For everyone who's been having trouble installing and running this game, I think I've figured it out. (including how to solve the boxes issues) So follow these steps and you should be good:
- Create a new bottle
- Open COG and click "Crossover Games installer"
- In the list of supported software, select "core fonts" and hit install. It may take a few minutes, just ignore it if it gives you any errors.
- After that, open the installer again and under supported software select "Chinese Ariphic Font" or something like that (should be right above the core fonts) and install that.
- Download Directx9 off the internet.
- Install DirectX9 into the same bottle as the fonts (however, sometimes the installation will complete and won't notify you of it's successful completion. THIS MEANS IT HASN'T INSTALLED! If this happens, go to manage bottles, go to control panel, run winecfg, go to graphics tab and check "emulate a virtual desktop" that should get it to run properly)
- After everything else is installed, download and install the Perfect World International client.
- After it is installed, go to the place you installed it (e.g. "username/library/application support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/[bottle name]/drive_c/Program Files/Perfect World Entertainment/Perfect world) then open the PATCHER (not LAUNCHER) folder and run the patcher.exe. (Note if the boxes are still there, make sure you're emulating a virtual desktop (see above) that should make it work properly)
- When it asks you for patcher settings, I chose automatic, and it worked fine. If it doesn't, you could try manually patching, but that never seemed to work for me.
- After it's done patching, start and enjoy!
I hope this helps. If it doesn't, tell me what the problem is and I'll see if I can figure it out. (NOTE: This game ONLY works on COG 8.0. I tried it on earlier versions and the boxes didn't appear but it would crash after the first loading screen. Also, this method has ONLY been tested on Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard. I don't know about Linux and I'm pretty sure Snow Leopard would have the same result. I don't know about earlier versions, but patch up just in case.) Also, make sure you always start the game from the patcher.exe. For some reason the shortcut and the launcher.exe are temperamental and tend to freeze up.