The latest World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, proved that Blizzard's massively multiplayer online game continues to get better.

Still, other Mac games enjoyed simultaneous debuts on multiple platforms, such as the much-anticipated Spore and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. WoW continues to get better and better, and players eagerly jumped into the new worlds and features provided by the latest expansion, some waiting in line hours for the chance to play.

Meanwhile, Spore can safely be called the biggest disappointment of the year. While wrestling with a PR disaster centered around the strict digital-rights management software included in the game, the game became the most pirated game on the Internet. The irony, of course, is that while the downloads (legal or not) have been numerous, the game has been slammed by critics for its shallow gameplay and limited strategy options. The latest expansion does nothing to address these flaws, and comes across—to use a popular phrase of the year—as so much "lipstick on a pig."

Other relatively unknown developers scored big hits in 2008 with their latest releases. The beginning of the year saw the popular puzzle game Peggle Deluxe come to Mac, while 2D Boy's World of Goo helped the year end on a high note with another quirky, original, and addictive puzzle game.

Graphics get better

If Mac gaming is to reassert itself in the coming year, a product release from Apple this past fall may turn out to be the driving factor. Apple's consumer-oriented MacBook line finally got a graphics system worthy of the popular laptop.

The switch to Nvidia 9400M graphics in the new unibody MacBooks has improved things dramatically for gamers.

When Apple switched to Intel processors, the MacBook suffered from dreadful graphics performance which made it unsuitable for games, thanks to seriously underpowered Intel-made integrated graphics processors installed on the motherboard. That changed in October, when Apple introduced a revamped MacBook lineup highlighted by the addition of Nvidia 9400M graphics.

Yes, the MacBook's graphic processor still shares memory with the system RAM, but there's a lot more to share (256MB, as opposed to 144MB in the older MacBooks). What's more, it's faster memory—the new MacBooks use DDR3 SDRAM. The end-result is improved graphic performance, particularly in games, where the latest titles no longer suffer from single-digit frame rates.

The fact that one of Apple's most popular Mac models is a much-improved gaming machine gives us hope headed into 2009. We'll take a closer look at more of the trends that figure to influence Mac gaming over the next 12 months in a future Game Room post.