Guild wars 2 Mac - Black screen

If you suffer from a black screen when starting Guild Wars 2 on Mac there is a workaround available. The reason for the window becoming black (if you know the positions you can actually enter you e-mail address and password and login) I do not know. But there have been updates for both Guild Wars 2 and OS X (Yosemite). Which of these that might be the cause I’ll leave undiscussed.

Now, on to the workaround:

This particular workaround us starting the game by adding a few extra parameters to the executable file which will make the client logon automatically so that you end up on the character selection screen directly. Patching should be done, but that window is not displayed during the progress.

NOTE: Do remember that putting your password in a clear text file (see below) is a security risk! I strongly recommend having a separate password the game, see here, and two-factor authentication, see here.

Workaround:

Edit (using an editor of your choice, I use vi) the following line with your email and password and put it in a file in the same directory as the “Guild Wars 2.app” and save it. I’ll be calling this file “StartGW2.sh”

Guild Wars 2.app/Contents/MacOS/cider —use-dos-cwd C:Gw2 — C:\GW2\GW2.exe -email YOUREMAIL@PROVIDER.DOMAIN -password “YOUR PASSWORD HERE” -nopatchui

Make the file executable:

chmod +x StartGW2.sh

Start Terminal and execute the file:

cd GAMEDIR

./StartGW2.sh

If all is working according to plan you should now have a black screen for a few seconds while you are being logged in and taken to the character selection screen.
If you feel brave and want to explore some more possible parameters to add to the start script, have a look at the command line parameters here.