How to install WINE for better LOTRO performance on your Mojave Mac. Revised, simpler procedure.

[Tralfazz]

Thanks for the report, DanteIL! I'm sorry we weren't able to get the open-source version of WINE working on your Mac, I still don't understand why.

...can only use DX9 rather than DX11...

Did you try DirectX 11 and experience a problem or is DirectX 11 not appearing as an option in the in-game OPTIONS->GRAPHICS panel?

I hate having to pay for 3rd party software (which is not even a one-time cost!!).

Any version of Crossover which is released during your subscription period is yours forever. You do not have to maintain your subscription to use those versions or any earlier versions. You only need to maintain or renew your subscription to install future versions of Crossover.

[DanteIL]

Did you try DirectX 11 and experience a problem or is DirectX 11 not appearing as an option in the in-game OPTIONS->GRAPHICS panel?

Lots of graphics issues with DX11. I'm pretty sure it still shows up as an option in-game, although I was just using the .ini file to switch between DX11 and DX9.

Any version of Crossover which is released during your subscription period is yours forever. You do not have to maintain your subscription to use those versions or any earlier versions. You only need to maintain or renew your subscription to install future versions of Crossover.

Ahhh that's good to know. Cheers!

[Tralfazz]

I've spent a few hours doing tests with the latest version of wine-devel which is 7.15. There are two significant differences for LOTRO performance and stability compared to 7.13:
1- The 15-30 second delay between invoking the LOTRO Launcher application and the LOTRO Launcher application visibly beginning to run no longer occurs. In 7.15, the LOTRO Launcher application visibly begins to run within 3 seconds of invoking the application from the Dock, most of that 3 seconds is the Wine Devel application starting up. That is the same performance as I am seeing in Crossover 21.2 and 22.0.
2- The checkboxes in the LOTRO Launcher application show their check marks correctly. In earlier versions of WINE and even in Crossover 21.2 and earlier, the checkboxes could be used to change options but the check marks would never show whether the option was enabled or disabled. This made it impossible to rely on the checkboxes in the LOTRO Launcher application to set options, necessitating direct editing of the UserPreferences.ini file instead. This improved behavior of the checkboxes is identical to that seen in the latest version of Crossover, 22.0.

I will note that I experienced no issues with running LOTRO in WINE 7.15, unlike the latest version of Crossover (v22.0) which has been failing to launch the LOTRO client application for most users and which, for me, exhibited a more minor error which I was able to correct by creating a new bottle for LOTRO. LOTRO ran perfectly for me in WINE 7.15, the only downsides relative to running LOTRO in Crossover is that LOTRO is limited to DirectX 9 instead of being able to use DirectX 11, and of course open-source WINE will work only when your Mac is booted into MacOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier because open-source WINE still has 32-bit components and no post-Mojave version of MacOS has support for 32-bit applications.

For those people who were having issues running LOTRO using other versions of WINE, I recommend giving the latest wine-devel (7.15) a try. To do so:
1- Launch the Terminal.
2- Teach your Homebrew the latest available casks:

brew tap homebrew/cask-versions

3- If you have an older version of wine-devel already installed, skip this step. Otherwise, delete any version of WINE currently on your Mac:

brew uninstall wine-stable

...or...

brew uninstall wine-staging

...depending on which other version of WINE you have installed. Again, if you have an older version of wine-devel already installed, just skip this step.
4- If you have an older version of wine-devel on your Mac already, run this command:

brew update

Homebrew will tell you that you can upgrade WINE. To do so:

brew upgrade

Finally, check to be sure everything has been installed correctly:

brew doctor

Remember that if you're warned about using MacOS Mojave instead of something more recent or if you're warned about needing an update to the Xcode command line tools, you can ignore that stuff. Otherwise, you will need to fix anything that got botched. It is very unlikely that you will get a warning that actually requires any action on your part.
5- If you don't have WINE on your Mac yet or just deleted it in Step 3, go back to the first message of this thread and follow the instructions there. (Don't reinstall SSG's old "Mac"/WINE version of LOTRO or Homebrew if installed already.) The only difference is that when it's time to install WINE, you will use this command instead of the command in Step D1:

brew install --cask wine-devel

The first time you attempt to run the LOTRO Launcher application using the newly-installed version of WINE, your Mac will complain that it is an app from an unknown developer. You will need to go into your System Preferences->Security & Privacy and "allow" WINE to run. You should only have to do this once.

In short: Anyone still using MacOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier and playing LOTRO from such a boot volume should use the current wine-devel which as of 2022-08-28 is WINE 7.15. It works perfectly, as good or better than Crossover (except for the inability to use DirectX 11 or to run under a post-Mojave version of MacOS), and is completely free.

[Tralfazz]

I have just learned about a bug in open-source WINE which affects all versions of WINE from 6.17 forward and prevents WINE from functioning properly in any version of MacOS earlier than MacOS 10.14 Mojave.
https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52354

Please remember that LOTRO will not work using any version of open-source WINE in any version of MacOS later than MacOS 10.14 Mojave because Apple removed support for 32-bit applications in all post-Mojave versions of MacOS. LOTRO still has 32-bit components (notably the LOTRO Launcher application) so it simply won't run in any version of open-source WINE under any post-Mojave version of MacOS. Crossover gets around this by using a proprietary 32-bit->64-bit conversion layer for Windows applications, but that is not available in the primary distributions of open-source WINE.

That means you must use MacOS 10.14 Mojave if you wish to use the version of open-source WINE which, as I write this on 2022-08-30, runs LOTRO best – which is WINE 7.15, the current wine-devel as installed by Homebrew. No earlier version of MacOS will do, so no 10.13 High Sierra, no 10.6 Snow Leopard. No later version of MacOS will do, so no 10.15 Catalina, no 13 Ventura. MacOS 10.14 Mojave ONLY.

I have edited the first message of this thread to reflect this new-to-me information.

If for some reason you simply must use a version of MacOS older than 10.14 Mojave, you might be able to get LOTRO to work by installing WINE 6.16 or perhaps an earlier version. However, I will not provide instructions for doing so nor will I provide support for anyone attempting to do so because such old versions of WINE are not available as Homebrew packages and installing WINE using any method other than Homebrew is not something I care to explain over a message board. That doesn't mean it's impossible, or even terribly difficult. But if you don't already know how it will be time consuming and you'll need to learn how to do it on your own; sorry.

[Tralfazz]

Just for kicks I tried the latest wine-stable which is still WINE 7.0. Surprisingly, LOTRO started up without delay and ran beautifully. There was no 15-30 second delay between invoking the LOTRO Launcher application and the LOTRO Launcher application visibly beginning to run. There have been several LOTRO game patches since the last time I tried to run LOTRO in WINE 7.0 while WINE 7.0 is still WINE 7.0 (obviously...) so I can only attribute this positive change to a change in the LOTRO 64-bit client executable or perhaps one or more of its support files (such as the vulkan-1.dll or lotrobrowserhelper64.exe).

So for those of you who were having trouble getting LOTRO to run on your Mojave Macs using the latest wine-stable (WINE 7.0) and still have wine-stable installed, I suggest you try to launch the game again. After the LOTRO Launcher application updates the game to the latest patch you might find that the client will just start right up for you.

[Valerin]

Greetings Tralfazz and everyone here!

I've been visiting and reading this thread since this year's spring. The instructions listed by Tralfazz on installing LOTRO using Wine used to be very helpful, and I played smoothly via 64-bit client back in June, as I remember. But after a break when I decided to get back into the game a few days ago, I stumbled upon an issue very similar to the one described in post #22 by Bristlehawk in this thread.

So, how it goes: I launch "LotroLauncher.exe" using a shortcut in the Dock. LOTRO Launcher opens normally. I log into the account normally. But upon choosing a server (Arkenstone in my case) and pressing the PLAY button, a new window asking "Where is the game client executable?" appears. I must note that it opens on the 'x64' subfolder of "The Lord of the Rings Online" folder.

Now there are 2 outcomes that I may get:
1) If I open 'lotroclient64.exe' file in the 'x64' subfolder, there appears an error window "Failed to launch client".
2) Or, alternatively, If I open 'lotroclient.exe' in the LOTRO main folder, then the launcher window just closes in a moment, and the wine icon also disappears from Dock meaning that it had been closed, as I understand. So, simply put, everything crashes and disappears without any explanations.

Now let me please give my system details:
Mac OS Mojave 10.14.6
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)
Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics Intel Iris 1536 MB


Some of my 'UserPreferences.ini' settings as follows:

[Launcher]
AllowMultipleInstances=true
FirstRun=false
UseHighResolutionGameData=true
PreCache=true
GameClientType=1
SelectLastPlayedWorld=false
WindowGeometry=@ByteArray(\x1\ xd9\xd0\xcb\0\x1\0\0\0\0\x1~\0 \0\0\xc0\0\0\x4M\0\0\x2\xe8\0\ 0\x1~\0\0\0\xc0\0\0\x4M\0\0\x2 \xe8\0\0\0\0\0\0)
LoadOnStartup=false
AskBeforeDownload=true
ThrottleDownload=true
ThrottleDownloadRate=4
AutoRetrieveUpdates=false
AutoRetrieveUpdatesInterval=4
KeepLauncherOpen=true
StayLoggedIn-Enabled=true
LastLocale=en

[Display]
AllowDesktopCompositing=True
AllowFakeFullScreen=True
AllowWindowResizing=True
Antialiasing=2x
ConfineFullScreenMouseCursor=T rue
FixedOutputScaling=Default
ForceFakeFullScreen=False
FullScreen=False
RefreshRate=Auto
Resolution=1440x900
ScreenMode=Windowed
SyncToRefresh=False
TripleBuffering=False
WindowedResolution=800x600

[Graphics]
AvatarTextureCompositing=True
AvatarUpdateVisible=True
PVMPPerformanceOverride=True


As I mentioned above, the game used to run smoothly on high prefs some months ago. The installation method that I used is the one described by Tralfazz using Homebrew in terminal. I have not used the 'Mac Download' launcher option from LOTRO website.

In Mac System Preferences under 'Security & Privacy' section, in 'Full Disk Access' subsection the permission is granted to 'Wine Stable.app'. In 'Accessibility' subsection the permissions are granted to 'Wine Stable.app', 'Wine.app', 'wine-preloader', and 'wine-64 preloader'.

My CleanMyMac antivirus isn't blocking anything, no firewall or Little Snitch is being used on this system.

I have already run terminal 'brew doctor', 'brew update', and 'brew upgrade' commands.

Now I don't know what to do. I've seen latest posts in this thread by Tralfazz telling that LOTRO runs smoothly on Wine v7 and v7.15. I think that maybe the best way for me is to uninstall the Wine, the game, the Homebrew - everything. But the problem is that I haven't played for a few months now so I've completely forgotten which version of Wine I am using (stable or unstable or staging, I really dunno, don't know the version number). My game is not installed in 'Application Support' folder, the path looks like this:
My SSD/Users/kayla/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/StandingStoneGames/The Lord of the Rings Online

So I really don't know what to uninstall and how to do that exactly in a way not to damage my system.

Now I'm here asking for a help. If you could advise me on what to do next, I would appreciate that very much, thanks a lot in advance.

[Tralfazz]

I stumbled upon an issue very similar to the one described in post #22 by Bristlehawk in this thread.

So, how it goes: I launch "LotroLauncher.exe" using a shortcut in the Dock. LOTRO Launcher opens normally. I log into the account normally. But upon choosing a server (Arkenstone in my case) and pressing the PLAY button, a new window asking "Where is the game client executable?" appears. I must note that it opens on the 'x64' subfolder of "The Lord of the Rings Online" folder.

Now there are 2 outcomes that I may get:
1) If I open 'lotroclient64.exe' file in the 'x64' subfolder, there appears an error window "Failed to launch client".
2) Or, alternatively, If I open 'lotroclient.exe' in the LOTRO main folder, then the launcher window just closes in a moment, and the wine icon also disappears from Dock meaning that it had been closed, as I understand. So, simply put, everything crashes and disappears without any explanations.

Now let me please give my system details:
Mac OS Mojave 10.14.6
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)
Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics Intel Iris 1536 MB

As I mentioned above, the game used to run smoothly on high prefs some months ago. The installation method that I used is the one described by Tralfazz using Homebrew in terminal. I have not used the 'Mac Download' launcher option from LOTRO website.

In Mac System Preferences under 'Security & Privacy' section, in 'Full Disk Access' subsection the permission is granted to 'Wine Stable.app'. In 'Accessibility' subsection the permissions are granted to 'Wine Stable.app', 'Wine.app', 'wine-preloader', and 'wine-64 preloader'.

My CleanMyMac antivirus isn't blocking anything, no firewall or Little Snitch is being used on this system.

I have already run terminal 'brew doctor', 'brew update', and 'brew upgrade' commands.

Now I don't know what to do. I've seen latest posts in this thread by Tralfazz telling that LOTRO runs smoothly on Wine v7 and v7.15. I think that maybe the best way for me is to uninstall the Wine, the game, the Homebrew - everything. But the problem is that I haven't played for a few months now so I've completely forgotten which version of Wine I am using (stable or unstable or staging, I really dunno, don't know the version number). My game is not installed in 'Application Support' folder, the path looks like this:
My SSD/Users/kayla/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/StandingStoneGames/The Lord of the Rings Online

Hi, Valerin! I'm glad you were able to run LOTRO using the instructions in this thread. And I'm sorry you've run in a problem after taking a break. Let's see if we can fix you up.

First, be aware that you can directly run LotroLauncher.exe (the LOTRO Launcher application) but you can't directly run lotroclient.exe (the 32-bit client application) or lotroclient64.exe (the 64-bit client application), they must be invoked by the LOTRO Launcher application. This isn't some limitation of WINE, the clients are designed to work that way, they won't launch without the parameters sent to them by the LOTRO Launcher application which transmits your credential authorization and server choice, among other things.

When the "Where is the game executable?" dialogue appears, that usually indicates that you are attempting to run the 64-bit client in an environment which lacks the resources to run it. The most common cause is a version of WINE which supports the running of only 32-bit applications. However, your UserPreferences.ini file includes the line GameClientType=1 which is the 32-bit client.

I'd like to see the rest of your UserPreferences.ini file (with your account information redacted to protect your privacy). For example, I'd like to confirm the version of DirectX set in that file by examining the expected line GraphicsCore=D3D9.

I suggest disabling or uninstalling CleanMyMac, at least while performing the troubleshooting related to this problem you're experiencing with LOTRO. You can enable it or reinstall it afterward.

You can determine the version of WINE on your system by running this simple Terminal command:

wine --version

Also, look in your /Applications folder. You should see an application called Wine Stable, Wine Devel, or Wine Staging.

In your next reply, let's see your full UserPreferences.ini file (again, minus your account name and any other personal details), the output of that Terminal command, and the exact name of the Wine X application in your /Applications folder. You can also try this before replying:
1- Edit your UserPreferences.ini file so that GameClientType=3 and GraphicsCore=D3D9 if necessary.
2- Open a Terminal window. Type the following into your Terminal window, without the quotation marks:"wine "
Be sure to include a single space after the word "wine".
3- Using the Finder, navigate to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/StandingStoneGames/The Lord of the Rings Online/LotroLauncher.exe and drag the LotroLauncher.exe file into your Terminal window. Doing so will populate that window with the exact file path to the LotroLauncher.exe file.
4- Hit the RETURN key on your keyboard to run that command line.
5- The game ought to run. If it does, great! If not, report back with as much detail as possible.

[Valerin]

Hi, Valerin! I'm glad you were able to run LOTRO using the instructions in this thread. And I'm sorry you've run in a problem after taking a break. Let's see if we can fix you up.

First, be aware that you can directly run LotroLauncher.exe (the LOTRO Launcher application) but you can't directly run lotroclient.exe (the 32-bit client application) or lotroclient64.exe (the 64-bit client application), they must be invoked by the LOTRO Launcher application. This isn't some limitation of WINE, the clients are designed to work that way, they won't launch without the parameters sent to them by the LOTRO Launcher application which transmits your credential authorization and server choice, among other things.

When the "Where is the game executable?" dialogue appears, that usually indicates that you are attempting to run the 64-bit client in an environment which lacks the resources to run it. The most common cause is a version of WINE which supports the running of only 32-bit applications. However, your UserPreferences.ini file includes the line GameClientType=1 which is the 32-bit client.

I'd like to see the rest of your UserPreferences.ini file (with your account information redacted to protect your privacy). For example, I'd like to confirm the version of DirectX set in that file by examining the expected line GraphicsCore=D3D9.

I suggest disabling or uninstalling CleanMyMac, at least while performing the troubleshooting related to this problem you're experiencing with LOTRO. You can enable it or reinstall it afterward.

You can determine the version of WINE on your system by running this simple Terminal command:

wine --version

Also, look in your /Applications folder. You should see an application called Wine Stable, Wine Devel, or Wine Staging.

In your next reply, let's see your full UserPreferences.ini file (again, minus your account name and any other personal details), the output of that Terminal command, and the exact name of the Wine X application in your /Applications folder. You can also try this before replying:
1- Edit your UserPreferences.ini file so that GameClientType=3 and GraphicsCore=D3D9 if necessary.
2- Open a Terminal window. Type the following into your Terminal window, without the quotation marks:"wine "
Be sure to include a single space after the word "wine".
3- Using the Finder, navigate to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/StandingStoneGames/The Lord of the Rings Online/LotroLauncher.exe and drag the LotroLauncher.exe file into your Terminal window. Doing so will populate that window with the exact file path to the LotroLauncher.exe file.
4- Hit the RETURN key on your keyboard to run that command line.
5- The game ought to run. If it does, great! If not, report back with as much detail as possible.

Greetings, Tralfazz! Thank you a lot for your kind reply. I just managed to get my hands on LOTRO. Working with no days off, so sorry for replying late.


First, I checked my Wine version. It is Wine Stable-7.0.
Then, I edited my UserPreferences.ini file. Changed GameClientType to 1. GraphicsCore already was D3D9, did not require corrections.

I've deleted my old Dock alias to LotroLauncher and made new one. Still no result, the launcher kept asking for the game client executable.

Finally I've run the command you suggested in step 3, and it worked like charm! Game runs perfectly!

To make sure that this success is not a one-time luck, I tried launching the game again. And now I see: running LotroLauncher from Dock does not work, but running via terminal works flawlessly.

Need to open terminal every time, but such workaround is pretty fine with me, as I don't play often.

Thank you so-so much Tralfazz! I really thought I'd have to spend another few hours of my life on reinstalling the game again (for the 7th or 8th time, I believe). Started questioning myself if I really do need to play this game for the mere sake of enjoyment...

Thank you very much! Many happy returns of the day to you.

[Tralfazz]

First, I am very happy you are able to play the game! See below, though, because after a brief reply to a detail in your last message, I have a couple of suggestions for making the launch of the game a little more convenient than following Step 3 in my last reply to you.

Changed GameClientType to 1.

I am assuming this is a typo and that you changed GameClientType=1 (which is what you reported was in your .ini file at that time) to GameClientType=3 (which is what you want it to be).

Finally I've run the command you suggested in step 3, and it worked like charm! Game runs perfectly!

To make sure that this success is not a one-time luck, I tried launching the game again. And now I see: running LotroLauncher from Dock does not work, but running via terminal works flawlessly.

Need to open terminal every time, but such workaround is pretty fine with me, as I don't play often.

Do you have an application in your /Applications folder named Wine Stable? You should. If so, rather than using the Terminal, try dropping the ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/StandingStoneGames/The Lord of the Rings Online/LotroLauncher.exe file onto that application. If that works, it is an alternative to using the Terminal and will also provide me with some useful data – so if you have the time, please try it and report back. We might be able to resolve the issue further so that you can use a Dock icon for LotroLauncher.exe.

Another alternative is to use the method I describe in Message #1 Step D of this thread:
https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...ayers-of-LOTRO
The only change to that procedure to note is the file path to LotroLauncher.exe which for you is, of course, different. You can get the correct file path by dropping the ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/StandingStoneGames/The Lord of the Rings Online/LotroLauncher.exe file into the Script Editor window rather than copy-pasting the example code I provided in that message.

[Roland_Deschain]

Hi. I installed homebrew a while back (years?) and it was fairly old. So I upgraded it to the current version. I then tried to install wine-devel but it can't find it:

% brew install wine-devel
Warning: No available formula with the name "wine-devel". Did you mean winexe?
==> Searching for similarly named formulae...
This similarly named formula was found:
winexe
To install it, run:
  brew install winexe
==> Searching for a previously deleted formula (in the last month)...
Error: No previously deleted formula found.
==> Searching taps on GitHub...
Error: No formulae found in taps.

[Tralfazz]

Hi. I installed homebrew a while back (years?) and it was fairly old. So I upgraded it to the current version. I then tried to install wine-devel but it can't find it:

Hi, Roland! You need to teach your homebrew the latest formulae:

brew tap homebrew/cask-versions

After doing that, be sure to use homebrew to uninstall any version of WINE currently on your system. Then, you can use homebrew to install whatever version of WINE you want to try.

Please note that any version of WINE from 6.17 forward will run LOTRO only in MacOS 10.14 Mojave. No earlier version of MacOS such as MacOS 10.13 High Sierra will do because of a bug introduced in WINE. No later version of MacOS such as MacOS 10.15 Catalina will do because LOTRO still has 32-bit components. And I don't suggest installing a version of WINE older than 6.17 in order to avoid the bug on an older version of MacOS because older versions of WINE might have trouble running LOTRO either now or in the near future.

If your Mac is so old it can't run MacOS 10.14 Mojave, you can try installing WINE 6.16 (or earlier, but no earlier than 6.0) but you won't be able to do so using homebrew. You can find WINE 6.16 in the WINE repository here:
https://github.com/Gcenx/macOS_Wine_...eleases?page=3
I will not provide assistance for installing WINE without homebrew. It's not complicated but there are too many things that can go wrong, it's just too much (for me) to attempt troubleshooting such installations over a message board.

Good luck! I'll be happy to provide additional assistance if you need it with homebrew, WINE, and LOTRO. If you do need some more help, it might be better to start your own thread here in Mac Technical Support rather than continue to enlarge this already overly-long thread.