Anyone else have freezing issues playing WCIII on their MBP??

Hey guys I wanted to try some gaming on my MBP and I play WCIII quite a bit on my desktop so I loaded it on my apple to try it out. I only play online, mostly DOTA , and sometimes when I am in the menus or exiting a game it just freezes, it has happened about 5 times in 2 days of playing, and the only way to get it unfrozen is to turn it off by holding the power button till it shuts off. Its never frozen in game, but I lag sometimes for no apparent reason, using comcast internet hooked up with a cable, (not wifi).

My temps are about 70 degrees celcius with fans on high, so I dont think its a heat issue, especially with this being such an old game.

Any ideas, could I have a hardware issue does WCIII just not work very well on OSX?

thanks
austin

 

It does crashes sometimes, but not quite as often... which version are you running?

 

Well I guess the most updated version casue to play online you need the most current version.... i think its like 1.21? i cant remember.

so its normal for it to crash sometimes? is there any way to get it to quit when it crashes w/o turning it off?

 

Try a Force Quit. Open-Apple + Option + ESC.

 

yeah I tried that when it happened, nothing would work, it was like totally locked up with no mouse movement or anything.

 

Also, are you playing with the actual disc or an image? When I used to play WC3 I found it to better/more convenient to use a saved .dmg. If you want to try that, there is a guide How to Play Mac Games Without CDs/DVDs. Of course it may not work with the latest patch (maybe Blizzard blocked this with some fancy copy-protection), but maybe it's worth a try. Worst case scenario is that you delete the image file and continue playing with the actual CD.

Still, the game shouldn't freeze either way.

Edit: Found this from Blizzard: Are you experiencing unrecoverable crashes in Mac OS X?

 

I play it just fine with no issues, but I haven't updated it from the version that came on the disc I bought.

 

ok cool.

I have been running it using the CD but I am familiar with using an image but only on XP, Ill try the guide you posted when I get home as well and the blizzard guide if that doesnt clear it up.

thanks for the help!

ill report back if I still have issues

 

version 1.21 (the latest) is supposed to be an Universal Binary. But the version before that (1.20e, I guess) was very stable, so I never updated. I hardly ever play it online though (I really suck!) so I am not sure how it will behave while connected to Battle.net.

 

I run WCIII on XP and I recently had freezing issues and it had to do with my computer overheating. It would freeze several times a day n the middle of games. Even temperatures around 70-80 would cause my computer to freeze. You may want to try to lower your comp temperature, that may also be an issue.

 

ok

what should be a stable temp for fairly low end game like wc3 ? ( I am playing at 1440x900 res at max settings )

like between 65-75? maybe I have some heat issues. I am running the fans on max 6k rpms on a hard table with the back propped up on a CD case to improve ventilation. It just doesnt seem like this game should be graphically intensive to casue such high temps. Like if I run fear or something it seems like this thing is just going to melt if its already hot playing WC3 made over 5 years ago.

 

I seriously doubt it's a heat issue. You said you were at 70-degrees Celsius, that's perfectly normal for a game and well within operating specfications. You're right, newer games, that are more graphically-intensive will give even higher temps. I get about 80-degrees Celsius playing Call of Duty 2 on a 2.4GHz MBP in OS X. It never crashes.

Also, Stunner was talking about XP. You're playing on OS X, right? Who know what hardware Stunner is talking about either, the signature says something about ThinkPad. You're playing on a MBP, right? These are two very important differences.

I think you should check out the link to Blizzard. And if you're still having problems, it doesn't hurt to play around with the game settings. Like Antialiasing, Anisotropic filtering, etc.

You said your fans were running at 6k RPM. Are you using smcFanControl? I suppose smcFanControl could be causing a problem, but I doubt it. One more thing to consider if you cannot otherwise isolate the problem. Good luck!