Thread: Mac Client

Please Turbine...make a Mac OSX client. I have many friends who are not willing to install windows vista on there machine to be able to play your wonderful creation. But still want to play LOTRO

Below is a link to Apples soaring share price. According to the article MAC sales are up 36%. There is a growing number of Mac folks out there, and the potential is there for YOU to profit.

Thanks

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070426/...C5tvbqtqMxVrIF

I want a mac client. Where I work, many of us play and we would all prefer a Mac client. Boot camping, or using Microsoft Windows in any fashion sucks. So many others I know thought about switching to LOTRO, but are waiting for the mac client.

It doesnt even have to be completely native so long as I dont have to boot to windows. LOTRO is the only reason I even have the wasted space on my Hard Drive. Look at EA (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...uying_guide/ea) they are doing it. That other MMO did it.

Please. Pretty please. Even if you just announce that you will be announcing it soon. That would make me smile and lift my spirits.

Don't be stubborn. Please consider it.

Thanks.

I agree that making this multiplatform would be nice, it actually supposedly runs in Linux, but the patcher (using microsofts .NET) will only run under windows. Maybe .NET is too nice to give up, but come on.

Had this same problem with other games. I ended up bring my Macbook back and getting a HP. I have to say I miss the Mac, but I just looked at all the up and comming games and none were Mac user friendly. I think that there will have to be a big shift in the gamming community before we see Mac supported games. If and when it dose happen I'll be buying another Mac.

Just my 2 cents.

Bump for a Mac client. I have a friend who REALLY wants to play, but can't because she's on a Mac. I personally avoid Macs because games aren't published for them as much, but there are certainly plenty of people who use them and would like to play.

Please...?

Turbine has never shown any interest in provided clients for alternative operating systems.

It does not make any economic sense these days to make a OSX client. Apple decided to switch to Intel chip sets. They provided the ability to nun Windows natively on an MAC hardware. By doing that, they took all incentive away for development houses to provide OSX versions of their software.

Tour MAC client already exists. The only additional customers Turbine is going to capture are the few folks who would play LOTRO but refuse to use the existing solution. It is the few new folks that are the business case for developing an OSX client. To be blunt, there are not enough of them to pay for the development and maintenance costs for a second client.

Unlikely. The port to a Mac client isn't close to trivial, the testing impact would be huge, and despite a good run by Macs in the past year... they still only have 7% of the U.S. PC market (and about 3.5% of the world PC market). And as Yula pointed out, Boot Camp has somewhat weakened the argument to do native Mac ports.

About the only really good argument for doing a Mac port that I can see is simply that there are so few MMORPGs there, meaning that Turbine would have a decent shot at getting a larger slice of that (small) pie than they can on the Windows PC.

Khafar

Another slight.. 'issue' with a non Windows client; the game is marketted under Microsoft's 'lovely' Games for Windows banner - I am betting that it took a bit of wrangling to get that designation from MS [unlike the Vista Ready label MS allowed Mfgs. to throw on sub par PC's]. I know for a fact that they do not plan to support non-Windows OS's anytime in the near future :/ [Direct from a Turbine representatives mouth].

A much bigger problem is DirectX. The game would have to be completely re-rendered into a mac-compatible graphics solution and that's about as easy as making a brand new game from scratch.

I have to wonder how many MACs are sold these days because they can run native Windows apps without a lot of trouble.

I bought a nice MAC labtop for my youngest daughter to take to art school for her freshman year. Bootcamp and the ability to run Windows figured heavily into this decision.

She is used to using a MAC at arts magnet she went to school at with the design apps. She is used to a Windows PC at home for most everything else. Now she has one machine that does it all.

There's absolutely no reason Turbine would allocate resources to enable a Mac client. Do you realize how much needs to go into it, to even allow Crapintosh users to play, you pretty much need to rewrite the entire program, fix out the bugs, redo the textures rendering, rewrite the pathways for sound. If you know someone with an extra few hundred million to invest it in this game, please send it to Turbine and then you'll get your Mac version of the game.

Considering how tiny the market is for Mac Users, it's just not feasible for Turbine or any other company to make a Mac version of a game. Macs aren't the target audience for games, they're there for... who knows now since, they're no different than PCs other than their O/S and keep in mind also, for every time Mac comes out with an O/S you'll have a problem trying to install older programs. Just think of the nightmare Devs would have making something compatible with Macs multiple O/S's

Tell your friends out there, buy a PC,they're not that expensive, or just buy Windows for Mac, and deal with it. A good number of PC users have multiple O/S's installed on their systems. Come over to our world and experience the true power of computing.

this message has not been paid for by intel, AMD, miccrosoft, redhat, or anyone else.

As far as playing the game on the Windows side of a Mac via bootcamp, I don't know if it works but I have a Parallel's Virtual Machine on my Mac and when I try to play the game, I get to the loading screen and then I get a graphics card error. The game doesn't recognize the Mac graphics driver. If they would just make the game so that you can use it in the Windows side of your Mac, I'd love it. Mac displays are so much better, the graphics would be insane!

I have to use a Mac for work, and while I have both Sony VAIO and Mac laptops, I prefer to take the Mac with me on trips...it is lighter and while I can run all of the same programs on a Mac and a PC, the Mac programs are always more attractive and user friendly. If it weren't for LOTRO, I'd ditch my PC altogether.

Please, just let the game run on the Windows for Mac with the mac video card.

it's just not feasible for Turbine or any other company to make a Mac version of a game.

This right here is pure comedy gold.

And michstua, the game runs perfectly on my machine with Bootcamp. And that's the main reason why I don't see a native Mac client ever happening.

Well dude, I have both a Windows machine and a MACbook Pro, and I got some good news. You can get the new OS for your MAC, Leopard, and install Windows onto your MAC. To upgrade I believe it is only something like $150.00 or so. Not bad at all considering the prices of new OS's these days. If you want to play LOTRO on your MAC, than upgrade to Leopard and install Windows via Bootcamp....

Originally Posted by michstua

As far as playing the game on the Windows side of a Mac via bootcamp, I don't know if it works but I have a Parallel's Virtual Machine on my Mac and when I try to play the game, I get to the loading screen and then I get a graphics card error. The game doesn't recognize the Mac graphics driver. If they would just make the game so that you can use it in the Windows side of your Mac, I'd love it. Mac displays are so much better, the graphics would be insane!

I have to use a Mac for work, and while I have both Sony VAIO and Mac laptops, I prefer to take the Mac with me on trips...it is lighter and while I can run all of the same programs on a Mac and a PC, the Mac programs are always more attractive and user friendly. If it weren't for LOTRO, I'd ditch my PC altogether.

Please, just let the game run on the Windows for Mac with the mac video card.

I has the same problem with Parallels and the mac graphics card... the problem is not the game, or the mac, its parallels. the program sets up a virtual graphics card for the windows half of the computer and at the moment this virtual card does not support LOTRO although it does work with some other games. Your best bet would be to get that windows xp with a sp2 and use bootcamp. It doesn't mess around.

Next they should make a client for Ubuntu!

Lifelong Mac addict here. Yet I would agree with the general consensus, which is it is not worth the time/money investment to make a native Mac client. Any mac that has the hardware to run the game is going to be an Intel mac. Which means it CAN already run the game using Boot Camp and either Win XP or Vista. I play on a MacBook Pro, running 10.4.11 (Tiger) and Win XP SP2. The game flies, I have my settings on high/ultra high and I get virtually no stutter unless Bree is particularly crowded or something like that.

So any mac user who wants to play LOTRO can. Very, very few people would come over to the game who aren't already playing, even if you had a native Mac client. Which at this point, would be horrifically expensive to produce.

Note this is very different from the situation Blizzard faced some years ago. Their decision to develop a native Mac client for WoW was genius; though at the time mac users were less than 5% of the market, something like 30% of WoW players were playing on macs. Simply put, WoW was the ONLY major MMO available in a mac client, which means (in the days before the Intel-based macs), it was the only major MMO mac users had access to. And they flocked to it, and many of them are still there to this day. But in this era of the Intel mac, I doubt we will ever see a new MMO developed with an explicit Mac client again.

Originally Posted by MithrilSoul

But in this era of the Intel mac, I doubt we will ever see a new MMO developed with an explicit Mac client again.

Does Blizzard's new Starcraft II on the horizon count then? Because they have already announced it will be released for both Mac and Winders.

The part earlier too about Blizzard going early on and adopting a Mac platform being genius is also spot on.

I've read a few interviews/articles (here's one) where the developers for Blizz flat out admit that because they adopted a Mac platform, with the aid of the X tools environment, it actually makes their job easier in finding bugs because they are developing cross-platform simultaneously.

“Both our Mac and Windows developers find bugs we probably wouldn’t have found so quickly without simultaneous development on both platforms. We’re building the same game using different processors, different compilers and different memory, and so we catch things much sooner.”...

Mac OS X tools also help us save time, which is important because both versions have to come out together.

But yeah, I've always wondered why Turbine has been so stubborn on the uptake when it comes to a Mac-based client, the "official" response is always the same, as if they hit a macro key every time..

"We have no plans at this time to develop a Mac client".

And yet the company that embraced it early on and ships a dual-platform install has millions more copies sold... purely coincidental, I'm sure.

Granted, I'm no developer and I don't play one on the Internet like many players here seem to do when things go wrong with the game, but one can only wonder how many more copies of Turbine engine-based games they could fly out the door these days with Mac sales on the uptake if they did make the initial investment.

The only way we'd ever know is if we had some sort of demographics done of Mac users and turbine games. (I for one would love to not have to use Bootcamp and a M$ product just to play)

I guess it's always just easier to hit that macro button again though.

Originally Posted by Vlass

Please Turbine...make a Mac OSX client. I have many friends who are not willing to install windows vista on there machine to be able to play your wonderful creation. But still want to play LOTRO

Please no.. Leave LOTRO to be played on real computers please. <Unabashedly PC Elitist...>

Make a Linux version before you make THIS abomination.

Originally Posted by Stilgaard

But yeah, I've always wondered why Turbine has been so stubborn on the uptake when it comes to a Mac-based client, the "official" response is always the same, as if they hit a macro key every time.

Unlike Blizzard, Turbine started as a Microsoft house. Their first two games were Microsoft games. Microsoft set them up. Mind controlled them. Supplied the tools and hardware for them.

Things like DirectX, .Net, Visual Studio, Windows, Intel PCs, IE are all wound into everything they do.

It is multiple problem for them:

1) To go Mac, they got to buy MACs, learn OSX, train their people, and port it.

2) It is a culture issue. They are a Microsoft house. It a hard sell. That all they do. Windows PCs games.

3) They probably do not think it worth the culture shock and money to go into the Mac because it so small.

They have been trying to expand into the console market. They have been working at this least two years. I bet this is fun for a company that has a mantrs of - There only one way to do it - Intel PCs running Windows. Consoles is a lot bigger market than Macs.

Circular logic in the M$/Mac debate for the draw once again.

There's no market for it so why bother developing it.
(Practically) No one develops for it, so there's no market to sell to.

Seconded.

If only we had a MAC client then I could get more of my friends on.

Truly, the great thing that Blizzard did with WoW was simultaneous release on MAC & PC platforms. I expect any developer that follows this example will see tremendous returns in exchange for the extra effort of porting across platforms. The modern hardware and OS are becoming more and more alike anyway.

Turbine, if you release a MAC client for LOTRO I can almost guarantee new users amongst my circle of friends alone.

Originally Posted by MisterBojangles

Next they should make a client for Ubuntu!

There already is one and they have even solved the update issues involved with .NET

One of my gaming rigs at home uses LINUX only and it plays LotRO quite will using Wine and Mono.

There is a thread on the Ubuntu forums dealing with this exact issue.

Here it is:http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ighlight=lotro

Link for a LINUX graphical interface launcher for LotRO: http://www.lotrolinux.com/

I think the only thing that hasn't been worked out is patching the High rez client in LINUX. You actually have to do it in windows then transfer the files.

Sorry for the threadjack.



More OT:



Unfortunately for MAC people it looks like your only option is to use bootcamp.

I do agree, while it would be no small undertaking, it seems there would be significant returns to be one of few major MMO's with a native MAC client.

My 2 pyreals

Despite being a pc user even I think a mac client would be great, but it 's much too late for that now.

The example of Blizzard is a good one, but WoW was far from being their first mac/windows game. They have a lot of experience developing on both platforms and this is the reason why their past games always appeared to be a graphical generation behind all others (macs previously struggled with the high-end gaming graphics of pc's).

In hindsight it's a good thing because Lotro would certainly not look so pretty had it been also developed for mac. Now if only Turbine could solve that hitching problem in their engine...

Why to spend development resources for some form of computer that is used less than 3% of the personal computers?

It's actually more like an 8% market share share these days on a steady incline (doing more than Gateway and Toshiba combined in 2007).

Same logic.. Firefox only does ~16% of the browser market, maybe they should just give up too.

Originally Posted by Stilgaard

It's actually more like an 8% market share share these days on a steady incline (doing more than Gateway and Toshiba combined in 2007)

I'm not sure how many of 8% buys it to play "games"

And about Gateway & Toshiba may be so, Apple is a trend for those who like their computers look cool, but considering PC sales, "Gateway" and "Toshiba" is just minority. In the end, PC is a PC.

At least Apple did a smart move and let people use BootCamp if they want to play games.

Originally Posted by SiSL

I'm not sure how many of 8% buys it to play "games"

And what percentage of the market that Dell has a clamp on is actually bought to "play games"?
You think the thousands of PC's that Dell sells to the Govt. and other corporations per year to support the users that need them in a work environment should be counted toward the market share of PC sales for gamers?

Wrap your head a round this then..
Dell sells Uncle Sam a PC, (usually by the hundreds at a clip) with an OS pre-loaded, Uncle Sam (i.e the Army, where I work for) pays for that OS license preloaded, and the first thing that is done, is the drive is wiped and re-loaded with a corporate version of the same OS, already imaged with the correct security templates needed.

M$ gets paid twice for each OS actually used in a Govt. work environment.

Yeah, XP sure does sell more copies alright, how many are actually ever used is another story..

Nice suggestion, I don't have a mac but I think it would bring a significant amount of players to the game so...

/sign

also rating this thread for excellence in hopes it gets some attention.

While I'd love a Mac-native client, I can play LotRO just fine in Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro. I'd rather see Turbine spend their resources on improving the gameplay than develop a Mac client. As has been stated in this thread, any Mac that has the juice to run LotRO is going to be an Intel Mac, and as such already has the capability to run Windows natively.

Windows XP Home can be had for less than $100 (OEM, just buy a $4 SATA cable with it to make it a legit OEM purchase). Boot Camp is included with OS X 10.5.

My Thoughts

-) I know lots of people that would play if there was a mac client
-) Many mac users don't want to install bootcamp. They'd rather just play WoW instead.
-) Yes, mac users are a minority but they generally don't have a problem dropping cash on technology.
-) There is little competition in this space which would mean a greater proportion of users using this product.
-) I'm probably going to cancel my account soon because I refuse to buy bootcamp and another copy of windows just so I can play this game on my new workstation.

Originally Posted by sonstone

My Thoughts

-) I know lots of people that would play if there was a mac client
-) Many mac users don't want to install bootcamp. They'd rather just play WoW instead.
-) Yes, mac users are a minority but they generally don't have a problem dropping cash on technology.
-) There is little competition in this space which would mean a greater proportion of users using this product.
-) I'm probably going to cancel my account soon because I refuse to buy bootcamp and another copy of windows just so I can play this game on my new workstation.

-How many is lots? 4-5-10? even then it wouldn't be worth it create a whole other version of the game. Even if you multiplied that by every single person who posted in this thread.

-if they wanna play WoW... let em.

-If they dont have a problem dropping cash for technology, then drop it for a PC instead of a mac.

-So you think that Turbine should make a whole other version just to keep yours and 100 other peoples subcription?? And all because you are too lazy/Hard headed to install a perfectly good bootcamp.
And as far as you quitting because of it... /waves goodbye

Originally Posted by Dallyoop

-How many is lots? 4-5-10? even then it wouldn't be worth it create a whole other version of the game. Even if you multiplied that by every single person who posted in this thread.

-if they wanna play WoW... let em.

-If they dont have a problem dropping cash for technology, then drop it for a PC instead of a mac.

-So you think that Turbine should make a whole other version just to keep yours and 100 other peoples subcription?? And all because you are too lazy/Hard headed to install a perfectly good bootcamp.
And as far as you quitting because of it... /waves goodbye

don't be a do.uche to the guy....it sucks that there isnt' a mac client. It sucks because WoW has one and LOTRO doesn't. The thing is LOTRO just isn't big enough and I doubt the devs want to devote that much time to it. Personally, I'd love a mac client so my gf wouldn't have to play through windows, but there isn't much any of us can do about it.

I've gotten LotRO working under CrossOver Games for Mac from Codeweavers. It runs without installing Windows, in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2, on my Mac Pro, and is completely playable.

There are some bugs and issues, but overall, it's totally worth it for me.

Unfortunately, the process of installing it and getting it working is not particularly simple. I'm working on improving that but need help from someone with a good understanding of these things (familiarity with WINE, which cxgames is based upon, and/or with writing simple Mac GUI apps would be very useful!)

See my post elsewhere on this for contact info, if you want to help.

Paul

Since Macintosh has a little thing called Bootcamp there is no need for any game makers to make software for the Mac anymore. Kind of a catch 22 huh?

Originally Posted by Strider5548

don't be a do.uche to the guy....it sucks that there isnt' a mac client. It sucks because WoW has one and LOTRO doesn't. The thing is LOTRO just isn't big enough and I doubt the devs want to devote that much time to it. Personally, I'd love a mac client so my gf wouldn't have to play through windows, but there isn't much any of us can do about it.

Im sorry, but i have little to no sympathy for someone who claims outright that they have a way to play a game, but they dont use that method (bootcamp) JUST because they dont want to.

And... wasn't WoW created before bootcamp was? I think that explains why WoW would have a version for mac, and no other games do.

Mac gave you and all mac players a way to play, if you claim that you dont want to go that way for the only reason being that you dont want to... well... what do you expect? sympathy?

I can understand lack of funds on mac users part for not being able to buy bootcamp, I can understand lack of availability OF bootcamp (if that's posible). But what I cannot understand is the desire for a company (Turbine) to waste thousands upon thousands - if not millions ... on a client that very few would use, and especially when there is a perfectly good alternative (bootcamp) to wasting all the time and money and hassle that they would have to go through to make said client.

Im not fanboi Turbine, though I DO think they are a good company... Im just Anti-mac... what can i say, their commercials annoy me.

To be fair we all know that LotRO came out on 04/24/07. Well the final version of bootcamp came out with Leopard on 10/26/07. Plus LotRO was announced way before bootcamp ever was. That being said I play it on my mac in windows under bootcamp and it works fine. But a native client would be nice since I did not buy a mac laptop to run windows.

Originally Posted by Khafar

, and despite a good run by Macs in the past year... they still only have 7% of the U.S. PC market

Wouldn't that still imply up to a potential 7% increase in customers? What other industry looks at potential sales increases of 7% and ignores it? A lot of single player games do this, but that's generally a one-time sale with a relatively short sales period. MMOs are different in that the customers will keep paying for a longer period of time, and most of the expense is with the servers and not the client development.

Originally Posted by Lohi

What other industry looks at potential sales increases of 7% and ignores it?

Lots. There's a huge cost associated with the initial port (this client runs DX9/DX10, and they aren't going to want to do a half-baked job by relying on Direct3D emulation), tracking very different OS changes across platforms, dealing with hundreds of new drivers, training for and handling customer support for a new platform, adding a couple of new columns to the test matrix for every update and expansion, etc. There are plenty of games and other software which don't have any native Mac port, and all that's usually why.

Back when I worked for HP in the 90s and I was working on a project that ran on a couple flavors of Unix, Windows, and Mac... we dropped the Mac flat when it fell below 10% of that particular market - even with the port already done, it just wasn't worth all the other time and expense to keep up to date anymore - the testing alone was a huge deal. We could make more profit by investing that time and resources in other ways (and the only reason we were supporting Unix was because it was a highly technical market).

I know it's a Catch-22, but until the Mac can get back up at least into double-digit market share, a whole lot of developers are going to continue to reject it as a supported native app platform. And even then, the fact that Macs can now run native Windows on Intel processors makes a native port less compelling. Despite the fact that they have Mac advocates on their own team, I doubt very much that a Mac port is even on Turbine's radar. If they're even thinking about a port, my bet would be neither Mac nor Linux, but the latest-gen consoles. Those are used by essentially 100% gamers, have the hot hardware to do the client proud, are underserved platforms for this genre, and are relatively closed systems so there aren't any issues with drivers, N different flavors of the OS, etc.

Khafar

LOTRO runs well on Linux with some form of windows emulation on softwares.

May be you should force Steve Jobs to allow "non-apple made" or "not-sharing-profit-for-apple" software company.

Amiga's one of most failure point was it did not allow even 3rd party hardware, Apple saw it last few years and run for Intel before they drawn alot more. Now same for Software side. Basically with their policy they will never see two digit numbers in percents of usage.