Why aren't you playing?

[Nebu]

Two very interesting surveys that seems more credible than Funcoms latest 700k whatwasitagain and shows the progression from launch to today.

Warning : Pics are HUGE.

http://fc05.deviantart.com/fs26/f/2008/184/f/6/nvm_by_mrhenrik.jpg

http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs26/f/2008/184/7/b/aoc_stuff_again_by_mrhenrik.jpg

Interesting...

Poor itemization, poor performance, poor class balance, and terrible customer support seem to be the major issues.  This mirrors the sentiment in the thread about what's wrong with AoC. 

[naum]

1. No Mac client. See Blizzard for a company that gets this, and no coincidence is also at the top.

2. Running out of disk space on home mac so boot camp not an option on that machine until I add/upgrade HD.

3. Haven't even logged into WoW for months, although my credit card is getting docked a sub fee.

4. Kind of burnt out on the whole MMwhackaMOleRPG deal, though a fresh wild west / cyberpunk implementation (other than TR which looks like giant suck) could rekindle my interest.

[schild]

1. No Mac client. See Blizzard for a company that gets this, and no coincidence is also at the top.

I guarantee these two things have nearly nothing to do with eachother. Particularly with bootcamp existing.

Blizzard has simply always made PC and MAC compatible games.

[Slayerik]

So there are a couple gamers in the world that use MACs?

You reap what you sow. Dont bitch when people don't make games for ya :)

[Cheddar]

Anyone have a stat on the percentage of WoW players that play it with MAC OS? 

[Abelian75]

I don't know percentages on how many people play WoW on a mac, but I actually don't think it's really a coincidence that Blizzard makes games for both Mac and PC and also has such utter market domination.  Even if, say, 5% of their players play on a mac, that doesn't necessarily mean that making a mac version only gets them 5% more sales.  If you don't have a mac version of your game, then anyone who has a friend who uses a mac can't spread your game to them by word of mouth, which means that that person can't spread your game to his five PC-using friends.  I suspect it would be hard to get the insane, world-dominating market penetration that they managed to get with WoW without both mac and PC versions.

Now, for smaller scale releases, it may well not be worth it to bust out a mac version.  But I suspect if your goal is to hit that critical mass of cultural phenomenon, a mac version helps a fuckload.

[Slayerik]

It helps when you print your own money :)

[squirrel]

So there are a couple gamers in the world that use MACs?

You reap what you sow. Dont bitch when people don't make games for ya :)

More than a couple thanks. I have a killer gaming PC. But professionally my Mac is my main axe. If you support both (Blizzard, SB) I'm more likely to spend $$. Please to be quoting numbers or shutting the fuck up thanks.

[Ozzu]

So there are a couple gamers in the world that use MACs?

You reap what you sow. Dont bitch when people don't make games for ya :)

A nice side effect of games being ported to the Mac is that they're going to be that much easier to run in Linux. WoW runs extremely well in Wine since OpenGL is supported, most likely because of the Mac client.

Not that it matters to the vast majority of people out there, but for someone like me that runs Linux a fair bit of the time, it's nice to be able to depend on Blizzard games to work in Linux damn near out of the box.

[naum]

1. No Mac client. See Blizzard for a company that gets this, and no coincidence is also at the top.

I guarantee these two things have nearly nothing to do with eachother. Particularly with bootcamp existing.

Blizzard has simply always made PC and MAC compatible games.

Bullshit. You say no. I say yes. We look at the sales charts, and reality is the final arbiter here - look where Blizzard (and others that offer Mac platform clients).

No Mac version means you don't want to be mass market.

Especially in 2008, when Mac share is ~10% (approaching 30-40% amongst college aged) and that figure really should be raised to reflect that Mac users do more read/write activity on the internet (and more time on the machine period) than Windows users (and they're more likely to be content creators also -- websites, videos, etc.…). You can google it if you want numbers.

But it's more than the numbers. It's also the marketing splash.

Digressing however as the question which was "Why arn't you playing?", not "Why arn't you playing so I can mock your answer"…

And for the record, not really sore about it whatsoever, was just adding my reason… …not that I'm 100% anti-Win evangelist, if there was a great game experience to be had, I would at least load up Boot Camp on my home machine (only have Parallels which did let me run older games OK, including MtG Online (V2, haven't tried V3 yet)). Very few games seem worth the time investment to me, but I've always been picky, even when Windows boxes populated my house…

[schild]

So.... what you're saying is...

90% isn't mass market. Got it.

[Tebonas]

The real question here is how developing for the Mac as well can be seen as anything other than an advantage. 10% are 10%, but even more so you tend to write better code if you develop for multiple platforms at once.

[Trippy]

Companies like id and Blizzard develop for the Mac "because they can" not for any expectations of huge revenue generation from that platform. I.e. they develop games on their own schedules so they don't have publishers/owners telling them what they can and can not do (id's totally independent, Blizzard to a lesser extent), they have people there that like developing for the Mac/doing cross-platform development and they can afford to do so.

[trias_e]

I would guess that Blizzard has the luxury of making games for the Mac because their games sell so well, not the other way around.

If you sell 100,000 copies of a game, and 10,000 would be mac users, it's likely that going for a simultaneous release or even porting the game is simply not worth the money you would spend on it.

If you sell 2 million copies of a game, 200,000 of which would be mac users, you have a compelling reason to port the game to Mac as it is much more likely to be cost effective.

[Cheddar]

I would guess that Blizzard has the luxury of making games for the Mac because their games sell so well, not the other way around.

If you sell 100,000 copies of a game, and 10,000 would be mac users, it's likely that going for a simultaneous release or even porting the game is simply not worth the money you would spend on it.

If you sell 2 million copies of a game, 200,000 of which would be mac users, you have a compelling reason to port the game to Mac as it is much more likely to be cost effective.

These were my thoughts.  I am curious as to how many subs use Mac, though. 

[Lantyssa]

If your company can spare the efforts to put out versions for multiple OSes, then it probably reflects a superior level of commitment and effort.

Making the game for the mac doesn't bring them a whole lot directly (As if 10% of 10 million isn't a whole lot...), but it does show why things work behind the scenes to bring a better game to everyone.  It's more about a design philosophy and how they "get it".

[Rishathra]

1. No Mac client. See Blizzard for a company that gets this, and no coincidence is also at the top.

I am reminded of the bread thread.

[Surlyboi]

Yeah, I pretty much ignore anyone that spells "Mac" with all caps.

And though I may loathe blizzard for their, "let's take something everyone's done before and polish it 'til it shines" routine and the boring been-there-done-that that is WoW, but their commitment to the Mac has always been solid.

[Signe]

Is that you in that pic, Shirley Bob?  What are you looking at?  It looks cool!

[Soukyan]

Is that you in that pic, Shirley Bob?  What are you looking at?  It looks cool!

Perhaps I missed the sarcasm, Signe, but I believe that is Will Smith in the picture. It's from his new movie, "Hancock". Some super hero thing.

[Sky]

I was thinking Lenny Kravitz.

[KallDrexx]

most MMO companies can't handle the large amount of QA that is involved just for supporting windows, adding Mac support increases that even more.

There is more to the cost of porting a game then just writing cross-platform code.

[Signe]

Is that you in that pic, Shirley Bob?  What are you looking at?  It looks cool!

Perhaps I missed the sarcasm, Signe, but I believe that is Will Smith in the picture. It's from his new movie, "Hancock". Some super hero thing.

No, there was no sarcasm, I was really asking.  I haven't seen that film or that pic from the film.  I just thought he was off skiing and something cool got reflected. I guess I'll have to wait ans see the film to find out what Will Smith was looking at. 

[Sky]

most MMO companies can't handle the large amount of QA that is involved just for supporting windows, adding Mac support increases that even more.

There is more to the cost of porting a game then just writing cross-platform code.

The ironic thing is that the mac is now a better gaming platform than windows. The shit code of OS9 is long gone and they finally have decent cpus. But most importantly, it's a specific hardware platform more akin to a console. Windows boxes are a nightmare of incompatibility, comparatively.

[Trippy]

The ironic thing is that the mac is now a better gaming platform than windows. The shit code of OS9 is long gone and they finally have decent cpus. But most importantly, it's a specific hardware platform more akin to a console. Windows boxes are a nightmare of incompatibility, comparatively.

Except that the most popular laptop and desktop Mac lines have crap GPUs.

[Surlyboi]

In answer to Feet's inquiry, yeah, that's Hancock. He's looking at Los Angeles.



As for the crap GPUs, shell out for a Mac pro. I've got a 9800 GTX in mine. Sure it took a little tweaking, but hey, it'll eat all but the most hardcore gamer's machines alive.

[Sky]

That is not LA. You can see the skyscrapers.

[CharlieMopps]

1. No Mac client. See Blizzard for a company that gets this, and no coincidence is also at the top.

Next you'll tell us the reason the second Matrix movie did poorly is because it didn't come out on Laser-Disc.
Failure or success of a product is not necessarily due to its lack of support for some dead media format that a small fraction of the country still clings to.

[Oz]

I lived in the LA area for 5 years...it wasn't ALWAYS that smoggy.  Probably more like 40% of the time from sept-Feb and 80% the rest of the months.  Inland Empire (slightly east of downtown LA) was way way way way way worse.   

/derail

[Nija]

Blizzard has always had Mac clients for their games.

If only 5% of WOW players are on Macs, that's fine. What percentage of Mac gamers play WOW? >>>>> 5%.

If you get a focus group together I'd gladly talk about stuff wrong with the game. We could do it via Vent or TS.  I never wanted to type out a long drawn out "this is why this piece shit isn't worth 2 hours of your time much less fifty of your dollars" post because there were too many people STARSTRUCK by a new MMO release and it would have just been buried by brown nosers or people who eat up shitty games for a side-job.

[UnSub]

most MMO companies can't handle the large amount of QA that is involved just for supporting windows, adding Mac support increases that even more.

There is more to the cost of porting a game then just writing cross-platform code.

The ironic thing is that the mac is now a better gaming platform than windows. The shit code of OS9 is long gone and they finally have decent cpus. But most importantly, it's a specific hardware platform more akin to a console. Windows boxes are a nightmare of incompatibility, comparatively.

Windows is consistently a nightmare of compatability, but has lots of people wanting to see that nightmare turned into working shape.

Macs (of which WoW would have launched during what, the beginning of OS9?) turn on the dime of Steve Jobs, who may decide to screw over gamers one day, just for the hell of it.

Of course, consoles are better gaming platforms than PCs and Macs. Does that mean a MMO developed for consoles will be the best of all?

[Evildrider]

We had 95% of my guild from DDO go over and try AOC, we were all back in DDO a week later when the new mod hit there. 

Alot of us were hoping it would be a good game that we could play when DDO was slow, but it just turned out to be the same ole crap.  The combat system was nothing near innovative, not after coming from DDO where the combat is faster and more involved.

[squirrel]

...of which WoW would have launched during what, the beginning of OS9?

Nope, not even close. OS 9 was launched in Oct. 1999. OS X Launched in 2001. So they both predate WoW by a significant amount of time. Not that it matters at all heh. OS 9 was discontinued in 2002.

[Falconeer]

not after coming from DDO where the combat is faster and more involved.

...

I quit the internet.

[Draegan]

not after coming from DDO where the combat is faster and more involved.

...

I quit the internet.

Wow, people play DDO enough to quit and come back to it?  Amazing.  You, sir, should be in a zoo so people can see you.