User:BrandonLive/Playing on Mac
While the official LOTRO Mac Client was discontinued in 2019, this page describes some alternative means of playing on a Mac using the Windows client.
Parallels
Parallels is a Virtual Machine solution for Mac devices which allows other operating systems to be run on Mac devices. Running Windows using Parallels on a Mac does not involve emulating Windows or a CPU. Instead, the official Windows software can be run (and is officially supported), and it executes natively against the Mac hardware. The result is that performance is suitable for many games.
Parallels offers multiple editions, some available solely through subscription offerings. The Parallels Pro edition offers greater support for 3D acceleration versus the standard edition.
As of July 2024, LOTRO has been found to run well on Parallels Pro on a MacBook M3 Max (using the ARM64 version of Windows 11).
| Device | Parallels Standard | Parallels Pro | Parallels Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| MacBook Pro (2023 - M3 Max) | Not tested | Works (Update 41) | Not tested |
| Intel-based Macs | Not tested | Not tested | Not tested |
WINE-based Wrapper
Pre-Catalina versions of MacOS only
When the official Mac client was discontinued, SSG released a package which used the WINE project to wrap the LOTRO client with an emulation/translation layer based on WINE. However, due to this only being offered for the 32-bit version of the client, it cannot run on newer versions of MacOS (as support for 32-bit applications was deprecated in the Catalina release).