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unhappy mac player - [Merged]


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@"ASP.8093" said:You can still find workarounds for running GW2 but it's not as simple as "we give up on support tickets," they're literally turning off users' current client at a specified date.

But that doesn't mean someone can't use wine or dual boot or virtualisation to run the Windows client.They're shutting down the mac client because as long as it exists, Anet is responsible for it and needs to support it.With the Windows client, they're responsible for it only on Windows.

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@Moira Shalaar.5620 said:

@"Sobx.1758" said:

Happy informed gaming then :lol:

"having worked in IT on windows" just says nothing about your expertise btw. You could as well sit in an office and be "the guy to connect the cables, install software and restart pc to fix a bug" and it would still mean you "have worked in IT on windows".

...and it's almost as if that "stability" is something you gain by apple closing itself off from others, which is a direct cause of... well, threads like this one. Stability by
exclusivity
non-inclusivity, waow.

Yup, that description cold be applied to my minimalist statement, but it is not applicable to me nor my actual experience. I could post my resume to back that up, but I doubt anyone would care anyway.

No worries, that's not what I'm asking for -I'm just saying that what you described as your -lets say- vague credentials to give more meaning to your words meant nothing.

I do not disagree that Apple has made its own decisions that have directly contributed to this situation being what it is. That does not change the fact that the OS is more stable than Windows.

Cool, you were talking about having an informed position, so I clarified that what you said as an undeniable proof of superiority of mac systems (or whatever you tried to do by writing what you wrote, I can't read minds) from the position of the long-time windows IT worker is largly what gets it in the situations like this, which at the same time is one of the reasons it's not being chosen by informed people knowing what they want to do with their devices.

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@BnooMaGoo.5690 said:I've been playing for almost 6 years.I can continue possibly if I go through Nvidia meaning I can play one hour a day for free or I can pay another amount to buy a membership.Not sure what I will be doing.You can blame Apple & there might me some truth to it but that's between the businesses.Where does it leave the player?

Koda the judge & kodan the jury.Yes I could use Bluestacks or some other windows emulator.But that seems counter-productive.It's like how bad do you want to play, customer?Not my idea of customer service/player support but I have a few decades of life before the internet & video games.Thanks for the tips.

Just curious... have you made a similar complaint/thread on apple's forum?

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Honestly, I think they probably went through preliminary QA for their next build, determined that MAC client breaks, determined they could not fix it, and have no other contingencies for the next release. So the result is, the next release will not have a MAC build. Since you can't login with an old build, the last MAC build will cease working.

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Very true but...

  1. On a tight budget
  2. Likes to play computergames
  3. Choosing a Macbook as first and only platformPriorities - Get them straight!

People do have to prioritise, just cause someone chose a Mac and also likes to play GW2 does not mean they have shitty priorities. I don't quite get your point. People buy computers for other reasons than gaming, even if they enjoy gaming.I play on a Macbook because I was doing a lot of photography and when I bought this laptop 6 years ago it was the only real option to go with. Luckily it is also decent enough to play GW2. Are you saying that anyone who decided to get a Mac at some point in the past should also be able to afford to get a Windows system too if they want to also play games? And they should have expected that they should do this?

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@Sobx.1758 said:

@BnooMaGoo.5690 said:I've been playing for almost 6 years.I can continue possibly if I go through Nvidia meaning I can play one hour a day for free or I can pay another amount to buy a membership.Not sure what I will be doing.You can blame Apple & there might me some truth to it but that's between the businesses.Where does it leave the player?

Koda the judge & kodan the jury.Yes I could use Bluestacks or some other windows emulator.But that seems counter-productive.It's like how bad do you want to play, customer?Not my idea of customer service/player support but I have a few decades of life before the internet & video games.Thanks for the tips.

Just curious... have you made a similar complaint/thread on apple's forum

Just curious... why did you respond to this?Apple's forum?Which one?Are you going to suggest buying a pc next?This isn't about whether pcs are better than Apple despite any attempts to guide the conversation there.It's about ArenaNet choosing not to support a platform going forward period.

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@BnooMaGoo.5690 said:

@BnooMaGoo.5690 said:I've been playing for almost 6 years.I can continue possibly if I go through Nvidia meaning I can play one hour a day for free or I can pay another amount to buy a membership.Not sure what I will be doing.You can blame Apple & there might me some truth to it but that's between the businesses.Where does it leave the player?

Koda the judge & kodan the jury.Yes I could use Bluestacks or some other windows emulator.But that seems counter-productive.It's like how bad do you want to play, customer?Not my idea of customer service/player support but I have a few decades of life before the internet & video games.Thanks for the tips.

Just curious... have you made a similar complaint/thread on apple's forum

Just curious... why did you respond to this?Apple's forum?Which one?Are you going to suggest buying a pc next?This isn't about whether pcs are better than Apple despite any attempts to guide the conversation there.

Did I say anything about apple vs pcs here? I'm asking why are you trying to make anet responsible for anything when all they did was respond to the actions of apple.

Like..."I can continue possibly if I go through Nvidia meaning I can play one hour a day for free or I can pay another amount to buy a membership." -how is this anet's problem/fault? Tell that to the company that made your hardware and stopped supporting whatever again when you're still willing to use it.

"Yes I could use Bluestacks or some other windows emulator.But that seems counter-productive." -again, why is this anet's responsibility that you don't want to go through more steps? It's apple creating inconveniences here, not anet, right?

"It's like how bad do you want to play, customer?" -said apple when they stopped supporting whatever again? I mean you could play gw2 on mac, anet didn't try to bait you into buying pc by telling you "you bought mac? we don't want you!". It's apple that pulled the support and develepment of resources that gw2 used for 8 years now....right?

I'm not "trying to make it about pc vs mac", I'm trying to tell you that you're trying to guilt a company that's not even the main source of your unhappiness. And that's exactly why I've responded to this. Hope I satisfied your curiosity as much as you satisfied mine (because despite not directly answering to my question, it's clear you didn't complain to apple about this).

It's about ArenaNet choosing not to support a platform going forward period.

Nope, it should be about apple suddenly not supporting what anet was using for 8 years, "period".

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I understand you mac folks are unhappy, but you have to look at this from a developer's perspective.1 porting a game engine from a Large instruction set processor to a recused instruction set processor is a huge undertaking and may not have anyone of staff who is versed in the ARM architecture. Compound the architecture with point 2, and you are looking at a complete engine rewrite.

2 Apple is dropping OpenGL for an in house developed 3d graphics API called metal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_%28API%29 and are also in the process refusing to adopt other industry standard API's like Vulcan.

3 Arena net is not the first game dev to leave mac users in the dark over this Zenimax has also ended Mac support for Elder Scrolls online https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/59187

this is not the first time apple has done huge changes to their product line that impacted users in a big way First the Jump from Apple 2 to Macintosh. One major change to Operating System kernels and, 4 major architecture changes on processors Motorola 68000 to PowerPC to x86 to ARM and with this new choice of dropping industry standard graphics API's they are forcing game developers asking is it worth supporting a Platform created by a highly unreliable company with a severe case of Not Invited Here syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here Just to reach 7.8% of players?

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Look Guild Wars 2 relies on the OpenGL software.A TON of products rely on it.In this case, it is Apple that desided to remove OpenGL support, which leaves thousands upon thousands of their customers in the cold.

Don't blame Anet, blame Apple.

Do a search on OpenGL, see how much out there depends on it... Anet is just 1 of thousands.

This is Apple, pushing THEIR ideas down the throat of developers.

I've done a few projects using OpenGL, I always stayed away from Mac to begin with for those projects because honestly...the tech world knew this was coming for years already.

If you blame someone, blame the right person: Apple

(ps NOT an apple hater or windows fanboy. Both have their pro's and cons...)

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@BnooMaGoo.5690 said:

It's about ArenaNet choosing not to support a platform going forward period.

I'm sure I'd be quite upset if I were in your shoes, but I don't blame ANet one bit for this decision. For all I know, choosing to support the mac client might be tantamount to essentially developing a second version of their aging product. I believe they cared enough to talk about it seriously amongst themselves, but the math just didn't turn out anywhere close enough to a spot where they could green light that project.

As much as I generally despise mac products, I hate to see any member of the community lose access like this. I hope in the meantime the various emulation solutions are good enough (or keep improving) to keep you in the game.

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@""Veprovina.4876" You can't take Steam as the only representative of the world gaming market, you are not considering other game stores and Apple has its own game store as well. Please refrain from writing invalid arguments based on your opinions, you have no idea what your talking about. My claim still stands right, your assumption that the gaming market orbits around Windows is a pure old myth based on no evidence. Here is some food for your thoughts: https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/

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@Touchme.1097 said:@""Veprovina.4876" You can't take Steam as the only representative of the world gaming market, you are not considering other game stores and Apple has its own game store as well. Please refrain from writing invalid arguments based on your opinions, you have no idea what your talking about. My claim still stands right, your assumption that the gaming market orbits around Windows is a pure old myth based on no evidence. Here is some food for your thoughts: https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/There's nothing on there about MacOS on desktop/laptops that I see. iOS has a sizable marketshare in the mobile space. This isn't a mobile game similar to an iPad app.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/gaming-on-apple-platforms-is-set-for-some-big-changes-here-are-a-few/

In a hugely consequential change for the Mac platform, Macs running Apple Silicon will be able to run iOS and iPadOS games. Developers will be able to choose whether their iOS or iPadOS games are listed on the Mac App Store, but if they choose that, the games will run natively, with minimal additional work required.

This is a seismic shift for gaming on the Mac, and it may represent Apple giving up on a strategy that has never really worked that well in the 15 years since Macs moved to Intel CPUs. Mac games have generally been ports of Windows games. Not all games get ported, and those that do often don't perform well.

Here’s what’s happening to Boot Camp amid the Apple silicon transitionThe poor performance hasn't been because of any one problem. It's a combination of Apple's emphasis with its video drivers, the comparative weakness of the mobile GPUs used in Apple's Macs versus PC gaming GPUs up until very recently, bad OpenGL support in Macs, a reliance on DirectX-specific technologies and frameworks in modern games, and a lack of widespread expertise in Apple's proprietary Metal graphics API among PC game developers, among other things.

Plus, porting triple-A games is extremely expensive, and the market for them on Macs has always been relatively small. It's been hard for a lot of developers to justify the cost and effort. It seems like Apple has decided that trying and failing to win with that strategy is no longer worth it, so the Mac's center of gaming gravity is moving from Windows PCs to the iPhone.From Apple's perspective, this seems like an all-around win. The iPhone app store dwarfs PC gaming by many metrics, the nature of the Apple Silicon shift means Apple will usually be able to ask for more of a cut of revenue from developers who make the games than they would in the old ecosystem, and the effort and expense required to make an iPhone game work well on an Apple Silicon-equipped Mac pales in comparison to that required to port a triple-A, DirectX game in Windows to Metal in macOS.

Parallels' macOS marketshare numbers:As of November 2020, macOS holds a 7.31% share of the operating system (OS) market, compared to 5.79% almost two years ago. (https://www.parallels.com/blogs/mac-in-business/)

Anti-developer practices:

! https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/apple-ends-epics-ability-to-offer-fortnite-save-the-world-on-mac! > Apple is preventing Epic from signing games and patches for distribution on Mac, which ends our ability to develop and offer Fortnite: Save the World for the platform.!! (the aftermath: Fortnite set to return to iPhones via Nvidia cloud gaming service http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54825891 , https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/11/19/amid-dispute-with-apple-epic-games-finds-workaround-to-bring-fortnite-back-to-ios/)!! https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/368364/Apple_to_revoke_Epics_dev_tools_including_those_used_for_Unreal_Engine.php! > The fight between Apple and Epic is only picking up steam, and, according to Epic’s latest development, it looks like the collateral damage has begun.!! > Epic has now filed a motion with the court to block Apple from retaliating or taking any adverse action against Epic’s business in response to the lawsuit it filed last week.! https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/08/17/apple-cuts-off-epic-its-tools-endangering-future-unreal-engine-projects-ios-mac/! > An Epic Games spokeswoman tells The Post that without that access, all future versions of Unreal Engine can’t be developed for iOS and Mac devices like iPhones and Macbooks. In turn, subsequent updates to iOS or Mac devices could make software running on Unreal Engine unusable.! >...! >Game developer Brianna Wu said she already invested thousands for a new Mac to port an Unreal 3 iOS game over to a 64-bit program.! > “Now that project is dead in its tracks,” Wu told The Post. “Using Unreal to develop iOS games has always been extremely risky. All the greatest games of all time, games Apple promoted at iOS keynotes like ‘Infinity Blade’ are gone, lost to time because Apple constantly breaks Unreal Engine with updates.”!! https://www.cnet.com/news/apples-out-to-crush-fortnite-and-unreal-engine-epic-games-says-apple-refuses-to-make-exception/

Canalys analysis:https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/worldwide-pc-market-Q3-2020

Lenovo led the global market with 23.5 million tablets, notebooks and desktops shipped followed closely by Apple with 22.1 million macs and iPads15.2 million of that 22.1 million was iPads because the chart on the page listing tablets has that number , meaning the total Mac computers (non tablets) is 6.9 million (~5%)

Per Gartner , 7% marketshare for Apple in terms of Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 2019

Also WePC isn't a reputable source for statistics unlike a source such as IDC, Counterpoint research, Canalys, Gartner, or industry publications such as eetimes, IEEE, etc. Even in the mobile phone space, globally Samsung is top at 22% while Apple is 11% and in Europe where presumably half the players are Samsung leads Apple by nearly double.

The risk/reward for investing in that ecosystem for Arenanet as a company is in the negative to the extreme.

Leave the Apple bubble mentality and you will see reality. You have more luck of a mobile payment option with an Apple iPhone app and Android app than a full game on macOS.


@ASP.8093 said:

@"Infusion.7149" said:Arenanet has not said anyone on Mac OS cannot play the game. They stated they will not
support
any users with issues and it's no surprise given the complaint thread this past month by someone getting support information that was incorrect or outdated.

They explicitly said they're sunsetting the game client:

Starting February 18 , we will be discontinuing support for the Mac OS version of Guild Wars 2. This means the Mac client will no longer work after this date.

You can still find workarounds for running GW2 but it's not as simple as "we give up on support tickets," they're literally turning off users' current client at a specified date.
Please note that—due to ongoing changes to the game—these system requirements may change over time. In the event that you run into problems playing, you may need to upgrade your system or hardware to continue playing the game as intended.

They are fully covered on this.

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@Touchme.1097 said:@""Veprovina.4876" You can't take Steam as the only representative of the world gaming market, you are not considering other game stores and Apple has its own game store as well. Please refrain from writing invalid arguments based on your opinions, you have no idea what your talking about. My claim still stands right, your assumption that the gaming market orbits around Windows is a pure old myth based on no evidence. Here is some food for your thoughts: https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/

Apple has the iStore. That's not relevant to the discussion because it's mobile gaming ment for handheld devices, not desktops.

If you're saying that the largest spread platform's among desktop computers' statistical analisys is an invalid argument based on my opinion, then i'm afraid i can only surmize you're a fanboy and are at this point defending your platform religiously for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Gaming marked does orbit around windows because that's where the "gaming" graphics cards manufacturers advertise their stuff on, because most games are written for DirectX, not OpenGL, because Microsoft is actively supporting a wide variety of hardwares with its platform specifically to accomodate gaming among other things, and because when you go to a store to buy a gaming machine, no one in their right mind will sell you a Mac.

But i think @Infusion.7149 explained it to you better than i can so... Read that post and follow his advice. There's nothing wrong with liking a platform, just don't get stuck in an echochamber so far that you refuse facts.

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I've logged thousands of hours in the game and just spent over $100 in gems, and ANet is just telling me that I'm not a valuable player. There are dozens if not more ways to allow Mac players to continue to play without having to invest in new hardware or switching to the PC world. Especially during the time of the pandemic, this is an extremely poor decision. I'm disappointed, I'm angry, and I'm unable to comprehend why there's almost no notice on ANet's part (they've known for at least 2 years this was going to be an issue) and also just... depressed. WvW was my game mode of choice, I spent countless hours playing, defending, and making friends and in one slash you've taken that all away from me. There are no words to describe how upset I am.

Poor choice. All the way around.

  • Persistence (Purrsi), Carissa
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I don't know how many other players were also playing on the Mac client, it certainly had its drawbacks but it worked for what I needed. As you drop Mac players, with almost no warning, you're also dropping a selection of your player base and telling us that we're not worthy of your time, your effort, or your game - regardless of the investments that we've made to be part of the game ecosystem. I was a beta tester, I've been here 8 years, but now? Now I'm a nobody.

What's next? Dropping the ability to play via nVidia? With little or no warning AND I have to buy a subscription to play and hope that my internet connection is fast enough to do so? Or do I buy a current generation PC to game on, spend thousands of dollars on a computer only to be told, again with little or no warning, that my operating system/graphics card/whatever is no longer viable? Yes, in this case, Mac users got screwed but now that its happened, who's next under the knife?

For the PC users who are like, "I don't know why you'd buy a Mac to game with anyways" - let me respond with, for 8 YEARS it was okay, and then one day, I woke up, logged in, and found out it wasn't. This isn't on me, this is on Arena Net. This is on the people who are unwilling to upgrade to an actual solution for OpenGL. There's options, but it would take effort and I've been told I'm not worth the effort.

This game was my lifeline, a place where I had a community, friends, and something that mattered. No longer available, I'm very frustrated. I'm tired of the flames, I'm tired of not being good enough, and I'm tired of the idea that you're not willing to even turn over your code to the community so that we can build our own solution for the Mac side of the equation.

I was looking forward to Factions. I was looking forward to fighting with my friends in wvw this week. I was doing my best to actually buy currency to support development. And at the end of the day, none of it matters.

I'm just one voice in a sea of thousands, but just because you don't hear me, doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

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