Guild Wars 2

Are we ever going to come out of Beta and go to a native client or just out of beta. We are nearing 2 years in beta this has to be a record of some sort and not in any good way.

Ok, so it’s the same old song and dance we have gotten through the years. I am all to familiar with the we are working on it posts and such. Just wanted to check. I am not complaining the client runs fairly well. It would run much better on native built client.

What, exactly, does “beta” software mean to you?

Do you know how long Google’s Gmail was “in beta”? Two years is not “a record of some sort”

It’s common for software to NEVER advance past the beta development stage.

Todd.8162:

What, exactly, does “beta” software mean to you?

Do you know how long Google’s Gmail was “in beta”? Two years is not “a record of some sort”

It’s common for software to NEVER advance past the beta development stage.

The key difference here being that Google was actively working on Gmail for those two years prior to it’s full release (hence why it was called a beta client) whereas the GW2 Mac client is a cider wrapper of the PC’s native client.

With that in mind, the OP is actual making an incredibly valid point. It is most likely that this client will never be released out of “beta” as ANet has not discussed any interest in developing a native Mac client. On top of that, they only have 1 Mac tech specialist who was only hired a month ago. They label it as a “beta” because they understand that it is underperforming when compared to the PC client and want to avoid anyone feeling as if they were misled into buying the Mac client. (though, ironically enough, it is how most of us end up feeling anyway)

This client is a cider wrapper. That is very different than being in a beta state. I only wish that ANet would have the common decency to appropriately title it as such.

The key difference in the beta you are talking about with Google and the beta we have been running for far to long is that Google was not running through a wrapper as stated above. Your point is so mute it should be deleted honestly If in fact we were in a native client beta this conversation and post would have never occurred as well as many others of the same format. This is no fashion a true to form beta it is a cheap mockup so to speak. I can in a matter of minutes or so wrap gw2 and play it myself through parallels or wine or any number of wrappers. What Anet has done is nothing to be impressed by, I would be impressed if as I stated before we ran a beta of an actual native client.

You know that it costs money, time and human resources to create a native client. They’ve obviously decided that the number of mac users is not worth the time and money that would need to be spent. Not to mention they would have to physically hire people who had a completely different skill set. Yes the wrapper is a pain, but it makes it a lot easier for Arenanet to provide a consistent experience.

I agree that the “beta” tag is a bit misleading, but honestly what do you expect them to do, release a buggy port as a proper release and then have to deal with the legal issues of delivering a product that does not work as advertised.

We should probably stop conflating out of beta and native client. Lots of games are cider ports and are not consider beta (e.g., EVE Online, Star Trek Online, The Sims 3…I believe basically every Ubisoft and EA game actually).

The reason why we won’t leave beta is because of the level of support they want to give us. With the beta label they can pretend that a subpar level of support is justified (even though if it was a true beta they would be talking to us…the supposed testers way way more than they are). Yes, google perverted the term beta to mean “here is something with no support” rather than “here is an in development piece of software that we’ll be giving you regular status updates about and would like your help testing”.

Nageth.5648:

The reason why we won’t leave beta is because of the level of support they want to give us. With the beta label they can pretend that a subpar level of support is justified (even though if it was a true beta they would be talking to us…the supposed testers way way more than they are). Yes, google perverted the term beta to mean “here is something with no support” rather than “here is an in development piece of software that we’ll be giving you regular status updates about and would like your help testing”.

On the button. I fully expect that the beta tag is there so they reserve the right to drop all Mac support in the future when it starts to be more trouble than it is worth. Call me cynical

The Mac client isn’t technically “native”, it is using a product from Transgaming called Cider, which just wraps up the Windows executable and data files and translates the operating system calls to work with OS X. (Right-click on Guild Wars 2.app and choose “Show Package Contents”, then browse into Contents > Resources > transgaming > c_drive.)

That’s probably part of the reason for the permanent “beta” tag: Anet can’t necessarily 100% control how the Windows client works through that translation layer. And regardless, keeping the Mac client permanently in beta relieves them of any responsibility if it doesn’t work correctly, in spite of any assistance they choose to offer here.

It would be great for the Mac to be treated as a first-class citizen, but no game built around DirectX can ever be such a thing. We’ll always be relegated to platitudes like, “it should work, but we don’t guarantee it.” The bottom line is that there’s no good reason for them to ever make the Mac client “official.” We should however be extremely grateful that they bothered producing and releasing it for us at all though.

beporter.9254:

The Mac client isn’t technically “native”, it is using a product from Transgaming called Cider, which just wraps up the Windows executable and data files and translates the operating system calls to work with OS X. (Right-click on Guild Wars 2.app and choose “Show Package Contents”, then browse into Contents > Resources > transgaming > c_drive.)

That’s probably part of the reason for the permanent “beta” tag: Anet can’t necessarily 100% control how the Windows client works through that translation layer. And regardless, keeping the Mac client permanently in beta relieves them of any responsibility if it doesn’t work correctly, in spite of any assistance they choose to offer here.

It would be great for the Mac to be treated as a first-class citizen, but no game built around DirectX can ever be such a thing. We’ll always be relegated to platitudes like, “it should work, but we don’t guarantee it.” The bottom line is that there’s no good reason for them to ever make the Mac client “official.” We should however be extremely grateful that they bothered producing and releasing it for us at all though.

“And regardless, keeping the Mac client permanently in beta relieves them of any responsibility if it doesn’t work correctly, in spite of any assistance they choose to offer here.”

Hit the nail on the head with that one. The fact they still advertise this game as Mac compatible is pretty frustrating. I’m sure there are plenty of users out there who bought this game, thinking that their Apple machine could run it, and then don’t know what is happening with their FPS until they realize it’s a very rough beta.

I get it, there’s a lot of resources that go into releasing a Mac client. But honestly, it would be worth their money to come up with full-fledged client at this point. The only MMORPG that runs natively for Mac, that I can think of, is WoW. I’m an MMORPG fanatic, I need to play and level up! And getting only 15fps on GW2, WoW’s one of my only options at this point. I’ll pay $15.00 a month for Blizzard’s amazing customer support and compatibility.

I would much rather be playing GW2.

Elder Scroll Online is native and well supported, Mac coders even post on forums like InsideMacGames.com

Guild Wars 2 is a joke even if FlamingFox is trying to defend ArenaNet in every thread.

I’d just like to point out that the ONLY reason I still play Guild Wars 2 is because it runs on OS X. I simply cannot be bothered to reboot to a windows installation for gaming any more.
You may want to get some more cross platform expertise in your team for your future developments… i know South Korea is entrenched with Windows, but you can do better than a Wine wrapper.

NotTorp.5036:

I’d just like to point out that the ONLY reason I still play Guild Wars 2 is because it runs on OS X. I simply cannot be bothered to reboot to a windows installation for gaming any more.
You may want to get some more cross platform expertise in your team for your future developments… i know South Korea is entrenched with Windows, but you can do better than a Wine wrapper.

The game isn’t operating in South Korea, just the US, Europe and China. Other than that I wholeheartedly agree. The lack of support is silly.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

NotTorp.5036:

I’d just like to point out that the ONLY reason I still play Guild Wars 2 is because it runs on OS X. I simply cannot be bothered to reboot to a windows installation for gaming any more.
You may want to get some more cross platform expertise in your team for your future developments… i know South Korea is entrenched with Windows, but you can do better than a Wine wrapper.

The game isn’t operating in South Korea, just the US, Europe and China. Other than that I wholeheartedly agree. The lack of support is silly.

You do realize that NCSoft is based in South Korea, right? Most people know that.

NCoft west who are the publisher are not based in South Korea. The parent company NCoft East is, but that doesn’t have mic of an impact. The reason NCoft west exists is because they know that they need a proper US subset of their company because they aren’t familiar with what the market needs or demands. So whether I not Koreans only use windows is irrelevant.

The better question would be, when are we getting a NATIVE gw2 client – not a windows client emulated using Wine (a.k.a. Transmaging).

It looks like NCSOFT isn’t committed to developing a native gw2 client for the Mac.

This emulated crap that they got going on isn’t working out well for many of us!