Today we’re happy to announce another major milestone in the development of Guild Wars 2: going forward, ArenaNet will also be supporting the game on Apple’s Mac OS X. The Mac Beta client is available immediately for all Guild Wars 2 players. It shares the same features and connects to the same live game servers as the PC client. Anyone who purchases Guild Wars 2 can now play it on both PC and Mac.
Bringing Guild Wars 2 to the Mac is huge for us, because it introduces the game to an entire group of players who are often ignored by game developers. The ability to play together with your friends is one of the underlying principles of Guild Wars 2, and providing a Mac client means that friends and guildmates can play together regardless of what operating system they favor.
Take the installation folder which is normally in. C: Program Files Guild Wars 2. And copy it to the desired harddrive location. D: Program Files Guild Wars 2. From that folder you can make a shortcut on the desktop which will start the launcher and download the rest of the gw2.dat directly to your D drive. I just confirmed that yes you can run Guild Wars 2 from an external drive. I plugged in an external USB 3 HDD, moved the Guild Wars 2 file from the Applications folder to the external drive, double-clicked it, downloaded an update, logged on, and everything worked fine. It is a little slower on a USB 3.0 external than an internal SSD, but.
On top of it all, ArenaNet staffers are big fans of Macs. We offer them as part of our employee laptop subsidy program, and our president Mike O’Brien is rarely seen without his Mac laptop. We’re as excited as anyone to play Guild Wars 2 on OS X.
The Mac Beta is available to anyone who has purchased or purchases Guild Wars 2. All you need is an active Guild Wars 2 account to download the Mac Beta client. Just log in to account.guildwars2.com and click Download Client to get started. If you have any questions, check out our Mac FAQ.
Keep in mind as you play the Mac Beta that it is a beta product. Performance and system requirements aren’t finalized. Review the beta hardware specification, and understand that your overall experience will be better when we release the final version. Even though it’s a beta, the Mac client does connect to the same live environment that the PC client connects to.
To bring Guild Wars 2 to the Mac, ArenaNet worked with our partners at TransGaming, whose Cider technology allows us to mirror the game experience as closely as possible between the PC and Mac. This means that future updates to Guild Wars 2 will be available for both platforms simultaneously.
So whether you’re a PC or a Mac, or both, we’ll see you in-game!
Today, ArenaNet announced Guild Wars 2 for the Mac (beta). As excited as I was for that announcement, I wasn’t looking forward to downloading the client all over again. With some digging, I discovered that I could simply copy my GW2.dat file from my windows installation to the mac install. Here’s how:
- Make your Windows client GW2.dat file available some how (mine is on an external drive)
- Download the Mac client.
- Run the installer.
- When the login window/downloader shows its ugly face, close the window.
- In your Finder window, navigate to your Guild Wars 2 install.
- Right click the Guild Wars 2 application and select “Show Package Contents”.
- Navigate to: Contents > Resources > transgaming > c_drive > GW2
- Copy your GW2.dat file from step 1 over the top of the GW2.dat file in the Finder window.
- Run the game and it’ll download any updates!
External Hard Drive Best Buy
Easy!