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Do you support a Mac OS X client in Star Wars the Old Republic?


Pencilvania

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Mac users are growing, but many of them are not running Mac OS on their machines.

 

Every year there's an industry stat put out for what computers are using what OSes

 

Mac OS was 5% last year

 

Linux was 7%

 

The rest was Windows with a few percentages lost to more obscure OSes

 

I love observational misinformation.

 

Those statistics are for all computers, everywhere. That includes every fortune 500 company who has Linux servers and tens of thousands of cheap desktop terminals running some flavor of Windows.

 

the home market, Apple has almost 17% of the market. iDevices luring people to the Mac camp has been a serious boost.

 

in the laptop market, they have almost 30% of the market.

 

Even if 10% of people with Macs could run SWTOR (which is a little low - it ran totally fine on an older iMac i have in the house, with a fairly minimal GPU), that'd still be 5 or 6 million Mac users as potential clients. If even 5% of those people played SWTOR on their macs, you're still looking at 200,000+ players. At 15 bucks a month, that's still a pretty substantial pile of money.

 

Yes, it will end up being a small fraction of their player base, but no EA shareholder is going to be upset that they are spending the time to add another few million to the pile every month.

 

The main issue, and the reason we wont see an OSX client, is because the version of the HERO engine they used for SWTOR wasn't cross-platform, and it has now been so heavily modified there's simply no way to drop in support for the newest HERO engine version (which IS cross platform) without an almost total re-write.

 

What is potentially likely is that during a major expansion pack, they will overhaul the client and drop in support for the new HERO engine - much like Blizzard did when they made the client 64 bit native - essentially a complete rewrite, or when they dropped in the new OpenGL engine - but it isnt something that will happen outside of major expac time, if ever.

 

Yeah, i support an OSX client, so i dont have to boot back and forth. It's kinda annoying. But ill still be playing.

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No, I do not support. Use bootcamp or yell at Apple for using gestapo tactics in regards to their OS compatibility.

 

It's not BioWare's responsibility to bend over backwards to meet Apple's demands especially when Apple isn't exactly "known" for playing well with others.

Edited by Gankstah
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No, I do not support. Use bootcamp or yell at Apple for using gestapo tactics in regards to their OS compatibility.

 

It's not BioWare's responsibility to bend over backwards to meet Apple's demands especially when Apple isn't exactly "known" for playing well with others.

 

I think that the larger issue is that Bioware's major competitor, Blizzard, has had Mac OS X support since World of Warcraft Beta just over 7 years ago. In the MMORPG game space that SWTOR exists in the "big guy" is taking all the Mac players. A smart move would be for Bioware to go after that dedicated minority looking for something new.

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They gathered machine information during beta signups to see who was running what, and I imagine they base any client decisions on the information they gathered during that time.

 

The information they gathered on "Mac" users would have been severely skewed. A very small minority have the time and money to Bootcamp their machines to play a single game. The amount of Bootcamped Beta testers would be a small number because of the added hurtles those users would have to go through.

 

Given that the signup required a Windows client most Mac users would choose not to bootcamp and thus not sign up. This also is not an indicator of the demand for that platform.

 

The logic that Bioware based Mac demand on the Beta testing weekend is inaccurate.

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No, I do not support. Use bootcamp or yell at Apple for using gestapo tactics in regards to their OS compatibility.

 

It's not BioWare's responsibility to bend over backwards to meet Apple's demands especially when Apple isn't exactly "known" for playing well with others.

 

.... what?

 

I have no earthly idea what you're talking about, particularly since it is Microsoft with the proprietary API that they wont liscence to anyone else (DirectX) that prevents porting in 90% of cases.

 

The only reason there's no support for OSX is because when work began on SWTOR, the HERO engine version used had no support for OpenGL, because Microsoft had paid them rather a bit of money to ensure that only a DirectX code path was enabled.

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Untrue, Mac users are growing. Also Mac's are not bad for gaming as the hardware in them is usually fairly good for the video editting and 3d rendering software that is used on them.

 

Only windowz supports DirectX, so... out of luck unless they want to re-write the graphic engine to support OpenGL. GG.

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Only windowz supports DirectX, so... out of luck unless they want to re-write the graphic engine to support OpenGL. GG.

 

first... DirectX only games are ported to Mac all the time. While re-write to OpenGL is usually the best performing way, its not required. Wine and Cider ports handle Direct3D calls with OpenGL, and even Valves fully "native" games on Steam have a layer that handles Direct3D in OpenGL so they can still code their whole game in DirectX.

 

But that isn't as important, since the creators of the HeroEngine that is used for Star Wars are already making (finishing up) an OpenGL version of the Engine with both mac and Linux support (as well as iOS).

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first... DirectX only games are ported to Mac all the time. While re-write to OpenGL is usually the best performing way, its not required. Wine and Cider ports handle Direct3D calls with OpenGL, and even Valves fully "native" games on Steam have a layer that handles Direct3D in OpenGL so they can still code their whole game in DirectX.

 

But that isn't as important, since the creators of the HeroEngine that is used for Star Wars are already making (finishing up) an OpenGL version of the Engine with both mac and Linux support (as well as iOS).

 

Like i said earlier, though, it wont happen midstream. The version of the Hero engine that SWTOR uses is so modified they cant just drop the new version in and make it go. Theyd have to retool a lot of stuff to get it in..

 

which is something they might do for an expansion, much like Blizzard took the time for an expansion to completely rebuild the client in a 64 bit version and rewrite the entire OpenGL framework.

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Mac users are growing, but many of them are not running Mac OS on their machines.

 

Every year there's an industry stat put out for what computers are using what OSes

 

Mac OS was 5% last year

 

Linux was 7%

 

The rest was Windows with a few percentages lost to more obscure OSes

 

All of your statements are incorrect.

 

Most Mac users do not run Bootcamp. The cost and effort.

 

The Mac was NOT 5% last year.

 

Lunix is also NOT 7%.

 

THIS IS NOT A BOOTCAMP THREAD. Please be so kind as to use the Bootcamp thread for those discussions.

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Do you support a Mac OS X client for SWTOR?

 

This thread is for discussing support for an OS X client for Star Wars The Old Republic. Please keep comments related to that topic.

 

This is not a Bootcamp thread.

 

This is not a Mac Vs. PC thread.

 

Unless the Linux guys get a Linux client as well: Nope

 

Not that either will happen with the availability of dual-booting. It's too much effort for BW right now and their effort is honestly better directed toward other things right now as far as SWTOR is concerned....

 

 

Lets give the BSD guys a client too while we're at it. :rolleyes:

Edited by Racquerr
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