For years I have recommended DXVK for any Mac using Crossover to run LOTRO. DXVK remains the best choice for performance and stability with LOTRO. However:
The version of DXVK in Crossover 25.0.0 is not compatible with LOTRO’s implementation of DirectX 9. The client will launch to a “black screen” and while the audio track can be heard the game is not playable. The easy fix for this is to use DirectX 11 instead. To set LOTRO to use DirectX 11 when unable to get to the client’s in-game options panel, open ~/Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/UserPreferences.ini with TextEdit, change the line GraphicsCore=D3D9 to GraphicsCore=D3D11, then save the file and quit out of TextEdit.
If you must use DirectX 9 for some reason – I can’t think of a reason but I suppose there might be one – change the LOTRO bottle’s Advanced Settings->Graphics from DXVK to WINE (which is wined3d). While it is important to set LOTRO’s in-game Antialiasing setting to DISABLED when using the WINE bottle setting with the game set to use DirectX 11, there is no problem with the WINE/DirectX 9/Antialiasing combination.
There is no advantage to using the new DXMT option with LOTRO. It offers no performance or stability advantage and also is not compatible with LOTRO’s implementation of DirectX 9.
The updated version of D3DMetal included with Crossover 25.0.0, available only to Macs with Apple CPUs, works better with LOTRO than previous versions but still has some odd issues without an advantage of any kind over DXVK. I am looking forward to further improvements and hope to be able to recommend D3DMetal as the best choice for Apple CPU Macs running LOTRO at some point in the future – hopefully next year.
Always use default sync in bottle settings regardless of the bottle’s graphics setting or the game’s DirectX setting.