According to information obtained from Blizzard Entertainment staff, version 1.9.3 of World of Warcraft will be a Universal Binary enabling it to run on Intel Macs. The update is in final testing and is expected to be released in less than two weeks.
During the recent Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the publisher had a Universal Binary of the game running on a 17-inch Intel iMac. Performance seemed to be acceptable, with reasonable frame rates even in heavily populated areas.
The Mac Observer also learned that Blizzard will stick with Universal Binaries of its games for the foreseeable future. While some Mac game publishers expect to shift to Intel-only late in 2006 or sometime in 2007, Blizzard will wait until its user base shifts completely to Intel Macs, a process that could take "some years." However, upcoming releases might require a G5 or Intel processor, with the G4 dropped if itis unable to run a new game acceptably.