Success with Crossover 20 and MacOS Big Sur 11.0.1

[shilofax293]

More details would be helpful, a screenshot would be good.

You are able to enter your credentials but instead of logging in and getting a list of available game worlds you get some error message? If that is correct then my first guess based on “I get an authentication error” is that you are making an error when typing your account name or your password or both. Try again, be sure you are entering both your account name and password correctly. They should be the same as the account name and password you use to log in to the forums here.

If that isn’t the cause of the problem, let’s hear some more details and perhaps see that screenshot. I’ll do my best to help!

Managed to get past this now.

So I've gotten to the point where I can select a world, but once I do that, the launcher stays open, and says "Initializing..." and never progresses past that. I'm using a 2020 MBP with the M1 chip, so honestly it could be an incompatibility with the new apple silicon.

EDIT: Now I've gotten the game client to launch, but it just remains on a black screen. Selected no at the DX10 prompt.

EDIT2: Now it just works. So that's nice!

Thanks for your post on this matter!

[Tralfazz]

So I've gotten to the point where I can select a world, but once I do that, the launcher stays open, and says "Initializing..." and never progresses past that. I'm using a 2020 MBP with the M1 chip, so honestly it could be an incompatibility with the new apple silicon.

It's not about your lovely new Mac's M1 chip. I know of at least 3 people that are using an M1 Mac to run LOTRO.

Did you follow the steps outlined in Message #17 of this thread? If not, the problem you're experiencing is most likely due to the ScreenMode and Resolution settings. The LOTRO game client is not able to properly recognize the very high "retina" resolutions of modern Macs. And the LOTRO game client defaults to FullScreen mode. That causes the LOTRO client to fail to launch properly. The failure most often results in a black screen but some people report what you did: The client just doesn't seem to run at all.

Please go to ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/UserPreferences.ini and open that file with TextEdit. Copy/paste the contents of that file in your next reply in this thread. If there is any personal information in there such as your account name or the server you play on, redact that information (no personal information should be in there if you haven't managed to log in to the game yet). If there is a ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/UserPreferences64.ini file, please copy/paste the contents of that file as well.

Please confirm that you have installed Crossover 20 on your Mac and that you have LOTRO installed into Crossover. That is the only way to run LOTRO on Big Sur, you can't run the "Mac"/WINE client that SSG provides – you must run the regular Windows client within Crossover. LOTRO has 32-bit components and since post-Mojave versions of MacOS cannot run 32-bit applications, the "Mac"/WINE version of the game will run only on Mojave and earlier.

[Tralfazz]

Now it just works. So that's nice!

Thanks for your post on this matter!

OK, well, glad to hear it. I'm happy that you got it to work and if my posts helped, that makes my day!

It might be helpful for future folks who have the same problem if you were to describe exactly what you did to overcome each obstacle you ran into rather than just saying, "Well, I got it to work!"

[JohnAdcox]

I just wanted to say thanks ... a thousand times thank you. I followed your excellent instructions to the letter, and the game is working like a champ! I am beyond grateful.

[shilofax293]

It's not about your lovely new Mac's M1 chip. I know of at least 3 people that are using an M1 Mac to run LOTRO.

Did you follow the steps outlined in Message #17 of this thread? If not, the problem you're experiencing is most likely due to the ScreenMode and Resolution settings. The LOTRO game client is not able to properly recognize the very high "retina" resolutions of modern Macs. And the LOTRO game client defaults to FullScreen mode. That causes the LOTRO client to fail to launch properly. The failure most often results in a black screen but some people report what you did: The client just doesn't seem to run at all.

Please go to ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/UserPreferences.ini and open that file with TextEdit. Copy/paste the contents of that file in your next reply in this thread. If there is any personal information in there such as your account name or the server you play on, redact that information (no personal information should be in there if you haven't managed to log in to the game yet). If there is a ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/UserPreferences64.ini file, please copy/paste the contents of that file as well.

Please confirm that you have installed Crossover 20 on your Mac and that you have LOTRO installed into Crossover. That is the only way to run LOTRO on Big Sur, you can't run the "Mac"/WINE client that SSG provides – you must run the regular Windows client within Crossover. LOTRO has 32-bit components and since post-Mojave versions of MacOS cannot run 32-bit applications, the "Mac"/WINE version of the game will run only on Mojave and earlier.

I followed all the steps, for whatever reason the first 1-2 times it would not launch properly, but eventually it just worked. Runs exceptionally well as well. Thanks for this post and all the info contained.

[juanjose1981]

Hi! Thanks! Its a great guide! I have an issue. I can run lotro but at 15fps. I have a Macbook pro M1. Any idea?

[Tralfazz]

Hi! Thanks! Its a great guide! I have an issue. I can run lotro but at 15fps. I have a Macbook pro M1. Any idea?

How much RAM do you have in your nice new Mac? If it's 8gb that is going to be a little bit of a bottleneck for games because your 8gb has to run your OS, anything running in the background, the game you're playing, and some will be allocated as "video RAM" and unavailable to the system as a whole. For something like LOTRO, even though it's not terribly demanding, 8gb shared between the system and the video subsystem is not a lot. 16gb should be plenty especially if you aren't running a bunch of other applications simultaneously with your game. Reducing your video quality settings will help, perhaps a lot, if you have only the minimum 8gb of RAM.

Are you running any other applications? If so, quit out of them. (You must leave Crossover running, of course.) If you are new to Macs, be aware that closing all the windows attached to an application does not quit that application in most cases, use command-q to quit. Some applications run in the background and you won't see any windows or see them in your dock, check System Preferences->Users & Groups->Login Items.

Be sure you are running the 64-bit version of the LOTRO client, lotroclient64.exe. To check this, go to ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/UserPreferences.ini and open that file with TextEdit. Look for the line...
GameClientType=X
...where X is a numeral between 1 and 3. If it's not 3, change it to 3.
***Note that the Crossover "bottle" into which you installed LOTRO must be a Windows 10 64-bit bottle in order to run the 64-bit client. If it's labeled as a Windows 10 bottle without the 64-bit qualifier, then it's a 32-bit bottle. If the latter is the case, you will need to create a new Windows 10 64-bit bottle so you can run the game from there.

Beyond that, I ask you to post the contents of your UserPreferences.ini and UserPreferences64.ini files. Please redact any personal information such as your account name and server names but include everything else. By examining your prefs files I can see exactly what video settings you are using and perhaps see some things we can optimize to get you better framerates.

[Roland_Deschain]

Great job on getting Lotro to run on BigSur.

The stumbling block with getting Lotro to run on Catalina is the 32-bit launcher. Seems like Codeweaver added 32-bit support in a 64-bit environment with Crossover 20? Did you ever attempt to get Lotro running in Catalina with Crossover 20?

[Tralfazz]

Great job on getting Lotro to run on BigSur.

The stumbling block with getting Lotro to run on Catalina is the 32-bit launcher. Seems like Codeweaver added 32-bit support in a 64-bit environment with Crossover 20? Did you ever attempt to get Lotro running in Catalina with Crossover 20?

Hi, Roland!

Yes, the 32-bit LOTRO launcher application is quite likely the only reason the Windows client with a WINE wrapper that SSG provides for Mac users won't work with versions of MacOS more recent than Mojave. However, there might be other components of the game which are also 32-bit, I can't be certain. Probably just the launcher, though, and it's not a terribly complex application so hopefully SSG will produce a 64-bit version of the launcher. That ought to allow LOTRO to run on post-Mojave OSes without any need for Crossover.

No, I didn't bother running LOTRO with Crossover 20 under Catalina. I have read reports of others who did so. I only started playing in August and Big Sur was right around the corner so I waited for that, rebooting into Mojave when I wanted to play the game. (I still keep a Mojave boot volume because I have a number of other applications that are 32-bit and which remain useful to or fun for me.) If you are running Catalina you should be able to follow the same procedure I describe in Message #17 of this thread to install and run the game using the 2-week free trial or a fully licensed version of Crossover 20.

Crossover 19 should work with Catalina if you have a license for that but not for Crossover 20. Look at Message #2 in this old thread for one example of a person who did so:
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...-to-the-Mac-OS

[Jerusha]

Thank you for all the information & directions.
I am running Catalina 10.15.7 on a 27" 2017 iMac; 4.2 GHz Core i7; 32 GB ram; Radeon Pro 580 8 GB
I downloaded the trial of Crossover v.20.02. I created a bottle for Windows 10 64 bit.
I downloaded LOTRO to it. I never saw an option to choose the "standard resolution" version.
I clicked PLAY and received the window to put in my User name, Password & choose the server that I play.
A window popped open asking if I wanted to choose DirectX 10 Graphics. I have chosen both to use it and to not choose it.
Several times the game just quits instantly, and once I got the black screen and had to force quit it as you stated and quit Crossover.
My ini file looks nothing like yours. Here is my copy when I open it in Text Edit:

[Launcher]
AllowMultipleInstances=true
FirstRun=false
PreCache=true
SelectLastPlayedWorld=false
GameClientType=3
WindowGeometry=@ByteArray(\x1\ xd9\xd0\xcb\0\x1\0\0\0\0\x3\x9 1\0\0\x1\xb7\0\0\x6`\0\0\x3\xd f\0\0\x3\x91\0\0\x1\xb7\0\0\x6 `\0\0\x3\xdf\0\0\0\0\0\0)
StayLoggedIn-Enabled=false

[User_1]
UserName=StamperCat
WorldName_1=Landroval
LastPlayed_1=2021-01-05T23:17:53
UserFileName_1=en-LOTRO_Eula-html
UserAckTime_1=2019-04-10T18:56:38
UserFileName_2=en-LOTRO_TOS-html
UserAckTime_2=2019-04-10T18:56:38

I was really hoping this would work as I have Windows 10 Home installed through Bootcamp and a few months ago it will only connect to my WiFi at .5 mbps, while on the Mac side it connects at over 100mbps. I have tried everything I could find online and through Apple care and other support calls and can't fix the problem. Had given up playing LOTRO because of it and I am a Lifetime member, joining before it launched. If you can suggest anything else I might try, it would be appreciated. I miss playing my characters.
Thanks again for your instructions,
Shirley

[Tralfazz]

I was really hoping this would work...

Assuming there's nothing wrong with your computer or your install of Catalina, I am all but certain we can get it to work! Don't give up yet.

A window popped open asking if I wanted to choose DirectX 10 Graphics. I have chosen both to use it and to not choose it.

I didn't understand this. I hope you said NO when that window popped up, and you should have DirectX 9 chosen for your first run. After you get the game running you can switch from DirectX 9 to Direct X 10 – or even Direct X 11 which is what I've been using for some weeks now and have found to be the best choice for least glitches and prettiest vistas.

Several times the game just quits instantly, and once I got the black screen and had to force quit it as you stated and quit Crossover.

I am not 100% sure what this means. Did you successfully get to the character creation/selection screen, enter the game world with a character, and then get a crash or black screen? Or did you get to the LOTRO launcher app, enter your user name and password, then get either nothing or a black screen at that point? I am going to assume the latter unless you write back otherwise.

GameClientType=3

That's good, that line is one of the things you need. Don't worry about the rest of what you showed me. Please go back and edit your post so that you redact your user name, that is personal information you shouldn't put on the public forums here.

At this point you should have the following two files inside your ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online folder. The first is UserPreferences.ini and the second is UserPreferences64.ini. I know for sure you have a UserPreferences.ini file, that's where you copied that information you showed me. If you do not have a UserPreferences64.ini file, that's OK, you will just have to create it from scratch using TextEdit.

1- Open your UserPreferences.ini file. Find and edit the following lines and if they don't exist, just type them in yourself. Don't worry if you have other lines in addition to these, just look for these lines and add/edit them as needed so they match what you see below:

[Launcher]
GameClientType=3

[Display]
AllowFakeFullScreen=True
AllowWindowResizing=True
FixedOutputScaling=Default
ForceFakeFullScreen=False
FullScreen=False
Resolution=2048x1152
ScreenMode=FullScreenWindowed
WindowedResolution=1680x945

[Render]
AspectRatio=Auto
D3DVersionPromptedForAtStartup =10
GraphicsCore=D3D9
HavePromptedForD3D10AtStartup= False

2- Open your UserPreferences64.ini file. As I wrote above, if you don't have one that's OK, just create a new file with TextEdit and save it to the same location as UserPreferences.ini which is ~Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online. Find and edit the following lines and if they don't exist, just type them in yourself. Don't worry if you have other lines in addition to these, just look for these lines and add/edit them as needed so they match what you see below:

[Display]
AllowFakeFullScreen=True
AllowWindowResizing=True
FixedOutputScaling=Default
ForceFakeFullScreen=False
FullScreen=False
Resolution=2048x1152
ScreenMode=FullScreenWindowed
WindowedResolution=1680x945

[Render]
AspectRatio=Auto
D3DVersionPromptedForAtStartup =10
GraphicsCore=D3D9
HavePromptedForD3D10AtStartup= False

The most important lines are ScreenMode=X, Resolution=Y, and WindowedResolution=Z:
1- X has to be FullScreenWindowed or Windowed, it can NOT be FullScreen. You can use FullScreen later but not now.
2- Y has to be equal to your chosen resolution. Your Mac runs 2560x1440 by default but you could have it set to something else. Set Y to whatever you use.
3- Z just has to be smaller than Y. If Y is 2560x1440 then I suggest 1920x1080 for Z but 1680x945 or any other SMALLER THAN Y 16:9 rez should be fine.

The second most important line is GraphicsCore=N. You can use DirectX 10 or DirectX 11 later but until you get the game working please use DirectX 9. To use DirectX 9, N must be set to D3D9.

Please try this, it should work. If not, please report back here. There is at least one more thing we can try to get LOTRO to work with Crossover if necessary.

I have Windows 10 Home installed through Bootcamp and a few months ago it will only connect to my WiFi at .5 mbps, while on the Mac side it connects at over 100mbps.

Boot Camp is notorious for playing badly with wifi, if you can use ethernet instead that should solve that problem. However, if you can avoid Boot Camp and Windows entirely, that's really better.

Since your Mac can boot Mojave, if you can't get the game running within Crossover you can simply create a small Mojave boot volume. After creating a new APFS volume on your drive and installing Mojave onto it, you can then install and run the "Mac"/WINE client from there. Rebooting to the Mojave volume to play doesn't take long, rebooting back to your Catalina or Big Sur volume to get back to work doesn't take long, either. The "Mac"/WINE client works very well, its only significant limitation is that it won't run on any version of MacOS post-Mojave because it has 32-bit components (mainly, and possibly only, the LOTRO launcher app) and post-Mojave versions of MacOS do not have support for 32-bit applications. Do try to get the game to work with Crossover, but if you begin to get frustrated or just can't do it for some reason, get a Mojave boot volume set up (a small external drive will do if you have no space on your main drive) and run the game from there. Having to boot back and forth between Mojave and Catalina/Big Sur is better than having to boot back and forth between Boot Camp with Windows and Catalina/Big Sur.

edit: There should be no spaces within the lines in the config files. Those spaces in this message are not typos on my part but for some reason the forum is adding spaces there. I cannot eliminate them.

[Jerusha]

Thank you SO MUCH, Tralfazz!!! It works! I added the ini 64 file, as you suggested and I got the black screen. Then I saw your very last comment about the spaces being added that shouldn't be in the config file. I took out all those spaces and it loaded fine. I have booted it up twice using 2 different characters. This is awesome! Only thing I see a bit different is that the movement could be smoother. Are there any suggestions to help that out? I'm not complaining....nice to not have to boot into Windows. Now if I could figure out where or how I could download a Steam game (Banished) to install in Crossover to play, I would remove Windows from my machine. You are a treasure....thank you again!!!

[Tralfazz]

Thank you SO MUCH, Tralfazz!!! It works!

I'm so happy to hear it, thanks for reporting back. I will say that the reason this is such a silly process is because SSG insists on having the LOTRO client executables default to FullScreen mode when no instructions otherwise are in the .ini file for that executable or when the .ini file that executable looks for doesn't exist. And the client doesn't know how to deal with a modern Mac's "retina" resolution modes. (As an aside, you CAN run in FullScreen but not for the "first run" – you have to get the game to launch in Windowed or FullScreenWindowed mode at least once. There's no advantage to playing in FullScreen rather than FullScreenWindowed mode, though.) If they'd change the default ScreenMode to Windowed or FullScreenWindowed then all these hoops would go away. (And updating the LOTRO launcher application to 64-bit would eliminate the need for Crossover, WINE would be enough.)

Only thing I see a bit different is that the movement could be smoother. Are there any suggestions to help that out?

Your machine is two model years older than mine but even so it has a lot more horsepower both in its CPU and GPU than mine. You should not be experiencing any issues with framerates outside of raids or areas with tons of traffic such as Minas Tirith during a festival event.

Three things:
1- Try going to DirectX 11. It works really well, fewer minor graphical glitches than DirectX 9 and none of the horrid immersion-breaking glitches of DirectX 10. I explain how to get DirectX 11 working with Crossover and LOTRO here:
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...-Big-Sur-11-1)
2- Since LOTRO isn't a first-person shooter or other twitch game, you don't need a framerate over 100 to fully enjoy it. I keep my framerate capped at 30. You can cap your framerate by going into the in-game options, "troubleshooting" section and moving the slider.
3- Using very high values of antialiasing can reduce framerate alot and you don't get much benefit beyond 2x so try setting it to 2x if you currently have it set higher. Very high values of anisotropic filtering can also reduce framerate a lot and you don't get much benefit beyond 4x so try setting it to 4x if you currently have it set higher.
4- Last thing to try is to reduce your resolution setting. This really shouldn't be necessary, your machine is quite powerful and LOTRO isn't terribly demanding unless you really try to stress it (such as by setting unnecessarily high values for antialiasing or anisotropic filtering) so reduce your resolution only if you try all of the 3 things above and they don't do the trick for you.

Now if I could figure out where or how I could download a Steam game (Banished) to install in Crossover to play, I would remove Windows from my machine.

Codeweavers keeps a database of games and other Windows applications that work on Macs with Crossover. Sometimes the information is old, sometimes it's updated recently, it depends mostly on users to add data such as ratings and tips. The game you want is listed, try reading about it here. If you already own the game it won't cost you anything and can't hurt to try to get it working in Crossover. Here's the link to Crossover's Banished page:
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatib...sover/banished

I'm not that much of a computer gamer so I don't use Steam for buying or installing games but I know people using the Windows steam client with Crossover on their Macs. Look around in the Crossover forums and you'll see people talking about it. Best thing to do is to just try to install your game in Crossover and go from there.