City of Heroes coming to Mac under Transgaming's Cider
Yet another MMO on the Mac -- EVE Online and World of Warcraft are already there, of course, and now NCSoft has announced that City of Heroes is coming to the Mac. Unfortunately, they're using Transgaming's Cider software to port the game, and as we've said before, the software isn't only unreliable, but But there is one thing we really like about this release, and that's that NCSoft is actually releasing the game on the Mac as a "special edition": players who buy the Mac expansion (which apparently will be a digital-only release) will pick up a free ingame teleporter item, as well as a special "Valkyrie" costume set usable on their superhero character. So if you do go for Transgaming's software, at least you can pick up some free ingame stuff for it. We're not so much for the
There's no set release date yet (they say it'll launch with the game's upcoming "Issue 13" update), but they're taking applications right now for an open beta, so if you're interested, sign on up.
[via Massively]
Update: NCSoft has contacted us to say that the Mac Special Edition of City of Heroes will not contain the SecuROM DRM. It was our understanding that all Transgaming releases would use the technology, but NCSoft says that theirs won't, so there you go.
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Yet another MMO on the Mac -- EVE Online and World of Warcraft are already there, of course, and now NCSoft has announced that City of...
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Isn't this like 4 years to late? I don't know anyone who plays this anymore. If this is going to be the way things are for mac gaming than I'm rather disappointed.
October 30 2008 at 7:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply
I have to say, I'm excited to see this. I've been playing CoH for years, but have switched to WoW, primarily because I *don't* have to reboot to play-I also strongly agree with Tas, just because we can run Boot Camp to use Windows apps doesn't mean it's an ideal solution, far from it.
However, I'm a little skeptical of how stable this port will be. My experience with Cider has been truly awful-frequent lock-ups and crashes, to the point where one crash took out my entire OS. I can only hope the engine has improved...
Sorry, Sam, but Cider doesn't work that way. There's really no way for the "engine" to have taken out your OS. It runs inside of a sandbox where the only files it modifies are in the application folder or in the game's Preferences folder. If you really did lose your system, my guess is the Mac drivers had some terrible memory stomping going on.
Earlier drivers certainly had serious issues that would take down a machine, but I don't know of any that would prevent it from booting back up again. Sounds like a bad piece of hardware.
Having to reboot into XP everytime you want to play a game can be a real pain, when you otherwise spend your time in OS X. I'm glad to have MMO clients I can run in OS X -- so for me that's generally EVE Online (via Cider) and WoW (on occasion). Although my preference for a long gaming session is to do it in XP through Boot Camp, having other options is fantastic.
I was very down on the initial release of the EVE Online client for Mac, but it's really made leaps and strides since then, and I use it pretty much every day. Quite likely City of Heroes for Mac may have issues in the beginning as well, but if it turns out as well as EVE has, that's one more MMO client for Mac I'll be adding.
Annnnnd...
I am gonna jump in here and say that I am sick to death of the WINE/Cider/CrossOver/Transgaming bashing.
Seriously.
There is ZERO REASON for ANY COMPANY to write "Mac Native" versions of games when the only time you even see the mac when you are playing is at the finder.
OK, granted, I'm not trying to run the latest/greatest games on ancient hardware, but truth be told the *hardware has been the problem all along*...not the software.
Like many, I took advantage of the Get Crossover Games free offer, and I have to tell you...now that I have a Mac with a decent gpu, I could NOT be happier.
This whole stupid "strawman" about WINE is getting sooooooooooooo old; SDL and/or XWindows are essentially treated like they should be via DirectX9...hence, with *decent gpus* games run like they do on windows.
*NOTHING* works well on janky-ass GMA950s or old ass Radeons :)
But they don't. I run TF2 on my MacBook Pro under Crossover Games and on Bootcamp under XP. The game runs much better under 'real' XP. Crossover is good enough most of the time, but the graphics quality is lower (and can't be increased) and the mouse smoothing really takes some getting used to, and the scroll wheel doesn't work...
Real native Mac versions would be nice, but with the games industry saying 'PC gaming is dying' repeatedly, it'd be a massive change for them to suddenly start supporting a platform with 1/10th of the market share of the PC...
What Macbook Pro...he wondered aloud :)
-K
My sentiments are the same as the previous posters above. As a recent Windows Convert (and Linux User), I'm disheartened at the State of Mac Gaming. Crossover and Bootcamp don't really offer a solution to this problem, and even further perpetuate it.
We need more Native Mac Games.
"Not to mention that even the MacBook can basically run any game through BootCamp now, making a separate Mac version unnecessary in many cases."
This mentality will kill Mac gaming. I don't know about you, but I find it rather troublesome to have to reboot to play a game. Not to mention, having to purchase Windows, and then maintain a Windows operating system is not really worth it, in my opinion. I'm glad they make these Cider ports, because it's better than nothing. I've played EA's Spore through all the way, and it was a very seamless experience. Blizzard is awesome for making real Mac games, but let's be honest -- a Mac game isn't going to sell as many copies as a Windows game, so developers aren't going to be spending as much money on it. Cider allows them to use much less resources and still present something to the Mac platform.
Cider, unreliable? Sure, the official ports. However, I've been using an unofficial port of 2DBOY's World of Goo that works perfectly.
October 30 2008 at 4:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHot Apps on TUAW
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