Blizzard games on Intel (MacBook)

[StofferX]

Hi there,

I am the owner of a standard MacBook (white). I am a fan of all blizzard games, and I had success playing most of them. World of WarCraft is easy, since Blizzard updated it with Universal Binary. StarCraft is easy, because Rosetta does the job - BUT, WarCraft III (and its expansion) I am having diffculties with.

WarCraft III install without the slightest problem - but when I open the game, I instantly get prompted with: "WarCraft III closed with an unexpected error (<-- or something quite like it) - OSX and other applications has not been affected.

I tried to reboot and reinstall the game. This time, the mac went to three different colours on the screen Black, Grey, Light Great and then gave me the same error.

I have been browsing help forums looking for a solution to this issue, but it seems everyone got success (more or less since its slow) running the game on Rosetta.

Any ideas about what this could be, and what I could do?

Many thanks,
StofferX

[nixgeek]

Since you're running this on a MacBook, you ahve to remember that the processor is completely different than the PowerPC ones previous Macs had. If this was a version for OS 9, then you're out of luck unless Blizzard has made available for download an OS X binary. If you have the one for OS X (which obviously has the OS X binary), then remember that on the Intel Macs like your MacBook you'll be running that application under Apple's Rosetta PPC emulation environment. Rosetta allows you to run PowerPC-based OS X applications on Intel Macs but you do suffer a performance hit as well as some other anomalies that might creep up.

The only choice you have at this point is to run it through Rosetta or pester Blizzard to provide a Universal Binary so that it will run natively on PPC and Intel Macs.

[StofferX]

I am going to pester blizz.

Rosetta dosent run the game though, its give error when I open the game.

Thank you for the quick answer

[nixgeek]

You never mentioned if it was an OS 9 version or an OS X version. Check blizzard's website and see if maybe they have any patches for the version you have.

[StofferX]

On blizzards website and the game cover, it says this:

"....# Operating Systems: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Warcraft III requires Mac OS® 9.0 or higher, or Mac OS X® 10.1.3 or higher.

# Memory: Warcraft III requires 128 MB of RAM. Virtual Memory should be enabled on computers running pre-Mac OS X versions of the Mac OS®...."

There is currently no patch available, and after many attempts - I finally got connected to the closed warcraft 3 forums (only for people who own the game), where some people are already pestering for the UB patch.

It took them no time to make it for WoW, I really hope they will make it for War3 too.

I would also like to ask, if unofficial groups could release such a patch?

[fryke]

What makes you assume it took them no time to make it for WoW? I'm quite certain that this largely depends on what code base we're talking about. Believe me: If it were a simple recompile, they'd probably have already done it. Seeing that this app ran on both OS 9 and OS X early on, I'd say it's quite possible that its code base is in CodeWarrior, and it simply is _not_ just a recompile to finish the job.

[StofferX]

I guess its a bit work,
Considering they earn approximatly 66666666 English Pounds/month just from World of WarCraft, I am sure they can buy whatever team the wish to update the game to universal Binary.

(:

Come on blizz, I hate gaming on my pc