Here is what worked (and also what DIDN’T work at first) for me:
Disclaimer: Brand new M1 Pro 14", Ventura 13.5. First time Mac user, so it took me a while to figure simple things out.
What I tried and DIDN’T work:
- Fresh install (directly downloading WoW), one of the first few programs I downloaded at all.
- Fresh re-install after deleting everything. This time I gave both ‘battle’ and ‘agent’ access (I had to manually type and search for the agent, otherwise it wouldn’t show up) - Also no difference.
- Deleted all data files as I had seen in the US forums while repeating 2) and also force quitting the Agents that kept eating through my CPU as soon as they came up. I did this many times- Also no success.
- “Manually” downloading Rosetta 2 again, even though I couldn’t really delete it (I couldn’t find it, so I just deleted the whole game and followed some steps I found on google to reinstall rosetta 2 before reinstalling WoW). - No difference
What finally did the trick was:
- No reinstalling. I just activated the beta version of the battlenet client and started updating the game again.
- While it started, I casually opened the access window which showed both Battle and Agent with full permissions, like previously BUT there was also a new option to toggle on something called “Relauncher”. I had read about this one in the US forums but I couldn’t find it before, but this time it was just there out of nowhere. I gave it permission just in case and once I checked the client again, IT WAS FINALLY UPDATING CORRECTLY (as in downloading data instead of just freezing at “initializing”.
I finally got to experience Valdrakken without any stuttering thanks to this beautiful machine.
Mind you, I never restarted my Macbook. That classic trick may work for some Windows problems, but it usually isn’t the case for Macbooks (this is something I have read on the internet, not sure how true it is). It was nice to finally get it to work and completely ignoring Blizzards first suggestions to restart everything, lol.
I hope this helps!