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I owned a MacBook Pro. I want to play a PC game called WarCraft 3 (with the DotA mod). I have Google and done some research on how to play DotA on the Mac. I can think of three possibilities:

Possibility 1: Buy Warcraft 3 for Mac (it does exist). However, I already own the PC version, and I dont want to waste another $60++ bucks to buy the Mac version (it's an old game).

Thus, I come across some forums suggesting using a VM or using Boot Camp to install Windows and play. This leads to

Possibility 2: Using Boot Camp and install Windows. Well, it sounds good for me, but I've never doen it before and I'm afraid I'll crash or need to reformat my Mac when partitioning, and Apple also recommends keeping a backup for your Mac when using Boot Camp. I do not want to go through all these troublesome things, thus I do not prefer this method.

Possiblility 3: Finally, using a virtual machine. I use VirtualBox, and already have a Windows XP install, running, that works perfectly fine. Now, I am wondering, if I install Warcraft into this virtual machine, and play the game ~5 hours a day, will it crash my Mac?

I have a few general questions about running Warcraft 3 in a VirtualBox VM Windows XP on a MacBook Pro:

1) Will the game lag, the video rendering, etc.?

2) Most importantly, will it damage my Mac?

If you have other methods of playing DotA (Warcraft 3) on Mac other than what I mentioned above, please do share them.

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Be careful upgrading to Mac OS X Lion if you play a lot of Warcraft III. Warcraft opens fine but the updater doesn't work. eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1874253837 – Nate Bird Jul 29 '11 at 15:18

2 Answers

up vote -3 down vote accepted

The best is S1. ;)

S3/lag - never tried VirtualBox for gaming, but Parallels works flawlessly with Direct X emulation.

S3/damage - the only possible damage come to my mind is the overheating damage. My old macbook (white plastics) survived very looooong WordOfWarcraft play without damage. My friend with aluminium (pro) notebook needed repair his video and wifi card - both times overheating damage - but both times it is detected as Apple's fault...

Ps:

S4 - go out with your girlfriend - it is much better spent time... ;)

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(S4) is it legal?? (S5).My girlfriend is also another dota freaks. We always play the game together – stupid.steve Jul 29 '11 at 7:32
In light of the edit to this question, the existing comment is hilarious. – LessPop_MoreFizz Jul 2 '12 at 1:18
up vote 9 down vote

You can create an account at www.battle.net and then tie your Warcraft 3 CD to your account.

Once you have done this, you are free to download the client on Windows or Mac at any time.

There's no need to buy different copies :)

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I registered a battle.net account. Now, how do I tie my warcraft 3 cd into my account? Please help – stupid.steve Jul 29 '11 at 8:24
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log in, click ACCOUNT (top right), click add game button, enter game key... – jm666 Jul 29 '11 at 9:07
While this is absolutely the best solution, the only snag is that while the game is Universal and runs fine on Intel Macs under Lion, the installer is a PPC app and requires Rosetta. So you'll need to install the game on an older mac/partition with an older OS, then move the installation over if you want to play it under 10.7 or later. – LessPop_MoreFizz Jun 20 '12 at 15:43

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