If you’re happy that we are collectively moving on to 64-bit systems (perhaps you’re still really anxious about the impact of the 2038 problem), you probably also note that there are certain drawbacks to the upgrade. One of those is about to hit Lord of the Rings Online players who are playing on Apple PCs, as the upcoming operating system update discontinues support for 32-bit applications… which is a problem for the WINE-based client used on the system for the game.
To be clear, the problem is less the actual game client and more the WINE wrapper used to have a fundamentally Windows-based application run properly on the system. Of course, people have pointed out in the comments on Twitter that better long-term support was one of the justifications for abandoning a specific Mac client in favor of the WINE-based client, so it seems fair to say that this situation is definitely on the ironic side. There’s no provided ETA for any sort of fix to this issue, so the best anyone can say is that hopefully this gets patched up sooner rather than later.
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
