iMac with EQ inside VMWare Fusion?

[Boeaz]

Greetings all,

I'm returning to EQ after, oh, maybe 10 years after starting soon after EQ classic launched. So, I have an iMac now and want to ask some questions before I spend money. I have EQ Titanium already.

Does anyone have any experience running EQ within a Windows 7 64 bit VMWare Fusion installation on an iMac? I don't have VMWare yet and don't want to part with AU$100 if it's going to run like a dog. I don't have any experience with Apple Bootcamp either but I'd rather run EQ in VMWare at the same time as OS X rather than reboot using Bootcamp every time I want to visit Norrath (but I will if I need to).

Thanks! I can't wait to get back!

[Mitchell92]

I've tried it on VMWare and Parallels Desktop on my Retina MacBook Pro.

My non-retina MacBook Pro I had prior to this one ran it great. The problem I have now with the Retina one is that it just won't play nice with the resolution. It crashes to desktop with errors.

[Sorn]

I run WinXP in VMWare Fusion on both an iMac and a Macbook Pro. The main problem is making sure the three different resolutions don't conflict, as mentioned above. Otherwise it runs great.

Just make sure you have vmtools installed so the virtual machine can use 3D acceleration. :)

[Pringles]

It runs but I found the mouse was way too sensitive and I couldnt get it to work good enough. Run it in wine instead, it works perfectly. (there are guides here for running eq on a mac via wine. Its what i recommend instead of a VM.)

[Sorn]

You can adjust mouse sensitivity in a few places, both in EQ and the virtual machine.

[Pringles]

You can adjust mouse sensitivity in a few places, both in EQ and the virtual machine.

Right, I adjusted VMware mouse settings and EQ mouse settings, no combination solved EQ mouse sensitivity.

This was ~3 years ago though. Even if it works fine in VMware now, wine is still superior to run EQ on OSX or linux.

[Boeaz]

Thanks all!

Your support is awesome from this community which makes me feel much more comfortable with the project. I did read the article for Wine but the configuration sounded a bit complex to me. Although VMWare is a bit pricey the Youtube video's make it look like a breeze to install and use on my iMac, particularly with the new Mac OS coming out in the coming weeks. Hopefully I'll be in Norrath one way or the other this weekend and I can't wait!

Thanks again and I will report back to this thread and share the details of my experience whether that be VMWare or Wine.

[nizuzen]

Hi, I'm currently playing EverQuest through Parallels on my iMac, but by default I get a dimension very small screen, and tried to adjust the dimension within the game options but I'm a failure and I automatically out of the game, someone comes up with an idea or has this happened?
Thank you

[Boeaz]

As promised I'm back to talk about what has happened. I downloaded a 30 day trial of VMWare Fusion and installed Windows 7 Pro 64 bit onto my late 2013 iMac 27". I bought a cheap LG GP60 external DVD writer to install EQ Titanium onto the VM. Everything worked fine. I didn't need to tweak or configure VMWare or EQ for everything to work. I've set EQ to the largest screen size using the normal in game options menu and dragged the Windows window out so that a small border is around the EQ window. Everything fits well inside the iMac's larger screen size. So, I'm back in Norrath (Qeynos) and loving reliving my memories.

Now I just need to buy Fusion in 30 days time but the lack of fiddling around and the confidence that it will just work is sort of worth it.

Cheers!

[Mitchell92]

Are you able to run it in full screen?

[Boeaz]

No, full screen ends in grief, often a black screen then if you return sometimes all the UI is stuffed. It makes sense I guess if you exceed the game's resolution - monitors weren't commonly this large in the early 2000s. I run at max resolution according to EQ Options, 1680 x 1050, which consumes about 80% of the iMac screen. This permits access to the iMac Desktop while medding with mail and browser in multiple windows at the same time.

It's all good so far with my Necro now at level 5! :)

[Mitchell92]

Ahh! Well, I'll stick with running it with WINE Skin wrapper if it won't let me get full screen... I'd put it on a VM if it let me run it full screen, oh well...