Can I play Warcraft 3 (DotA) on a Mac?

Question

I owned a MacBook Pro. I want to play a PC game called WarCraft 3 (with the DotA mod). I have Google and done some research on how to play DotA on the Mac. I can think of three possibilities:

Possibility 1: Buy Warcraft 3 for Mac (it does exist). However, I already own the PC version, and I dont want to waste another $60++ bucks to buy the Mac version (it's an old game).

Thus, I come across some forums suggesting using a VM or using Boot Camp to install Windows and play. This leads to

Possibility 2: Using Boot Camp and install Windows. Well, it sounds good for me, but I've never doen it before and I'm afraid I'll crash or need to reformat my Mac when partitioning, and Apple also recommends keeping a backup for your Mac when using Boot Camp. I do not want to go through all these troublesome things, thus I do not prefer this method.

Possiblility 3: Finally, using a virtual machine. I use VirtualBox, and already have a Windows XP install, running, that works perfectly fine. Now, I am wondering, if I install Warcraft into this virtual machine, and play the game ~5 hours a day, will it crash my Mac?

I have a few general questions about running Warcraft 3 in a VirtualBox VM Windows XP on a MacBook Pro:

1) Will the game lag, the video rendering, etc.?

2) Most importantly, will it damage my Mac?

If you have other methods of playing DotA (Warcraft 3) on Mac other than what I mentioned above, please do share them.

Answer 1

S3/lag - never tried VirtualBox for gaming, but Parallels works flawlessly with Direct X emulation.

S3/damage - the only possible damage come to my mind is the overheating damage. My old macbook (white plastics) survived very looooong WordOfWarcraft play without damage. My friend with aluminium (pro) notebook needed repair his video and wifi card - both times overheating damage - but both times it is detected as Apple's fault...

Ps:

S4 - go out with your girlfriend - it is much better spent time... ;)

Answer 2

You can create an account at www.battle.net and then tie your Warcraft 3 CD to your account.

Once you have done this, you are free to download the client on Windows or Mac at any time.

There's no need to buy different copies :)

Answer 3

You can download it directly from the app store for 9.99$. Have it in my computer and work perfectly.

Answer 4

Warcraft 3 cannot be installed in Mac OS X 10.7+ they no longer support the emulation framework necessary to run PowerPC applications.

More information can be found here.

UPDATE:

Warcraft 3 has been ported to work with Intel-based processors and can again be installed on modern Macs.