Guild Wars 2

Ashley recently posted in another topic saying that she is still chasing people up but unfortunately doesn’t have anything new to report.

I’ve only been playing for a little bit, but I definitely agree that a native client needs to be made. I’m not playing GW2 anymore until I get my new PC built because I hate the Mac version so much. It really is a shoddy port. I appreciate that the devs made it in the first place, but this is as bad as the Dark Souls port.

What if they made something using parallels? like a gateway emulator. would that have lesser performance costs?

the issue seems to be, that the mac client is playable in lowest settings just barely on many macs from years ago. but they dont take advantage of superior cpus and gpus!

Sad Swordfish.9743:

What if they made something using parallels? like a gateway emulator. would that have lesser performance costs?

the issue seems to be, that the mac client is playable in lowest settings just barely on many macs from years ago. but they dont take advantage of superior cpus and gpus!

Something like parallels would give you far worse performance… It’s also effectively not doing anything that different to Cider.
You’re creating a faux windows environment to run the game in, so yeah it takes up a lot of resources. Parallels (or anything like it) would give you far worse performance.

Yes I would absolutely love a native client for Mac!!!
Wish the new patch would load without crashing.
Why isn’t this ever asked at the dev live casts? you would think it would at least be covered or asked about.
Mac is 100x better machine than pc and the OS is so much more fluid.
So many students etc use mac and so many more will be turning to mac.
I think having a native client for mac would greatly benefit Anet and the GW2 community.

Still no word I see, feels like mac community really gets pushed in the dark. A beta client has been around for over a year its time for Anet to really push a native client to Mac. I am sure the mac community has more than paid there dues.

I’ve read through this thread.
Here’s my 2 cents:

Mac user since before OS 7.

I’ve been a gamer for over 12 years.

Experience has taught me not to bother with port/wraps of Windows games. The reasons are many and there’s no need to revisit them here. The fact of the matter is the port/wraps never fully measure up to the native Windows version.

So I play GW2 in bootcamp on Windows, and I enjoy the game tremendously. I don’t enjoy having to use Windows, and having to be out of the Mac environment away from the rest of my computer, as it were.

Come late spring 2014 there’s another MMORPG launching called The Elder Scrolls Online (TESO). It will have a native Mac OS client.

I’ll be moving over to TESO when it launches. Sure, initially they plan to have a subscription fee, sure its a different game, sure it might not have this or that feature, sure it may fail at some other subjective gamer-criterion, sure it’ll be different from GW2 but the fact of the matter is I can play it in Mac OS. So I will be going there to check it out.

Oh, and by the way, I’ll be bringing three friends of mine (all on Macs), and customers of yours with me.

So while I await TESO’s launch this coming spring, I’m playing in GW2.

I’d love to get the permanent mining pick from the gem store.
Oh how I was tempted to pick up the toxic armour skins!
More bag slots? Yes please!
I want so bad to buy some gems and convert them to gold so I can buy a second set of armour with different stats, and afford some expensive Superior Runes of the Traveller.
And to go with the mining pick, I’d love to pick up a permanent harvesting sickle, and logging axe to boot!

But I won’t.

I won’t spend the real money and make the investment into my beloved guardian. Why? Because I know, come spring, I’ll be gone.

ANET, you’re losing out on my money.
I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford these many character perks, but I’m also old/wise enough to base my spending on the notion of “return on investment”. In this case, these purchases will only be of use to me for a little while longer.

The money I don’t spend now and in the near future in GW2, I will spend to purchase TESO and subscribe to it.

So you see, ANET, not having a native Mac OS client has caused a loss of potential revenue.
But more interestingly, ANET, your lack of a native Mac OS X client has resulted in sending me to a competitor of yours in the near future.
Two definite weak points in your business model.

ANET, I think its important you understand that if you had a native Mac OS X client, I would have made those in-game purchases, those things I consider investments into my character; and, like I said above, I enjoy GW2 tremendously, so that, compounded with a heavy personal investment in my guardian, I would be quite hesitant to move to a new game and abandon my investment here.

You’ve made a great game, ANET, and I’ll always check back to see if you’ve made a native Mac OS X client. If you have, I’ll be back, bringing my friends, my money, and theirs with me.

Best Regards & Cheers!
Just Another Mac User.

^—

1. - you’ve already purchased GW2 and given them money
2. - the potential revenue from a native client is probably not worth the cost of producing said client.

-#2 is the most important thing in regards to this issue.
YES it would be wonderful if there was a native client. But at the end of the day the amount of people who are holding out because of the client not being native would be rather low so the increase in account purchases isn’t likely to cover the cost of completely reconstructing assets to work natively in OpenGL as well as ensuring that the game continues to be equally optimised over both windows and OSX (which gets a lot harder when everything has to be done twice).
In regards to the potential loss of gem purchases, that number is also likely to be relatively low in relation to the cost of producing a native client. What people seem to forget is that producing new software is not just a case of re-allocating resources and throwing a little time and money at the issue. Anet is full of people who know DirectX and producing a native client would most definitely require them to bring in new staff who are proficient in OpenGL. That means new people to pay, which requires pulling the money from some other area of the game.

Best tip ever – install windows 7 64bit via bootcamp and play GW2 through there.

> – you’ve already purchased GW2 and given them money

ArenaNet make money on Gems and goods in the store. For example to date I have spent €200 on the store vs the €74.99 I paid for the game.

They would have had €50 more a week ago if it wasn’t for the fact the store no longer works for the Mac client (they know about this and are trying to fix it).

> the potential revenue from a native client is probably not worth the cost of producing said client.

Well as it stands now the current client is unplayable for me. So if the next patch doesn’t fix all the issues I’ll be dropping the game until such time that it does.

> Best tip ever – install windows 7 64bit via bootcamp and play GW2 through there.

Yea, imagine you had to tell a windows player to make the game playable they paid for was they had to install OSX and boot up native into it.

I am preatty kitten ed off by ANet. It has been over one year and three months and OS X client is still in beta? Not to mention it works really bad on newest (!) MacBooks -.-.

I can play GW2 on max details when using Windows (Bootcamp) with average 35~40 frames per second, but on OS X I do not get even half of the frame rate. Not to mention Cinder is bad at supporting high density screens (i.e. Retina display). Trying to play GW2 on OS X has been a horror…

Word of advice for ANET about OS X client: If you can’t do something “great”, don’t do it at all. I have been waiting really long for GW 2 OS X client worth using and I need to say I have grown distrustful towards ANET – they simple do not keep their promises.

Sidenote: I really can not understand why Apple won’t buy DirectX license from Microsoft – I know it can be bought since Sony did it for PS4. Or at very least they could mimic DirectX interface with their own implementation – it’s not like any programing library interface can be licensed.

Let’s face it, ANET has given up on the mac client; they can’t make it work properly so we’re stuck with the poop version.

I’d love to see a native client. I actually have very few issues w/ the current build other than the BLTC and BUYING GEMS.

Wine optimized clients work pretty well, but will never be quite the same as a Native Unix build.

Such a laughable thing, 4 months and still no word love it. Great support from the devs. I am fairly confident that I am done with this game supporting it both with my time and finances is like throwing bills in to an empty hole with no reward. Anet seems to care nothing for its mac community.

I uninstalled my GW2 Mac Beta Client to free up space and because it was being phased out of support with 10.6.8.

If I had the OS to run it, you bet I’d reinstall it, especially if it’s native.

So far, I’ve been making do with Bootcamp, but most of my projects are done on Mac anymore. I don’t particularly care to log to Windows (for reasons I won’t list because I’m windy and they’re relatively minor inconveniences that I put up with when I do really want to play the game). If progress on projects for the evening weighs out my desire to play, I don’t log over to Bootcamp, and I don’t play Guild Wars.

As a queen of multi-tasking, I would play far more if I could play on Mac. And that’s all it comes down to.

My point of view stands that if they determine that a Mac native client is within the scope of their programming department, meaning they actually have the resources to devote to such a project instead of other game features (because, realistically, unless they have a Mac-only department, it is going to be worked on in lieu of other things), so be it. We will rejoice as Mac-users.

If they determine that a Mac native client is not within their scope, they will be out the users who either cannot afford a copy of Windows 7, or choose not to run Bootcamp for the sole purpose of an online game. And raging about it won’t change that.

PLEASE GIVE US A NATIVE CLIENT!
vote +1

/sign (10 Zeichen)

I want a native client!!! No more betas!

While I agree with the fact that ESO will take practically ALL the mac users from GW2 if in fact their game client is mac native. And if it is, they will make a KILLING. The game looks great. Unfortunately for some of us, i’ll only speak for myself, cannot afford the kitten ed 15.99 a month sub fee. The honest truth is, for lack of the kittening lore making any sense with the alliances, they have made it play so much like morrowind and skyrim from what i have seen. That it will be the FIRST mmo that is in fact worth that subscription fee because of the content.
But then I stand by my opinion of Blizzard being greedy daft turds. I mean the fact that they strip you of your flying mount in new areas to FORCE you to experience content means THEY know its not fun content. GW2 on the other hand offers so many fresh, exciting and innovative twists on an otherwise bland and redundant Massively Multiplayer Online gaming market that they have proved it will work with the macro transaction in game store. WoW does it because they can make more money.
I was told that Diablo has awesome graphics, gameplay and good content. It was just a eight hour game. I’m sick of game studios thinking they can half kitten this kitten and still have the full support of gamers.

I’m also sick of all of us gamers dividing and separating each other based on either what systems we play on, be in PC, MAC or console. OR based on what games we enjoy playing most. We are all gamers, we need to stand together on this kitten. The fact is i’m playing on a “pc” (i am on a mid 2011 iMac 27" as you can read in my sig) too. its just built differently, doesn’t run on windows and blah blah blah. I admit it is expensive. I need to end my rant now. But this has been building in me for a while. Like i don’t give a crap if anybody plays GW2 on a pc or windows surface pro. We are BOTH playing this game because its fun.

I have also noticed a VERY huge difference in the playability of GW2 after installing mavericks on my computer, despite the fact that it does feel like Anet tries to make it even harder for the emulator to force the code down OS X throat with each new update.
sorry for my rant.

Rigami.3761:

> -

Yea, imagine you had to tell a windows player to make the game playable they paid for was they had to install OSX and boot up native into it.

honestly, i would LOVE to do that! Not trying to be sadistic. "Well of course you can play ESO on your PC… You’ll just have too run what’s called a “separate partition” to be able to run OS X along side Windows on your pc. Yeah sorry, ESO is mac only. That or you can try and play the game on a cider emulator. What are you system specs… actually that doesn’t matter never mind." What a day that would be…

FlamingFoxx.1305:

-#2 is the most important thing in regards to this issue.
YES it would be wonderful if there was a native client. But at the end of the day the amount of people who are holding out because of the client not being native would be rather low so the increase in account purchases isn’t likely to cover the cost of completely reconstructing assets to work natively in OpenGL

You just gave me an idea…

Hollow.9758:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

-#2 is the most important thing in regards to this issue.
YES it would be wonderful if there was a native client. But at the end of the day the amount of people who are holding out because of the client not being native would be rather low so the increase in account purchases isn’t likely to cover the cost of completely reconstructing assets to work natively in OpenGL

You just gave me an idea…

Is your idea to purchase hundreds of accounts O_o

Also in response to your ESO comment a few posts up. I don’t see ESO taking a substantial chunk of GW2’s players. It is a very different kind of game, from what I understand in some ways it’s more akin to GW1 than it is to GW2. Even then it’s a sub based game and subscription games are not really thriving at the moment (ignoring WoW because it’s old and has managed to hold onto most of it’s players and can therefore be set to the side). ESO’s launch I imagine won’t be that different to FFXIV’s (although in my opinion FFXIV is by far the superior game) in that a lot of people will try it out for a month or so but only a small fraction will decide to continue paying their subscription. That’s where GW2 really shines because the second those people get bored of their new shiny they will come back to GW2 because they don’t need to pay a sub fee.

Hollow.9758:

Actually, i tried to make a thread about having people on OS X not spend money for the first two weeks of March and the mods deleted it. We have no power…

I have power and I have decided to exercise it by no longer buying gems. I stopped buying gems in August after following this board for four months and becoming frustrated with the lack of respect Anet seems to have for the Mac customer base.

When I first started posting here there was no support on this forum from Anet. Then we were told there was someone assigned to this forum. Now a few days a month or so someone from Anet stops in, posts a link to some problem solving steps or says they have no news, and then they silently disappear for a few more weeks. The only problems I have seen acknowledged and addressed were the bugs that didn’t allow Mac users to buy gems. Even then, with the most recent bug, I had to post in the account forum to ask Anet to take a second to post their information on the problem in this forum as the information was not posted here. It seemed to me they would have done so without needing to be promoted since this is the Mac “support” forum and the problem was being actively discussed here by members.

Sure the game works 99% fine for me, but based on the way this community is mostly ignored I have chosen to keep my money in my wallet. I don’t like the way they have handled the Mac client Beta or not. Their attitude seems disrespectful.

For those of you newer to this forum I encourage you to take some time and read through some of the older threads here over the last 6 month or so. I couldn’t care less about a native client because after the way they have handled the Beta client I don’t have a lot of faith in them.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Hollow.9758:

Actually, i tried to make a thread about having people on OS X not spend money for the first two weeks of March and the mods deleted it. We have no power…

I have power and I have decided to exercise it by no longer buying gems. I stopped buying gems in August after following this board for four months and becoming frustrated with the lack of respect Anet seems to have for the Mac customer base.

When I first started posting here there was no support on this forum from Anet. Then we were told there was someone assigned to this forum. Now a few days a month or so someone from Anet stops in, posts a link to some problem solving steps or says they have no news, and then they silently disappear for a few more weeks. The only problems I have seen acknowledged and addressed were the bugs that didn’t allow Mac users to buy gems. Even then, with the most recent bug, I had to post in the account forum to ask Anet to take a second to post their information on the problem in this forum as the information was not posted here. It seemed to me they would have done so without needing to be promoted since this is the Mac “support” forum and the problem was being actively discussed here by members.

Sure the game works 99% fine for me, but based on the way this community is mostly ignored I have chosen to keep my money in my wallet. I don’t like the way they have handled the Mac client Beta or not. Their attitude seems disrespectful.

For those of you newer to this forum I encourage you to take some time and read through some of the older threads here over the last 6 month or so. I couldn’t care less about a native client because after the way they have handled the Beta client I don’t have a lot of faith in them.

I couldn’t help myself and bought the toxic armor skins. But I am now residing myself to not spending any more money in the gem story in GW2. I’ll save my money now for ESO and Dungeons and Dragons online. Which is old yes. but it is a fun game.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Hollow.9758:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

-#2 is the most important thing in regards to this issue.
YES it would be wonderful if there was a native client. But at the end of the day the amount of people who are holding out because of the client not being native would be rather low so the increase in account purchases isn’t likely to cover the cost of completely reconstructing assets to work natively in OpenGL

You just gave me an idea…

Is your idea to purchase hundreds of accounts O_o

Also in response to your ESO comment a few posts up. I don’t see ESO taking a substantial chunk of GW2’s players. It is a very different kind of game, from what I understand in some ways it’s more akin to GW1 than it is to GW2. Even then it’s a sub based game and subscription games are not really thriving at the moment (ignoring WoW because it’s old and has managed to hold onto most of it’s players and can therefore be set to the side). ESO’s launch I imagine won’t be that different to FFXIV’s (although in my opinion FFXIV is by far the superior game) in that a lot of people will try it out for a month or so but only a small fraction will decide to continue paying their subscription. That’s where GW2 really shines because the second those people get bored of their new shiny they will come back to GW2 because they don’t need to pay a sub fee.

Totally untrue look at final fantasy sub based and #1 at mmorpg.com it has a huge following and WoW is still very much going strong with over 8 million subs. GW2 is a great game but you bet your bottom dollar that the lack of mac support will definitely be a downfall if they don’t act fast there are several games coming that will support Mac and will be f2p and or sub either way I will not be one to stick around and continue dumping time and money into a company that just does not appreciate or show support for my efforts and the multitude that feel the same way. Just look at how many people have commented on this let alone looked at this Topic itself. Let alone reddit.

mikeew.8607:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Hollow.9758:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

-#2 is the most important thing in regards to this issue.
YES it would be wonderful if there was a native client. But at the end of the day the amount of people who are holding out because of the client not being native would be rather low so the increase in account purchases isn’t likely to cover the cost of completely reconstructing assets to work natively in OpenGL

You just gave me an idea…

Is your idea to purchase hundreds of accounts O_o

Also in response to your ESO comment a few posts up. I don’t see ESO taking a substantial chunk of GW2’s players. It is a very different kind of game, from what I understand in some ways it’s more akin to GW1 than it is to GW2. Even then it’s a sub based game and subscription games are not really thriving at the moment (ignoring WoW because it’s old and has managed to hold onto most of it’s players and can therefore be set to the side). ESO’s launch I imagine won’t be that different to FFXIV’s (although in my opinion FFXIV is by far the superior game) in that a lot of people will try it out for a month or so but only a small fraction will decide to continue paying their subscription. That’s where GW2 really shines because the second those people get bored of their new shiny they will come back to GW2 because they don’t need to pay a sub fee.

Totally untrue look at final fantasy sub based and #1 at mmorpg.com it has a huge following and WoW is still very much going strong with over 8 million subs. GW2 is a great game but you bet your bottom dollar that the lack of mac support will definitely be a downfall if they don’t act fast there are several games coming that will support Mac and will be f2p and or sub either way I will not be one to stick around and continue dumping time and money into a company that just does not appreciate or show support for my efforts and the multitude that feel the same way. Just look at how many people have commented on this let alone looked at this Topic itself. Let alone reddit.

FFXIV has 1.5m purchases – that is the number of box sales, not the number of active subscribers.
GW2 has over 3 million purchases – once again, that is the number of box sales.

Also I never once said FFXIV wasn’t a popular game, it is tremendously popular, especially in comparison to other MMO’s. But you have to remember that almost every other popular MMO that isn’t WoW is free to play.

GW2 is a niche game, obviously not as niche as GW1, but it retains it’s player base because it offers something different from the typical MMO experience and it offers a high level of polish that few other MMO’s achieve. I think you overestimate how many people are going to jump ship to different MMO’s.
Also to say that other MMO’s offering a native mac client is going to instantly make GW2 mac users switch is ridiculous. To say that you have to ignore the time, emotional and monetary investment that players have already put in to GW2.
Once again I want to put emphasis on the fact that with any subscription based game the numbers always start out strong but drop off very quickly. We’ve seen this happen over and over again and it’s why there is such a strong P2P conversion to F2P.
FFXIV will do alright because FF is a well established and well loved franchise and has a massive Japanese playerbase. People are going to start realizing that ESO is not as much of an MMO as they expect…

As much as i want to agree with you Flamingfoxx. I’ve seen some recent beta gameplay of ESO, and the basic battle system is very similar to GW2. Also the way point system. What i’m getting at is, and again this is just my opinion, many people may underestimate the power behind the Elder Scrolls name. And it looks like that ESO might be enough like morrowind and, moreover skyrim, that the fact that its an mmo will be almost unnoticed. This is again my opinion, i have never played FFXIV

Man, Jaid.3205 struck home with that response!

I own the late 2012 rMBP, has a decent Core i7 with 8GB RAM and a GT 650M GFX card (mid-range, not horrible) and I get roughly 30~ fps with res @ 1440×900 and most things set to medium/high.
But, with so many little annoyances happen; the gamma changing from time to time, the camera rotation bug, the constant BLTP issues, now the Gem Store purchase ability, it has dawned on me this Mac beta client isn’t exactly up to my standards of quality.
That is why I’ve decided to no longer spend any of my USD in this game, and believe me, I’ve spent TONS (easily over $150 since launch).
I’m done with sub-par. I’m done waiting for a STRAIGHT answer from a higher up at ANet as to whether or not we are ever going to have it better then it is now (native or not).
I’ll still play, casually, and if nothing changes in the status quo for the mac users, I’ll be moving on to other MMO’s (ESO comes to mind).

Thanks for reading!

absolutely! i’m with you beinghuman. I suggest everybody on an apple computer to go out of their way, not only to stop from spending money in the BLTP. But maybe we should all consider just not recommending it to our friends and family gamers as well, buying the game I mean.

A really old thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/mac/Will-the-Mac-client-make-it-out-of-beta/

I would hope that GW2 looks at the ARPU coming from its Mac users, I assume they do. ARPU for Mac users in other companies tends to be higher (Linux users outspend Windows users on average, too). I don’t know why it would be any different with GW2.

Taken as a part of overall revenue, and long-term technical strategy, it would end up that they would consider the OpenGL development path practically a necessity — or at least an abstraction layer that allows for any graphics API you want (DirectX, OpenGL). OpenGL and DirectX aside from a handful of minor technical differences, provide the same thing. They could provide the same game with the same IQ for Windows users under OpenGL.

But for all this argumentation, it’s probably past the point of no return. Guild Wars 2 was built with a certain tech spec, and almost never does a developer deviate from that in a product after a release. They’ll be focused on adding content and extracting more revenue where they can.

What we CAN hope for, if there’s a Guild Wars 3 someday, that ArenaNet does the more sensible thing and makes it an OpenGL foundation. Till then I seriously doubt a native Mac client will ever happen, no matter how much money Mac users blow in BLTP. It’s a fools hope to expect anything different than what you’ve got. They certainly haven’t given us any signals that it will change.

Love it or leave it, basically…

Luis Machado.4256:

Louiziana.2180:

Luis Machado.4256:

Louiziana.2180:

I guess Louis, that moderator that recently replied to a few post’s last week has already stopped answering questions? lol

I’ve only been at it a couple days and I’m already getting razzed!

I’ve combing the posts trying to see what kind of grievances Mac players have. This item number one that I’m looking into. I haven’t posted on this yet because I didn’t have anything relevant to communicate.

I’m poking hard though, and as I have any information or update to give you guys I will share.

Kyllaa.1385:

I imagine he gets days off too ;p

yes they let me out every now and then so I don’t forget what sunshine looks like

Any news? i’m not letting this post slip back down into the archives, it’s too important to leave behind again

Nothing yet :\ still waiting to hear, Don’t worry I’m not letting this one slip either, I’ll post as soon as I have information for you guys.

lolz it is kind of sad but so sad that I almost find it funny in a weird way. If “as soon as i have information” means 4+ months I think it is safe to assume they are not working on anything for this beta.

you do know lots of these issues also occur with windows issues with trading post are common for me poor fps in many areas also common

The worse part for me it’s that they don’t put the effort to fix this asap.

I agree with you Kioshi and others. i don’t want to let this thread drop. But after playing this game a year and having nothing change except get worse and worse. I guess its time we realized the sad reality of this situation.

Stop recommending to your friends and family to buy this game. This is what i plan on doing.

I just find it intriguing that this game states support for mac yet it is truly not a mac client it is a wrapper which by definition is not the same thing. To have a client means that it is coded around the kernel that system is built on. A wrapper is a port and in most cases is very touch and go I think for macs Aspyr does wrappers best. Anet just needs to either drop mac and focus windows or they need to fully support Mac and stop half stepping us. We pay good money for this game and I’m sure most of us have spent multitudes of cash when the gem store is working and to receive this kind of silence from a company is absurd.

mikeew.8607:

I just find it intriguing that this game states support for mac yet it is truly not a mac client it is a wrapper which by definition is not the same thing. To have a client means that it is coded around the kernel that system is built on. A wrapper is a port and in most cases is very touch and go I think for macs Aspyr does wrappers best. Anet just needs to either drop mac and focus windows or they need to fully support Mac and stop half stepping us. We pay good money for this game and I’m sure most of us have spent multitudes of cash when the gem store is working and to receive this kind of silence from a company is absurd.

That’s exactly what i’ve been saying. Thank you! You put it far better than i was able too.