that ArenaNet did not intend to put Guild Wars on macs...