Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends
Warhammer Online coming to the Mac
Unfortunately, the client doesn't run truly natively -- Mythic is owned by EA, so, you guessed it, Transgaming's Cider is behind this port, too. Cider isn't always the best way to run games (native would be the way we'd like to see it), but many of the problems we've seen with the technology are a few years old now, so hopefully it's gotten better (and that's likely what this beta is all about) -- hopefully they can work out all the kinks before the official release in the Fall.
Warhammer Online is an excellent MMO, especially notable for its heavy PvP elements and its innovative Public Quests and Tome of Knowledge feature (kind of like achivements, but even more in-depth). It's a little late coming to our platform, but it's good to finally see another big game take on Mac support.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
AskRyan said 12:09PM on 7-31-2009
Everquest for Mac is also still going strong!
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Seth said 12:46PM on 7-31-2009
Don't forget about City of Heroes/Villains too :)
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Dogzilla said 1:34PM on 7-31-2009
I downloaded this last night, signed up for an account and left the update running. Had to kill it after 2 hours, then restarted it later. Had to kil it again after another 1.5 hours. At this point, I'm not really sure I'm that interested, as I've read some pretty bad things about how buggy this client is on the PC, and it appears to be running under Wine on the Mac, something which didn't work terribly well for me with Spore.
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istarman said 6:03PM on 7-31-2009
Warhammer is NOT an excellent MMO. It's buggy, broken, filled with so many problems. Even the forums are filled with complaints about unbalanced PvP, broken PvE, and so many other issues.
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WyldKard said 3:16PM on 7-31-2009
Sadly, this release is a little late. Warhammer's decline has already kicked in, and it's not nearly as PvP-centric as games like Darkfall. Indeed, at this point, I'd much sooner want a Mac Darkfall port over a Warhammer port.
Still, it's nice to see that companies are transitioning MMOGs to the Mac, even if the ports are anything but timely.
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Bryan T said 7:26PM on 7-31-2009
Final Fantasy 11 will never make it over here :(.
Perhaps 14 will.
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Trynemjoel said 7:06AM on 8-01-2009
It's not so much that Warhammer is buggy than that it's boring. But then again that's my feeling of most MMO's after my first one was over (Dark Age of Camelot). People don't appear to be social beyond their immediate circle of friends, PVP is so short lived and unnecessary of communication that no one can be bothered with getting to know each other till the fight is over, the points are gained and people can move on to the next thing.
Things have been made so casual and easy there is no need to reach out for help. You can do it all with just 1-2 groups, 12 people, with most of them being random and have very little knowledge about what needs to be done. There is no puzzle hidden in the quest text safe for the location of the goal, and there is major need for alliances, social gatherings and raids if you're doing anything else other than taking over the city.
What was good about MMOs has been lost by most games in the genre, even by DAoC in the end, and what is left is the casual boredom of games such as WoW and WAR. And a mac-client is not going to change that.
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