Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG for Macintosh - Help us get noticed!
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We need you! icemansab has made a huge thread to get BioWare's attention and ask them to make a Mac client for Star Wars: The Old Republic, an upcoming MMORPG based on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) I & II.
Head on over to this thread, register on the SWTOR forums, respond and take the poll and make the developers hear us!
It's very important that we show developers there is a demand for a Mac version of this game, so please help out if you have a few minutes to spare!
[/CENTER]We need you! icemansab has made a huge thread to get BioWare's attention and ask them to make a Mac client for Star Wars: The Old Republic, an upcoming MMORPG based on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) I & II.
Head on over to this thread, register on the SWTOR forums, respond and take the poll and make the developers hear us!
It's very important that we show developers there is a demand for a Mac version of this game, so please help out if you have a few minutes to spare!
Comments
Mac-Forums.com just took down a similar thread of mine with the accusation that I was spamming/advertising. Please take a moment to consider what my post is really about before passing a judgement on it. I'm not trying to make anyone any money, or scam anyone. I'm providing a link to another forum where Mac users are trying to get a game developer's attention. I beg you not to take this down.
It looks like it would run comfortably on Mac GPU hardware:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMds7IvDdpA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8KJzaWOBL0
Although those pre-release shots may be lowered graphics-wise.
The trailer looks amazing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvbv-LkK6w
Pity they couldn't just redo episode 1 with something like this and replace it in the collection.
The gameplay actually doesn't look that interesting if I'm being honest. The game Mass Effect looks better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OKsRjE76mE
Interesting that Bioware make both though. Perhaps The Old Republic will be Mass Effect but in the Star Wars context. If it has high end requirements like Mass Effect, there would be little point in a Mac port as you can't play Mass Effect on most of the Mac GPUs adequately.
If it's a large game, it's probably a lot of work to port across and the target is basically:
Mac users > who like MMORPG > who like Star Wars
This could be a pretty small audience. I wonder how profitable WoW is Mac vs Windows.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the options for Mac users for MMORPG's are few. WoW and EVE. That's almost all of them right there.
BioWare could steal a significant part of the market. Sometimes it has nothing to do with liking Star Wars or Sci-FI or whatever the game is about. It's about the MMO experience too, and Mac users don't have much choice right now.
The poll in the thread is a bit of a joke anyway. The real deal is the people posting their support for the idea, showing BioWare that there is a significant demand for it.
What are the chances it'll get ported to Mac?
KOTOR II doesn't even have an official Mac version yet. There's almost zero chance of this happening.
http://www.aspyr.com/games/star-wars...e-old-republic
http://www.aspyr.com/games/star-wars...e-old-republic
You'll want to read my post again?
http://www.aspyr.com/games/star-wars...e-old-republic
That one came out about a year after the Windows version. KOTOR 2 was in 2005 so a Mac port is unlikely at this stage. We'd probably only hear about a Mac port of The Old Republic sometime in the 2nd half of next year.
Aspyr's porting has been a bit disappointing. It's good that they managed MW1 and Force Unleashed but I'd say Feral Interactive have been doing a better job lately with Mafia 2, Arkham Asylum, Lego Star Wars, Dirt 2 and Bioshock 2 (upcoming).
That one came out about a year after the Windows version. KOTOR 2 was in 2005 so a Mac port is unlikely at this stage. We'd probably only hear about a Mac port of The Old Republic sometime in the 2nd half of next year.
Aspyr's porting has been a bit disappointing. It's good that they managed MW1 and Force Unleashed but I'd say Feral Interactive have been doing a better job lately with Mafia 2, Arkham Asylum, Lego Star Wars, Dirt 2 and Bioshock 2 (upcoming).
KOTOR 2 sucked compared to the first game so that is probably why it wasn't ported...
While there are still more Wintel machines than Macs right now this is coming very close to changing in the home market where games are played. The numbers for Mac Pen across the board is 15% but that includes hundreds of millions of business machines. If you sort the numbers for the following parameters. Hardware capable of running game, western and asian audience and privately owned vs business machines you get a number that falls between 40 and 50% of all computers sitting in private homes. Those numbers exclude iPads etc....
This is the great failure of sloppy and not overly bright media types when reporting on the PC vs Mac markets. If you edit your search a little further and go for Western customers you are now looking at over 50% of the potential market. The move by the private market in the U.S. to Mac over PC is one of the greatest sudden shifts in business history where product loyalty is concerned.
Take Blizzard who has had both PC and Mac clients from launch. WOW is a small client relatively speaking and can be run by many many more machines than Old Republic so lots and lots of Walmart PCs are running WOW where not many Walmart PCs can run OR. Well even with their Walmart ready client Blizzard has a gigantic, huge, monster Mac install base.
If I were a Bioware parent company stock holder I would be really pissed that poor development has led to abandoning hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of an uninformed 20th cen bias.
In the U.S. right now, 72% of all computers going into private homes with price tags over $1,000 (game capable systems people) are Macs. I live in a little town in the South and even here that is the case.
OR will ultimately lose to a new version of WOW or some other more inspired MMO that embraces the entire market and not just the shrinking Wintel one. Its just too bad that Biowares failure will kill this game. For that matter its not being available on consol was a stupid decision. I am sure they could have overcome the issues.
If I were a Bioware parent company stock holder I would be really pissed that poor development has led to abandoning hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of an uninformed 20th cen bias.
It's not Bioware's fault entirely though. Games are built on engines that work best for a certain kind of gameplay. If the engine developers don't target Macs, the game developers can't either. In the case of Old Republic, the HeroEngine hasn't been developed for the Mac.
KOTOR 1, 2 and Jade Empire used Bioware's Odyssey Engine so Mac versions are no problem.
There should be no problem with Mass Effect as it's based on the Unreal 3 engine but apparently there were contractual agreements that determined which platforms it could target - this is why it can't even get on game streaming services that are platform agnostic. It was a Microsoft exclusive for a while so restricted from the PS3 too and they aren't getting ME1.
Unless the HeroEngine developers port their software to the Mac, I'd say an SWTOR port will never happen. Your best bet would be to contact them about it:
http://www.heroengine.com/
I personally don't get why MMORPG developers aren't targeting tablets more. There are RAM limitations and storage constraints but people can far more easily sit with an iPad for hours than at a computer desk and the touch interaction would add a lot to the gameplay. They all use fast solid-state storage too so loading times shouldn't be all that bad.
KOTOR? ?2? ?so Mac versions are no problem.
Then why haven't we seen one?
Then why haven't we seen one?
Obsidian got a license for the engine. Since the first one was ported over ok, there were likely other reasons it wasn't ported over. Maybe the Mac version of KOTOR 1 didn't sell very well. The Mac side will rarely get unpopular PC games ported over, which is quite a good form of quality control but too many decent titles get skipped over too.
The Mac side will rarely get unpopular PC games ported over
Which begs the question why anyone would bother petitioning for a Mac version of The Old Republic. I've seen nothing but bad responses to it.
For all over MAC users!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!