TOR So, why PC only?

I'm not going to whine or complain just because I am a Mac user, but I do not get the logic behind the decision. I am sure I am not the only Mac user who is going to have to miss TOR simply because of our platform, just do not understand the decision.

Ah well. These things happen.

 

If I'm not mistaken, a few years ago it was announced that compatibility for the Mac would be worked on after launch.

 

Well, that's good and bad. Good, we will eventually get it. Bad, Mac users are going to miss out on the launch goodies. Hardly seems fair, but not our call.

 

For a million reasons. I'm a mac user as well, but if you really want to play the game just run it off bootcamp or buy a cheap laptop. I'm on a mac for school reasons, so it's not really an option for me. I need the little space on the laptop I have rather than installing bootcamp and another game. I recall WoW took up about 27gb on here, and I don't doubt this will eventually reach that size.

 

I'm guessing there's a lot of reasons why... but personally I don't think its fair. I use a PC; but I definitely think the game should be avaliable on Mac too.

 

It's perfectly fair. If you want to play, get bootcamp like I said above. It's like owning a 360 and complaining about games that are exclusive to PS3. It will cost them extra money to make the game for mac, and the sad truth is that the demand for mac games isn't high enough. A lot of people who own macs also own pc's, or else they play off of bootcamp. At least, the gamers do. And that's who they're targetting.

 

Well... whatever. I just thought it would be nice for the game to also be for Mac too. That's all.

 

THIS IS WHY WE DON'T HAVE NICE THINGS.

 

This is why...



"Even though the hype about Apple gadgets and Macintosh personal computers is among the loudest in the industry, the actual installed base of Macs remains negligible compared to other systems running around the world. In fact, the amount of installed Macs is just 54 million.

"We now have over 54 million active Mac users around the world and growing," said Philip W. Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing at Apple, during his speech at the company's worldwide developer conference (WWDC).

Sales of Apple Macintosh computers have been outgrowing the industry of PCs for several years now, but given the fact that the company sells negligible amount of systems in general, that has not transformed into a massive installed base. For example, Apple only sold around 14.43 million Mac PCs in calendar 2010, which is around 5% of all personal computers sold last year. Around 73% of all Macintosh systems sold in 2010 were notebooks, according to Apple.

According to an estimation of Gartner market tracking firm, the global installed base of PCs neared 1.4 billion units in 2010, which means that Apple Macintosh represents around 3.8% of installed personal computers nowadays."

 

Apple focuses on Ipad, Iphones, Itouch and Ipods. They could careless about gamers.

 

They said at Comic Con they have no plans of doing a Mac version right now. Basically all that means is they are not looking into it but aren't going to say 100% it will never happen. But as of right now, not going to happen.

James Ohlen did say someone in the office in Austin uses bootcamp to play the game and it works fine.

 

I'm completely new to games played on the PC, I've always played console based games, so please excuse me if this is a dumb question, but what are the advantages to releasing it on PC and not multiple platforms? Not just the cost advantages, but are there gameplay, graphic, etc advantages? Also, I'm a mac user that runs parallels to access windows programs, would I be able to run it off of that? I'm not against buying a PC for the sole reason of playing TOR.

 

Well I don't have any metrics or stats for you, but I can tell you that most Massively Multi-Player Online games are only released on PC and or Mac.

There are some exceptions. Everquest Online Adventures was solely for the PS2 back in the day. Final Fantasy XI launched on PS2 and PC and then eventually went to Xbox (or Xbox 360 can't remember) as well.

A newer game that has tried this was the DC online game. They have PC servers and PS3 servers. The players cannot interact if you are on a PC and your friend is on a PS3.

This type of game is going to be very reliant on having a lot of buttons, more than a controller can handle. So it's made to be played with a mouse and keyboard. DC looks to be very action oriented, more than having action bars with 20+ abilities on your screen. Final Fantasy XI was a macro based game, no action bars. If you haven't played World of Warcraft and need to know what an action bar is, just google image: world of warcraft and you'll see bars all over people's screen with different icon images that represent abilities they can use.

I've played WoW for years and I played TOR at Pax East. It would be a horrendous experience on a console.

Also the game is HUGE. Yes, the consoles have hard drives now, but you'd be asking people to take up upwards of 50% or more (if they have a smaller HD or older console version) of their HD space, and go out and buy accessories such as a keyboard and some type of PS3 or XBox mouse.

Basically, they wanted to make a really good game and didn't want to focus on trying to make different versions, would be my guess. If they did make it for all the systems and wanted to keep their quality where it is now, the game would still probably be a few years away from release.

Also, they would have had to put a ton more resources into the game, and the game is already said to be the most expensive video game ever made. Even Electronic Arts and Lucas Arts set budgets.

But to answer your Mac question, you CAN play it through Bootcamp on a Windows setup. So you have to have Windows XP, Vista, or 7 installed through bootcamp on your Mac. James Ohlen, one of the lead developers on the game said someone in the Austin, Texas studio uses this and it plays the game beautifully. That was at Comic Con a couple of weeks ago when he said that.

 

My only experience with WoW was watching the Leroy Jenkins youtube clip, so I'll have to do a little more research. Thank you so much for such an in depth response, I really appreciate it. I'll probably end up just getting a new pc devoted solely to it. Thanks again.

 

I thought most Macs didn't have a lot of game titles simply because most games are designed to runn on Windows and therefore won't work on Macs. That and Macs might not have the graphics to run most of them.

I do a lot of PC gaming, I have an Xbox controller for many games but also the keyboard & mouse configuration too.
There are various advatages, the main one being upgrades. Xbox & PS3 grpahics are set, they will not change. PC Graphics and speed and memory can be expanded easily to keep up to date with the latest titles. My PC easily outperforms a 360 or a PS3 and has better graphics, so why go with inferior consoles?

There is not a big demand for PC games so much these days, but I've never understood why.

 

Actually the cheapest Mac's graphics are better than most decent PC's. That is what they are normally designed for such as web design etc. But there are less gamers on Macs than PC's. So Mac users have to use Bootcamp to play games.

 

Because Windows/Microsoft cornered the personal computing market long ago. Not worth the developer's time to develop a separate thing for the mac. Just not enough market share

 

Indeed, it's the same reason Macs don't often get viruses. There is not enough market share to bother spending time making a virus to damage macs, much better making one that affects the OS used by the majority (Windows).

 

Hehe, thats a good way to put it

And, are there actually any mainstream MMOs that have a mac client?

Also, can't you guys fake it with some sort of weird Windows installation?

(no offense to mac users, I just don't have any experience with them)

 

That's what I've always argued when Mac users try to berate me for using PCs.

 

I just hate the myth that "Macs can't get viruses", that's a load of rubbish. They can get them, it's just that virtually none are written for them because hardly anyone uses them. One day someone will make a massive one and because Mac users don't feel they need virus protection software all their systems will get destroyed and many of us will LOL.

But that's beside the point, as with all these things it's demand. I must say though I'm suprised it is exclusively PC. I know game shops that don't even sell PC games anymore because very few people buy them (or so they say)

 

No, the reason Macs don't get many viruses has to do with Unix itself and how installation permissions are setup. It's designed to have administrator permissions required for all applications, and was originally intended for corporate networks. It's the same reason Linux doesn't get viruses. If the user is running in user mode, and not admin mode, it's very difficult to get a virus going because it won't be able to run to begin with. To be fair, the lack of attention paid to Unix-based OSes certainly helps.

But that's not why I randomly decided to stop lurking and actually post something - Mac users who want to run TOR, check out Wine, which is a Unix compatibility layer designed to handle Windows software. It takes a bit of effort on your part, but it's much safer than bootcamp with regards to viruses and the like. Also it's free. Free is good.

 

World of Warcraft the biggest sub based MMO ever has a Mac Client.

Also, as I said in previous posts, you just need to have Windows bootcamped on a Mac and it will work fine, TOR developers have confirmed this.


On the console topic here's an interesting quote from Daniel Erickson, lead writer for The Old Republic:

VideoGamer: We?re beginning to see more MMOs being developed for console, and MMO-oriented apps for iOS, is cross-platform gaming the next logical step for MMOs?

Daniel Erickson: While there?s always been a push for cross-platform gaming, I don?t really see MMOs being the place that it takes off as a pure implementation. In a community where a one point difference in dps per character classes can cause major outcries, it?s hard to imagine accepting wholly different input devices. So until consoles have keyboard/mouse setups standard and enough users willing to find a way to use them in the living room, I imagine we keep the core game to one type of platform each. That said, using light console games or iOS games to enhance aspects of your MMO or explore other takes on the world is exciting.

 

Blizzard didn't support World of Warcraft on OSX until 2006, 2 years after the game's launch IIRC.

With this being BioWare's first MMO, I think only patching for Windows will cause for a lighter load until the game is fully up and running, which takes a different amount of time for every MMO. I expect you'll see it on OSX eventually.

I think they expect Mac users will play the game if they really want to, using Boot Camp or Parallels. If they felt this would really impact their install base, they would address it.

 

You sure about that with WoW? My impression is it has been cross-platform since at least WCII. Blizzard is not stupid, after all.

The headache honestly is to play TOR on a Mac, you need the following:

TOR - about 100 bucks.
Windows OS license - about 100 bucks.

So, to play ONE game will set you back 200 bucks. Financially, that just does not makes sense.