About New World on Mac

New World is MMORPG game that was released on the 28th  of September this year, and it only has a Windows PC version and no version for Mac. Officially, you can’t play New World on Mac, but there may still be a workaround option.

In recent years, with the increase in the hardware capabilities of Mac computers and especially with the introduction of the powerful Apple M1 chip that significantly enhances the computing abilities of Mac machines, more and more Mac users have started considering using their Macs for games. While Macs are still not considered a good option for gaming, it’s definitely not impossible to casually play even the newest games on a powerful enough Mac. 

One such upcoming game that people are hyped about is New World – a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that puts the player in the shoes of an adventurer exploring the mystical and vast island of Aeternum – a fictional island located somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. In this game, the player has the option to join one out of three factions and form small groups of up to five people to make exploring the world of the game easier.

Editors’ Choice: Genshin Impact for Mac

Can you play New World on Mac?

You can play New World on Mac by installing Windows 10 or using Parallels for Mac. Officially the game doesn’t have a version for the macOS system. However, you may still be able to use a workaround to play New World on Mac

You can install Windows 10 on your Mac using the Boot Camp Assistant tool and doing so should allow you to play New World (as well as any other Windows game) on your Mac. This is actually a common and popular way of getting Windows-exclusive games to run on Mac computers. However, before you could play the game, you’d need to go through the rather lengthy and time-consuming process of installing Windows on your Mac. Fortunately, if you carefully read the instructions below and follow them as they are shown, you should have no problem getting Windows installed on your Mac and then playing New World on it.

New World on Mac M1

Running New World on a Mac with an M1 chip seems to not be possible at the moment. Since Macs with the M1 chip don’t have the Boot Camp Assistant app, running New World on Mac M1 systems isn’t an option through this method.

Since the release of New World, Mac gaming enthusiasts have made attempts to get the game going on a macOS machine, and their experience gives us additional data on the game’s performance on a Mac computer. Obviously, since you won’t be playing the game natively from your Mac, bugs and performance issues are likely to occur, though it greatly depends on the hardware capabilities of the specific machine. That said, according to users who’ve run the game on their Macs via the Boot Camp Assistant/Windows 10 installation method, this workaround is a viable option to play the game on a Mac… provided that your Mac has an Intel processor and not an M1 chip. Unfortunately, using the Boot Camp Assistant app in order to install Windows 10 on a Mac and then run this (or any other game) through it can’t be done on M1 machines because, well, they don’t have the Boot Camp Assistant.

Some users have suggested that trying to play the game via the Crossover app (an app that allows you to run programs designed for other systems on macOS) can be done. However, thus far no one has reported having been able to properly run and play the game through this method.

How to play New World on Mac?

To play New World on, you need to first install Windows 10 on your Mac using Boot Camp Assistant. After Windows 10 is installed, you will be able to play New World on your Mac as if you were on a Windows PC.

As was already mentioned above, this method would only work on Mac computers that have Intel processors and cannot be used to play the game on a Mac with M1 chip because such Macs don’t have the Boot Camp Assistant app needed to perform the next steps.

Installing Windows 10 on Mac

Step 1 – Download Windows 10

Go to your browser and search in Google (or another trusted search engine) for Windows 10 download. Open the first result (which should be from the official Microsoft site).

Next, select the preferred Window 10 version that you want – we recommend choosing the “Windows 10” version – and click Confirm.

After that, choose your preferred language and click Confirm again.

On the next page, select the 64-bit version and choose a location where you want to save the file (if asked to do that). If you didn’t get asked to choose a location and the file was directly downloaded, it was probably saved in your Downloads folder.

Step 2 – Boot Camp Assistant

Open Finder, select Applications from the left panel, go to Utilities and find and open the Boot Camp Assistant app.

When the app starts, click on Continue, and then select Choose next to the ISO image field.

Now find the ISO file you downloaded in the previous step, select it, and click on Open.

Next, drag the line between macOS and Windows to give the Windows 10 partition enough storage space. As we said, the OS itself needs at least 64GB, but we recommend that you assign at least 150 GB of HDD space to the Windows partition since you will need the extra space for New World. Still, be careful to leave enough space for your macOS.

After that, click on Install and wait for the completion of the next process (it will likely take a while). At a certain point, you will be asked to provide your password – type in the password you normally use to enter your Mac account and click on OK – this will cause your Mac to restart.

Step 3 – Activate Windows

When your Mac starts again, you should first see the Windows logo, and then you will be asked to choose a language and location, so do that and click Next.

After that, you will be asked to provide your product key, so type it in and click on Next. If you don’t have one at the moment, you can skip this step for now by selecting I don’t have a product key.

  • If asked to choose between Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro, since you are installing Windows 10 for playing New World and you will probably not need the Pro version (which is significantly more expensive), we recommend picking the Home version. Click next after you choose the version you prefer.

Select I Agree and select Next again – this will start the installation process of Windows 10. Wait patiently as the process will likely take quite a while to complete.

Step 4 – Create Account

After the installation completes, your system will reboot again and you will get a Windows 10 screen that gives you the option to either customize your Windows 10 settings or to use the preset Express settings. We recommend that you choose the Customize option so that you can set everything the way you’d prefer it to be.

Next, you will have to create an account for Windows 10 on your Mac. If you want, you can only type in a name for the account without creating a password, but we recommend that you create a password for increased security.

On the next page, you will be given the option to enable (and customize) Cortana or leave that for another time – choose whichever option you prefer.

Step 5 – Install Updates (Optional)

When you finally boot into Windows 10, you will see the Boot Camp installer on your screen – click on Next in it. Then select I accept, click Next again and an installation process will begin – this will install any necessary drivers that your Mac may need to properly run Windows 10. If any pop-ups show up during the process, select the Install option in them.

Once the process completes, select Finish and wait for your Mac to reboot once again. When your Mac starts again, open the Windows 10 Start Menu, and click on Apple Software Update, and once the check for updates completes, check all available updates and click on Install. Again, if any pop-ups show up, select the Install option.

After this is done, you will be asked if you’d like to reboot your Mac – click Yes.

When the computer starts again, go to the Start Menu once more, select the Settings icon (the Gear icon), go to Update & Security, click on Windows Update from the left panel, and then wait for the update check and installation to complete (this happens automatically) – note that the process will likely take a significant amount of time, so be patient.

Once the updating process is complete, click Restart now and wait for the computer to restart.

Step 6 – Rebooting to MacOS

If you want to boot back into macOS, look for a small slanted square in the bottom-right corner, right-click it, and then select Restart in macOS and click OK. If you don’t see the slanted square icon, click on the upwards arrow icon and you should now see the square in a box with some other icons.

If you want to return to Windows 10, select the Apple Menu, go to System Preferences, and click on Startup Disk. From there, select the padlock icon, type your password, click Unlock, and then select the Bootcamp Windows icon and click on Restart.

Purchasing and playing New World

New World can be purchased from Steam and Amazon. To download the game once you’ve purchased it, you’d need to use the Steam app and have a Steam account. If you don’t have either, go to Steam, create an account, and download its Desktop client for Windows – be sure to be in the Windows 10 partition while performing this. Then open the client, search for the game, open its page, and click on Play Now to start downloading the game’s installation file. Once it’s downloaded, open that file and perform the installation steps that appear on your screen. Once the installation is complete, you can start playing by double-clicking on the game’s icon that should appear on your Desktop.