MMORPG.com Aion Correspondent Josh Price looks at a couple of ways to ensure that if you're a Mac user, you aren't left out in the cold when it comes to playing Aion.

To some Mac MMORPG players, Aion is like a distant fortress located on the other side of some impassable geography. They stare longingly at it, wishing they could make the journey there. But, alas, the barriers are too great and the trip would take a long time without guarantee for success. Aion will be just one of those games, like many others, that they'll just miss out on.

But really, why should we miss out?

Read Playing Aion on Your Mac

That first image made me think of Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines.

I'm sure the 6 people out there who use Mac's for gaming will be interested to read this ;).

"Macs: for when two mouse buttons is too complicated" ;)

"Crash different" ;)

Hehehe.....

Mac and gaming lol, just shows you how ncsoft is "out of the loop"

At home I have a gaming system but at work I use a Macbook Pro. I run boot camp with windows 7 and play aion no problem. I have a hard time taking lunches until now! Now I take a full hour ever day just to play Aion. What is even cooler is that it takes very little bandwidth.

I've actually been using a Macbook Pro for gaming purpose (with Windows on boot-camp) since late 2006 and it's going all well. Been playing all kind of games from shooters (CSS, TF2, L4D), to RTS (AoE III, Warcraft III) and to MMORPG (Eve, WoW, WAR and now... Aion !).

I never had a problem DIRECTLY related to the fact that i was running a game (on windows) on my macbook pro. The main difference is for the versatile version of PC which let you change your video card, sound card, etc.

As for Aion, i never experienced the cut-scene audio/video problem that the OP had, but hey MAC is far from perfect so i guess someone had to run into something someday. I just went today to an apple store to change my RAM of my old macbook since i can now only run aion at mid graphic quality...

Thanks for this long and nice tutorial. I prefer Crossover if a game is supported. You don´t need a Windows copy and it works just in Mac OS. And it even is easier and faster to setup. But Boot Camp is more compatible and perhaps has better Performance.

But at the moment i have only native games on my Mac. And i tried Aion on PC and for me it´s not really good or funny. But Guild Wars for example runs great on Crossover Games.

And why should anyone not use his Mac to play? Everytime such stupid postings. Sad.

I also use Macs for gaming.  People don't seem to realize that they are actually PCs nowadays.  Bootcamp isn't really a program - it's a boot manager to load Windows instead of OS X.

There's a lot of ignorance about Macs and I was one of the ignorant until last year when I finally bought one to see what all the fuss was about.

As for the mouse issue - Pick your own gaming mouse, as you would on your PC.  You wouldn't use the mouse that came bundled free with your PC - you'd choose a nice Razor or something.  That's what I did on my Mac.

The reason City of Heroes runs slow is because it uses Transgaming's Cider to make the game run which is just a Wine port like CrossOver.  I'm not a fan.  I think Wine is pretty damn slow compared to native ports like World of Warcraft and I wish game companies would stop using it.  They should design their games with cross platform in mind - Not just for Macs but for Linux, XBox 360, PlayStation 3 or any other equipment that's up for the job.

Microsoft Vista was such a horrid thing to release on PC users that it drove many of us to other operating systems to preserve our sanity.  Thankfully Windows 7 seems to be more on the money.

Blizzard have always supported Macs natively and WoW runs like a dream in OS X.  Shame I don't like WoW any more lol.

I love that no matter what Mac guy sget laughed at by PC guys. 

What's worse is the fact that I remember being one of the morons laughing.

Hate to break it to ya guys, but my Mac is just as good a general purpose gaming rig as the next guy, and better regular day to day computer to boot.  But no one knows until they finally make the switch.  :) 

As for AION this whole article is basicaly a "use bootcamp" answer.  Been there, done that.  It runs fine on both my Wife's brand new Macbook Pro 17" (the new Unibody one) and my much older Macbook Pro 15". (The older pre-unibody one)  The only warning I have for my fellow mac users is the same one repeated in all Mac gaming through boot camp threads: Watch out for heat.

For some reason Windows ALWAYS runs hotter than OS X does on the same equipment.  I bet if I picked up some 3rd party Windows software it's an easy fix (and I know some windows guys who've pointed it out thanks) I just find it annoying that the basic OS won't properly manage the heat.  *Shrugs* 

Oh well.  The things we do for gaming. :D 

Hate to break it to ya guys, but my Mac is just as good a general purpose gaming rig as the next guy, and better regular day to day computer to boot. But no one knows until they finally make the switch.

Only difference ofc that you pay lot of overprice for PC that can run Mac OS legally, which ofc can't run most games so you end up bootcamping back to Windows all time you want to play more than those 10 games.

As for AION this whole article is basicaly a "use bootcamp" answer.

Which makes whole article totally pointless. Like I said Macs are PCs, been since they moved away from PPC (PowerPC). Whole article could been just simple "How to run Aion on Mac? Use Windows."

For some reason Windows ALWAYS runs hotter than OS X does on the same equipment.

Best thing is to upgrade drivers with non-Apple versions, they much more optimized.

People with Macs just crack me up.  They go to all these contortions to run a game and then think wow I am as good or better than the PC.

Well earth to Mac owners, you paid two to three times as much for your computer.  You could easily buy a gaming computer or have one built that would probably cost a third of what your mac costs. Why bother with the contortions?

Now I won't argue that the Mac OS is better than Windows, which it is, just that is that worth it if you play games too.

If you get a kick out of going through all these contortions, have it at, but don't come here bragging about it because all you will do is get laughed at.

Blue vs. Red... errr. something like that. I never understood the PC vs. Mac vs. Linux debates. Simply because I understand the pros and cons of each of the OSes.

Here is the thing. If you forget the fact that Apple allowed Power Computing to create Mac clones about 10-15 years ago, the reason why the Macintosh is considered higher quality is because all of the components are assembled inhouse by the same company who designed the operating system. This allows the software development department to know ahead of time what kind of interrupt and timing issues they are going to have with hardware and the hardware guys know what pitfalls exist with the software. Also, the support department can see exactly what you have installed in your mac as it left the factory and chances are it hasn't changed much. This allows support to be much more streamlined.

This is why people are paying more for the Macintosh. Everything is insourced and because of this tightly controlled.

That was until 3 years ago. Not because of the Intel switch. Personally, I was an Amiga user back in the heyday, so I know a lot about the motorolla family and the company was starting to fall behind in their consumer cpu lines. I'm referring to the fact that Apple is now outsourcing a lot of the components to other companies. Apple is also allowing for a much more open archetecture when expanding Macs.

This is good and bad news. The good news is that a lot of devices will work in the Mac even if they don't have official drivers for them. The bad news is that Macs now come with a slew of nVidia cards or ATI cards that you can choose from. The bad news is that the amount of testing is greatly reduced. For example, let's say that Apple may want to start including a new nVidia card in their Macs. Well, they test that card in a couple of their most popular setups and it does great stability wise. So, they offer it to the end user as a package. However, that same video card released by nVidia may go through 5 revisions over the course of the year. Any hardware manufacturer does this to streamline production costs and try to reduce failure rates to avoid RMAs.

Personally, if your at least somewhat tech savy, it doesn't matter. BUT, things to keep in mind before buying your next Mac.

• Is this the Mac you grew to love? Or this next machine a bunch of parts from several companies with an Apple logo
• If you are buying a Mac to boot to another OS with bootcamp (Win7, Vista, WinXP) and barely use OSX - you are inflating the cost by about $200 for something you will never use
• Compare the costs between a PC of identical calibure with Win 7 vs. Snow Leapord. The PC will obviously be much lower. Then think about is the $400-700 more worth it. What am I getting for this extra cost and will I actually use it?

As for the article, it's a moot point. Anyone who runs a Mac for gaming will simply pick up a copy of Win7 and use boot camp. At this point it -IS- a PC.

boot camping windows is viable, but it's not really "playing on your mac".

I haven't played Aion, but in general I don't think Bootcamp is a great solution for gaming, especially with the HD2600 ATI card. The drivers that come with bootcamp do not seem correct for this card. Even after a lot of tweaking, I never got respectable frame rates out of TF2 (which it should have handled with the same specs on a Windows box).

I also had an issue with Bootcamp messing up my system time, which I blame for some crashing issues I eventually had on my Mac. Everything went away after uninstalling.

Anyway, Mac != PC even with the same hardware. My Mac is a work-horse and probably the best machine I've ever owned, but I am saving to buy a mid-range $500 PC for gaming.

Screw OSX, run everything in Wine on Ubuntu. ><p

Originally posted by Ozmodan

People with Macs just crack me up.  They go to all these contortions to run a game and then think wow I am as good or better than the PC.

Well earth to Mac owners, you paid two to three times as much for your computer.  You could easily buy a gaming computer or have one built that would probably cost a third of what your mac costs. Why bother with the contortions?

Now I won't argue that the Mac OS is better than Windows, which it is, just that is that worth it if you play games too.

If you get a kick out of going through all these contortions, have it at, but don't come here bragging about it because all you will do is get laughed at.

The only reason Mac desktops are more expensive than PCs is because when you buy a Mac desktop, you're buying the CPU, the monitor, the speakers, the built-in camera, the keyboard, and the mouse. When you buy a PC, you're getting the CPU. Maybe the keyboard and the mouse. I can't speak for laptops though, I don't use a Mac laptop.

I love my Mac, but I don't play Aion. Still, it's good to know there are ways of playing PC games on the Mac without buying Windows (which I wouldn't have a problem with except that Windows costs about as much as a new PC x.x). I did try Crossover though, while they were doing a one-week free promotion. It didn't have many MMO's it was compatible with :/ I might look at wine though. I'll also add that EVE runs about 10 times smoother on my iMac than on my Dell. The iMac is a 2008 machine, and the Dell is 2006. Whatever that means to you. I don't remember the type of Dell, but it's a decent machine for gaming. iMacs would be amazing for gaming if gaming companies would start making games for them. But, if you're into customizing / building your own computer by buying and installing your own parts post-factory, PC is the way to go, because you can't do that with Macs as far as I know.

Originally posted by eric_w66

I'm sure the 6 people out there who use Mac's for gaming will be interested to read this ;).

"Macs: for when two mouse buttons is too complicated" ;)

"Crash different" ;)

Hehehe.....

You just really showed your ignorance, considering anyone who is a professional uses a Mac. A PC is a game machine still attached to 1985 x86 technology. If something is fail, it's your bowing down to Bill Gates as he rapes you with a new operating system every 2 years that is complete fail. People are still using XP FFS and it's still fail and completely compromised every time you turn around. I guess your definition of wonderful is a virus infested game machine? Then, yes, PCs pwn Mac.

Otherwise, why don't you take a look around and realize that the operating system is much more stable. If you are calling BSD and Unix less of an operating system than windows, do you realize how many tech professionals are now laughing their ass off at your incompetence. I mean, do you even know how many rings are in an intel chip architecture? Do you know how to streamline an entire company's VPN infrastructure? Probably not. Most likely, you are a 12 year old fan boi of PCs who can't even get out of the 8th grade.

Take a look at nearly ANY music studio, ANY graphics design house, ANY writer, ANY musician, ANY film editor, ANY screenwriter, ANY game designer, and tell me, what do you see? Macs. If they suck so bad, why do people 5,000,000 x more talented and intelligent than you use them.

Oh, that's right, you're going on demographics of people who were exposed to video games and a bandwagon that everyone jumped on.

Hey, PCs are great, too, for some things, I use both, however comparing a game machine to an operating system is hardly a comparison at all. Get a life and do some research before you troll.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

People with Macs just crack me up.  They go to all these contortions to run a game and then think wow I am as good or better than the PC.

Well earth to Mac owners, you paid two to three times as much for your computer.  You could easily buy a gaming computer or have one built that would probably cost a third of what your mac costs. Why bother with the contortions?

Now I won't argue that the Mac OS is better than Windows, which it is, just that is that worth it if you play games too.

If you get a kick out of going through all these contortions, have it at, but don't come here bragging about it because all you will do is get laughed at.

Actually, Mr. Self-appointed Douchebag, I never see Mac people going out of there way to say anything about their computers, PC people, or any of the above. It's always the closet PC people like yourself who are all over us. I've seen it before. I've actually been accosted by more atheists in my life than people with a religion, and they claim the others are bad for going after people. Nearly same concept, you sit here and bitch about Macs all day, when we really don't care, and then you try to spin and say it's us complaining. I'm really getting sick of these self-proclaimed PC gods who use an outdated piece of shit with BSOD and viruses all day. It really makes you look sad.

Fact is, what we claim is the truth. OS X is a better operating system, and nearly NO professional who has used both or BSD or UNIX will disagree with that. Period. We give a shit about your games. Most of the good ones are made for Mac, anyway, and usually run better. I've run WOW on the same rig on OS X and Windows with the same hardware.  Whether my eye can see it or not, I get 180 - 200 fps on my mac, and 80 if I am lucky on my PC side. Which is better? I wonder. I also get 87 ms ping on Mac side and like 190 ms on the PC. Again, I wonder.

Use something before you claim to know something about it. Again, I never see Mac people proclaiming anything, and just like the closet homosexual who beats up gay people or complains about them,  you running around bitching about Macs all day just shows you wish you had one.

Please, keep your Nazi rhetoric and propaganda to your little gaming community when you are acutally able to get online when not infected with a trojan or BSOD.

Originally posted by chaosngn

Actually, Mr. Self-appointed Douchebag, I never see Mac people going out of there way to say anything about their computers, PC people, or any of the above. It's always the closet PC people like yourself who are all over us. I've seen it before. I've actually been accosted by more atheists in my life than people with a religion, and they claim the others are bad for going after people. Nearly same concept, you sit here and bitch about Macs all day, when we really don't care, and then you try to spin and say it's us complaining. I'm really getting sick of these self-proclaimed PC gods who use an outdated piece of shit with BSOD and viruses all day. It really makes you look sad.

Fact is, what we claim is the truth. OS X is a better operating system, and nearly NO professional who has used both or BSD or UNIX will disagree with that. Period. We give a shit about your games. Most of the good ones are made for Mac, anyway, and usually run better. I've run WOW on the same rig on OS X and Windows with the same hardware.  Whether my eye can see it or not, I get 180 - 200 fps on my mac, and 80 if I am lucky on my PC side. Which is better? I wonder. I also get 87 ms ping on Mac side and like 190 ms on the PC. Again, I wonder.

Use something before you claim to know something about it. Again, I never see Mac people proclaiming anything, and just like the closet homosexual who beats up gay people or complains about them,  you running around bitching about Macs all day just shows you wish you had one.

Please, keep your Nazi rhetoric and propaganda to your little gaming community when you are acutally able to get online when not infected with a trojan or BSOD.

Put bluntly; you're clueless, and I'm glad you're on a Mac.  You're probably less of a danger to yourself that way. 

Originally posted by chaosngn

Originally posted by eric_w66

I'm sure the 6 people out there who use Mac's for gaming will be interested to read this ;).

"Macs: for when two mouse buttons is too complicated" ;)

"Crash different" ;)

Hehehe.....

 

You just really showed your ignorance, considering anyone who is a professional uses a Mac. A PC is a game machine still attached to 1985 x86 technology.

Yet Mac just recently switched to Intel processors, which use this"1985 x86 technology". Interesting.

If something is fail, it's your bowing down to Bill Gates as he rapes you with a new operating system every 2 years that is complete fail.

It's OS... "X" right? That "X" stands for 10 right? Yet Windows 7 is being released. Hmmmm

People are still using XP FFS and it's still fail and completely compromised every time you turn around. I guess your definition of wonderful is a virus infested game machine? Then, yes, PCs pwn Mac.

People would probably still be using older versions of Mac OS if it wasn't so bad. Mac OS didn't become viable until they changed it to BSD at it's core and put a nice GUI on to of it as what they made from scratch couldn't cut it. If your machine is filled with viruses, you are an idiot and it is your own fault, plain and simple.

Otherwise, why don't you take a look around and realize that the operating system is much more stable. If you are calling BSD and Unix less of an operating system than windows, do you realize how many tech professionals are now laughing their ass off at your incompetence.

I just can't believe you spent so much extra money on BSD with a pretty GUI when you can get Free-BSD for... free.

I mean, do you even know how many rings are in an intel chip architecture? Do you know how to streamline an entire company's VPN infrastructure? Probably not. Most likely, you are a 12 year old fan boi of PCs who can't even get out of the 8th grade.

I'll ignore the random tech blabble you use to try and justify yourself as a tech "expert"

Take a look at nearly ANY music studio, ANY graphics design house, ANY writer, ANY musician, ANY film editor, ANY screenwriter, ANY game designer, and tell me, what do you see? Macs. If they suck so bad, why do people 5,000,000 x more talented and intelligent than you use them.

I can't help but notice you can put the word "creative" in front of every one of those job descriptions and it still works. Macs are only used mainstream by the "creative" types. They believe that Macs are hip, trendy, and cool(They also have some nice creative software). Sure, many creatives use Macs, but creative jobs are limited, and Macs are still less than 10% of computers used.

Oh, that's right, you're going on demographics of people who were exposed to video games and a bandwagon that everyone jumped on.

I'm posting from the IT demographic where my entire IT department uses Windows with the exception of one person.

Hey, PCs are great, too, for some things, I use both, however comparing a game machine to an operating system is hardly a comparison at all. Get a life and do some research before you troll.

Just because something is capable of playing games, doesn't make it a game machine. It's funny how you try to spin Windows being capable of doing more than OS X as a flaw of Windows.

That random blabbering of jibberish made my head hurt, but I can't say expected anything less from a Mac boy.

Anyways, I love how Apple markets Boot Camp as some awesome Mac feature that lets you use Windows on a Mac!!! When in reality it's just a partition editor and a boot manager, something you can get on any platform. If your Mac can run Windows, it should tell you that underneath that light up apple, it's really just a "PC" after all.

This article wasn't about playing games on a Mac, it was about playing games on Windows.

Just to throw in my two cents worth since I love to do so.... I bought a Mac last year and was so disappointed by it that I shoved it right back at them for a full refund.  I wanted to see what all the talk was about, and was really disappointed.  I have to agree that people are being taken advantage of by Apple in the computer market because they do pay way more for their computers, and they are not as upgradable as one might lead you to believe. They make them this way so you have to eventually fork over for an entirely new computer every so often to keep up.

They had a good thing back in the day, but customizing a linux distro and marketing it as the ultimate OS is kinda fake. Also, locking fans into having to buy their computers in order to run their OS is kinda off the mark now that the are basically a "PC". They lost that arguement also.

Alot of people here tho have really done their homework.  Yes, the hardware is now identical, but whoever stated that the reason Macs have less problems is because they only use certain periphs was right on the mark. High Five!

Also, many of you may not have read the news lately; but now that Macs have touted a larger market share, the hacking and viruses are on the way  ;)  Did y'all see the article about the hacker bounty for Macs this week?  For each Mac someone can infect, they earn  43 cents.

In the end, just go with what you like, but I need more versitality and will stick with a PC.  I don't have the money to fork over to be considered cool and end up with something that is limited.  I do more than email and watch YouTube, and I like to keep up to speed with my hardware.

Originally posted by mlbslugger

Also, many of you may not have read the news lately; but now that Macs have touted a larger market share, the hacking and viruses are on the way  ;)  Did y'all see the article about the hacker bounty for Macs this week?  For each Mac someone can infect, they earn  43 cents.

The rest of your post was spot on, but I just wanted to comment on this specifically. Mac vulnerabilities have been there, they just haven't been exploited due to the low population. Apple left a Java exploit that allowed drive by downloads and execution of arbitrary code out there for 8 months before they finally patched it.

Hackers are going to start targeting Macs because even though they are a small market share, that small market is almost completely unprotected because they believe they are immune to such attacks. The very thing Apple uses as a marketing tool to boost their products image will come back and bite them when their products are boosted into the population. A bit of irony.

I've tinkered with OS X on my netbook, but I found it to be nothing special, and I get everything I ever needed and more out of my computer by multi-booting Windows and Linux.

Originally posted by mlbslugger

Just to throw in my two cents worth since I love to do so.... I bought a Mac last year and was so disappointed by it that I shoved it right back at them for a full refund.  I wanted to see what all the talk was about, and was really disappointed.  I have to agree that people are being taken advantage of by Apple in the computer market because they do pay way more for their computers, and they are not as upgradable as one might lead you to believe. They make them this way so you have to eventually fork over for an entirely new computer every so often to keep up.

They had a good thing back in the day, but customizing a linux distro and marketing it as the ultimate OS is kinda fake. Also, locking fans into having to buy their computers in order to run their OS is kinda off the mark now that the are basically a "PC". They lost that arguement also.

Alot of people here tho have really done their homework.  Yes, the hardware is now identical, but whoever stated that the reason Macs have less problems is because they only use certain periphs was right on the mark. High Five!

Also, many of you may not have read the news lately; but now that Macs have touted a larger market share, the hacking and viruses are on the way  ;)  Did y'all see the article about the hacker bounty for Macs this week?  For each Mac someone can infect, they earn  43 cents.

In the end, just go with what you like, but I need more versitality and will stick with a PC.  I don't have the money to fork over to be considered cool and end up with something that is limited.  I do more than email and watch YouTube, and I like to keep up to speed with my hardware.

You're quite mistaken about the origin of the OS it seems. They had their own code and then upgraded and based it off of Unix. Saying it was based off a Linux distro is lol, And drivers actually work with Mac OS. Linux is just a Unix-Like OS.

I still say that most of this is a moot point. Macintosh, FreeBSD and Linux are not supported by the vast majority of game developers for a reason. The market for games is spotty, wild west atmosphere with APIs that are simply not as robust as the DirectX model. I am not just referring to the the programming libraries. I am also referring to built in asset conversion with industry standard 3d modelers and level design applications. No company wants to start from scratch and build all their own tools, nor do they want to look for 40-50 seporate GNU programs that they need to make sure work well together.

That being said... it's still a moot point to bicker about the Mac vs. PC debate. Since games simply aren't published often on the Mac, most Mac users use boot camp. As it has been said in this thread before, at this point it is no longer a Mac. It is an Apple branded PC. Which is fine! There is nothing wrong with that. The whole point of a computer is to get the task you want done. Even if it is to play a game.

So much ignorance on both sides. If you go out and buy a PC today, and no I am not referring to going out and buying the parts, I am referring to a complete ready to use, turnkey system... It has the potential to be just as much as everything the Macintosh can be. All it really comes down to is the label and integrety of the company. Personally, I believe that Apple is probably one of the highest quality PCs you will find. However, it comes at  a premium price. If anyone wants to argue that, well it is possible to install OS X (x86) version on any brand of PC as long as it has Apple compatible components.

So, if people really want to debate, compare apples to apples. It should be a Snow Leapord vs. Windows 7 debate.

Oh, quick question, has anyone tried VMware's Fusion on OS X here? It's a complete virtual machine so it doesn't need to dual boot like boot camp and it will run inside OS X. Still requires Windows since it's virtualization rather than emulation. I have used VMWare workstation and ESXi server for years. I just wondered if anyone has tried out for playing PC games on the Mac. The latest version supports Direct X 9.0c