How do I download LOTRO when my Mac is Catalina? How do I work around it? I'm new to the Mac OS

[Tralfazz]

Is anyone familiar with a way to allow these types of files [.tga files] to be accessed? If not it's either play without plugins or go with another method. For now I'm running low on Crossover trial days, so I have to decide soon

The .tga suffix isn't causing a problem. The issue is with the Mac security services built in to the more recent versions of the OS which prevent executable code and certain file types from loading without explicit permission. Check this first (instructions specific for Catalina):

1- Go to your System Preferences.
2- Click on Security and Privacy.
3- Click on the brown-colored lock icon then enter your user password. If the user account you are logged in with is not an administrator, you will need to change to a user account that has administrator privileges first and then use Crossover and play from that administrator account.
4- Click on the General tab.
5- In the lower half of the window, you will see "Allow apps downloaded from:" and then a radio button for either "App Store" or "App Store and identified developers". Check the radio button to the left of "App Store and identified developers" if it is not already checked. If it is already checked, let me know and we'll move on to another possible solution.

[BlueXiphoid]

That's already on. I've been looking into that option and it was 'advised' to enable a third option which was to allow anything, but I must say that I'm not very comfortable with that option. I'm not a person to just download anything, but it's a safeguard I'd like to have in place.

My initial idea was that perhaps Crossover doesn't have access to 'execute' those images? Opening them from finder poses no such modal, so I'm confused on why it happens when it's ran through CO.


Edit: Oh wow. If I turn on "Allow apps downloaded from: 'Anywhere'". I can open the game, and all plugins load without warnings. If I then turn the setting back to "App store and identified developer". It will not warn me again about the plugins afterwards. So this will allow me to keep the gatekeeper in place but still run plugins. Whoop!
Only 'downside' will be that everytime I install a new plugin I'd have to change the setting, but that's something I can live with

[Tralfazz]

I'm glad you got that worked out, Blue. Thanks for sharing your final solution.

For others who might have the same problem, the way to toggle the "Allow Apps Downloaded From Anywhere" option in Catalina is described here:
https://www.imore.com/how-open-apps-...ina-and-mojave

[BlueXiphoid]

In addition. After playing for a bit I went to the store and got the same warnings. So the mentioned solution is actually 'required'...

To repeat:
1. Turn on the beforementioned setting.
2. Play the game, open the store, load plugins etc.
3. Turn back the setting to a safer setting (either store only or identified developers).

Getting the warnings again? Change setting, do the thing that caused the warning, change settings back.

[Aamu]

I'm already paying a subscription fee to play LOTRO. Now I have to pay another $60 per annum to run some gimmicky piece of code so I can run LOTRO? Thankfully I bought a MacBook Pro that won't run anything newer than 10.12. My mac mini tricked me into insralling Catalina so now I'm locked out of LOTRO there. Unless WINE gets a reacharound.

I'm so tired of being milked with subscription fees. I knew when abusive User Licensing Agreements became ubiquitous that they would extend rents to every bit of software or internet. Now they want to create 'smart homes' and 'smart cities' where they'll collect rent for every step you take on the Smart Sidewalk to pay for all the cameras that track all your movements.

And I'm not taking Bill Gates 'vaccine' either. GFYO Bill. With you buddy who famously didn't kill himself.

[Tralfazz]

I'm already paying a subscription fee to play LOTRO. Now I have to pay another $60 per annum to run some gimmicky piece of code so I can run LOTRO? Thankfully I bought a MacBook Pro that won't run anything newer than 10.12. My mac mini tricked me into insralling Catalina so now I'm locked out of LOTRO there. Unless WINE gets a reacharound.

I'm so tired of being milked with subscription fees. I knew when abusive User Licensing Agreements became ubiquitous that they would extend rents to every bit of software or internet. Now they want to create 'smart homes' and 'smart cities' where they'll collect rent for every step you take on the Smart Sidewalk to pay for all the cameras that track all your movements.

And I'm not taking Bill Gates 'vaccine' either. GFYO Bill. With you buddy who famously didn't kill himself.

WINE will (probably) be able to run on Catalina and newer versions of MacOS one of these days. If Codeweavers can do it with Crossover then the WINE open source working group can too, and will – eventually.

In the meanwhile, buy a small external drive or create a small partition/create another APFS volume on your Mini’s boot drive then install Mojave onto that. The current version of the LOTRO Mac client (which is the Windows client packaged with WINE) runs great, it just won’t run on Catalina or later until WINE is updated or you use Crossover (which is basically the “pro” version of WINE). If you’re booting from an SSD it takes less than a minute to reboot from your main Catalina+ system to your Mojave system. I’ve been doing this every day for LOTRO for about 2 months now and it’s no big deal at alll.

[ziggy29]

WINE will (probably) be able to run on Catalina and newer versions of MacOS one of these days. If Codeweavers can do it with Crossover then the WINE open source working group can too, and will – eventually.

Yep -- generally what Codeweavers gets into Crossover eventually makes it into Wine, so at some point Wine should be able to handle it, even if it takes some manual configuration.