Lord of the Rings Online Forum

Hey Guys,

I wanted to come back to playing LOTRO, a game I enjoyed a lot in earlier years...
but I can't seem to figure out to get it consistently running.

I've read through a few forums because there seem to be a few people that came across a familiar problem to mine.
The usual fix I've seen is to edit the UserPreferences.ini folder. But that doesn't seem to to do anything in my case.

Lets get more specific with the problem:

When downloading I followed this guide exactly as it says... step by step.
https://forums.lotro.com/index.php?threads/mac-installing-lotro-on-a-mac-using-crossover-short-version.74/

Afterwards the client works without any problem.
I can enter my username and my password.

Then when I hit "Play" for the first time the game starts and I see my characters and can enter middle earth without a problem.

so far so good...

... the problem is that once I close the game I can not enter again.

I can use the client but when I hit "Play" I get a black screen.

I don't understand how that works and it caused a fair bit of frustration.

I would be very glad if somebody is able to help me with this. Maybe there is a way to Launch the game again for the second time as if it was the first launch (without reinstalling the entire game).

This is the system I am running on:
macOS Mojave
Version 10.14.16
CPU: 2.7GHz Intel core i5
RAM: 8 GB 1867 MHZ DDR3
GPU: Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB

Thank you for the help,
Gideon :)

Hi, Gideon!

There is a way to remove all your locally-stored preferences and trick the game into thinking it's running for the first time. But doing that every time you want to play will get annoying! There are settings you will want to save and you will have to manually set them again every time you do this. Let's leave that for a last resort.

I know you said you followed the short instructions I wrote at the official forums, let's just be sure you did this part:

MOST COMMON SOLUTION TO THE MOST COMMON POST-INSTALLATION TECHNICAL PROBLEM:
If, after the installation is complete and you’ve entered your credentials and clicked the PLAY button, the client does not launch (nothing happens or you get a black screen); edit the ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/UserPreferences.ini file with these 3 lines. Add them if they don’t exist, edit them to match if they do exist:
GameClientType=3
ScreenMode=FullScreenWindowed
GraphicsCore=D3D9
The most common reason the client fails to run is because the client defaults to Full Screen mode and in Full Screen mode you can't see or get to your Mac's requests for the LOTRO client's required permissions. There are also some incompatibilities with Full Screen mode and some Macintosh monitors and laptop screens, especially when using multiple monitors. Full Screen Windowed mode works around these issues. You should be able to use Full Screen mode and DirectX 11 (with Antialiasing set to whatever you like) and any other options you like. If you have trouble getting the client started, though, begin with these settings.

If you have already tried that, or you try it now and the client still fails to launch, please open your UserPreferences.ini file and copy the entire contents. Then paste it all into your next message here, redacting your account name to protect your security and privacy.

Just FYI, you can delete (or rename or move to another location) the entire ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online folder to present the LOTRO client with a fresh start. It will recreate that The Lord of the Rings Online folder the next time it is run, just as if it were the first time it were ever run on your computer. This is a good test to run, to determine if there is a problem in your locally-stored preferences; but it is not a good solution if you plan to continue to play the game.