Are you a Lord of the Rings Online fan?

If you are, we can’t blame you. After all these years, it remains one of our favorite MMORPGs available on Mac. In fact, we also consider it one of the finest free-to-play games out there.

That said, if you are an active player, you will have to stay away from the upcoming macOS Catalina. As you may have heard, Apple will stop supporting 32-bit apps with Catalina, meaning all apps not updated to 64-bit will cease to function.

And I’m afraid Lord of the Rings Online on Mac is part of that list.

Lord of the Rings Online on Mac: Does it have a future?

This transition to only supporting 64-bit will be painful for many. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of apps are not ready for this move and many probably never will. To make matters worse, most developers remain quiet about their plans for the future.

Developer Turbine is at least making the effort to alert its Mac player base about the change:

With the release of Catalina for MacOS in the near future, Apple will no longer support 32-bit applications. This impacts the compatibility of our WINE-based client for MacOS. Players can continue to play LOTRO as long as they do not update to Catalina for MacOS. #LOTRO — LOTRO (@lotro) October 2, 2019

Understandably, updating a piece of software to 64-bit requires time and resources, and developers have to decide whether it’s worth it or not.

Turbine’s position is clear for the short term: Don’t update to Catalina if you wish to continue playing.

But what about their longer-term plans? After being pressed by Mac users, this is what they had to say:

Currently this is not possible, but if WINE becomes 64-bit compatible for MacOS in the future, we intend to look into it. — LOTRO (@lotro) October 2, 2019



I don’t how many of their users run the game on macOS but this issue will probably affect thousands. For that reason alone, they should already be in touch with WineHQ to try to find a solution.

In any case, if you’re still interested in giving LOTRO a try, make sure your machine meets the official requirements.

Lord of the Rings Online Mac requirements

These are the game’s official Mac system requirements:

OS: 10.7.5

Processor: 2.0 GHz Intel Core i5

Memory: 2 GB

Hard Disk Space: 25 GB of available space

Video Card: Intel HD Graphics 3000 or better

Sound: Integrated Sound

For the record, Intel HD Graphics 3000 is an integrated graphics chip found in 6-7-year-old Macs. Needless to say, this is an easy game to run.

We ran a few tests on it a few months ago, and as expected, the game runs great on MacBooks and older machines:

If you have a Mac with limited power and worry World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14 are too demanding, LOTRO might be just perfect for you.

The alternatives: Future-proofed MMOs on Mac

Luckily for you, there are other Mac MMORPGs that have been updated to 64-bit and are here to stay. These are our favorites:

On top of those 3 excellent choices, there’s also the recently updated Final Fantasy 14.

Lord of the Rings Online Mac download

As most MMOs nowadays, LOTRO can be downloaded either from their official site or directly from Steam. This being a free-to-play game, you can always download it, try it for yourself and decide whether LOTRO deserves your time and money.

Are you a Lord of the Rings fan? Have you already tried LOTRO? Let us know in the comments section.