Using Wine for Gaming in OSX - SWTOR

I like Star Wars and sometimes I feel compelled to revisit the games from my youth; however, this can be a bit difficult when one uses OSX (though there are some excellent ports of the classics, and other favorites, from Aspyr Media on the App Store). Wine, again, proves to be very useful in this area even for the MMORPG Star Wars The Old Republic at the highest graphics settings.

Setup for this game requires some patience but not nearly so much as it used to be when the clues were more scattered a few years ago (plus there are fewer steps required now, for a number of reasons). This guide on reddit is kept up-to-date and is very comprehensive but I'll describe what I did for reinforcement.

Download the latest Wine Staging version. I have had problems trying to use MacPorts to install Wine so I recommend downloading the installer from the website directly. 

Open a Terminal using your Wine install. Use "winecfg" to set Windows 10, and include d3dx9_43, crypt32. Remember, the default is that all Wine related items are stored in a mock Windows-style directory tree in ~/.wine. This is where all of the SWTOR files will be installed.

Download and run the SWTOR installer with Wine. I have only tested the "Express" install and had no issues with this step.

Run the SWTOR launcher by changing into the install directory under ~/.wine. Then, login to your account. At this point, an error will popup saying something about administrative privileges. Close the launcher. Open launcher.settings using a text editor and change the line "bitraider_disable": false to "bitraider_disable": true.

Run the launcher again. Login and allow the game to patch. Expect this to take several hours depending on your connection. The full game is 38 GB on the hard drive so make sure you can afford the space.

Screen shot of launcher window on OSX

Once you are fully patched, that should be it. I have played the game a couple of times since installing and it runs well even over WiFi on the highest graphics settings. I'm sure using Wine to run other Windows games on OSX would work well too. My MacBook has an AMD Radeon R9 M370X in addition to the integrated Intel Iris Pro so your mileage may vary on your own system. 

May the Force be with you.