Sony Slow To Reveal Mac EverQuest Code Freeze?

mpk writes "It seems Sony Online Entertainment has finally officially admitted (albeit only by an mail response to a user query which got posted into a web forum) that the Macintosh EverQuest server is to receive no further bug-fixing or development support, although the game is still available and playable online. The kicker is that this has actually been the case for eight months, following the Mac version's release in June 2003, yet SOE chose not to tell their customers about it. Inside Mac Games also has the story, and I've posted my thoughts as well. There's no mention of this policy on the EQ Mac home page and the game still appears to be being sold in the shops."

Comments

Open Source MMO

[Kalak]

This makes me wonder if there is a Open Source, cross platform MMO, preferably with a decent userbase. I'm sure I've heard of one existing, but when I looked at it, there didn't appear to be enough users to sustain it.

Heck, EOL titles like this should have the source released, at least for the executables (ala Quake, Quake II...) so that players who are inclined and capable can fix them. It's not like they don't make most of their money off of the subscriptions, and they don't necessarially need to open source that part of the program. They'll still make money off of the addicts.

For that matter, why not make all MMOs this way? Would there be a cheating issue? I've never coded a decent sized project, much less a game or network code, so I'd have no idea if open source would help or not.

Re:IANAECH

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two main issues with the game (although there are a number of other, minor issues):
1) Access to much of the higher-level content of the game is broken. The content itself exists (and it's a large portion of the game), but the scripts necessary to play it do not work.
2) Playing with sound turned on often causes such slowdown of the game as to make it unplayable.

The first issue is server-side based, and much of the EQMac population is of the belief that the fix is a minor one. The second issue seems to be client-side based.

The sound issue bothers players to different degrees (some don't care much at all about this, to be fair). The high-level content currently only affects those players who have played long enough to reach it, though everyone is a bit miffed, because the box and the advertising promised that a full version of the game was being sold.

One of the problems with the situation is that Sony has repeatedly stated that fixes for these issues were underway. Less than a month ago, even, one of the TSRs promised fixes in the next patch. It's now apparent that no patch was being worked on, or even planned.

More on SOE's attitude

[h0tblack]

CSR's have also been deleting any criticism of the game or questioning of the bugs and surrounding issues from the official forums. People have had their forum access and even their gameplay accounts suspended because of public questioining of SOE's attitude and bringing up the subject of unfixed bugs and lack of support. Then SOE changed the posting guidelines..

It's a bad enough state of affairs to get a code-freeze like this, but the entire customer support situation has just compounded the problem and annoyed even more paying customers.

Mac users paid the same cover price and the same subscription as PC users but have never receieved the same level of service. Unfortunately SOE's failure to deal with this properly (I don't think they even contracted any programmers to keep up to date with patches, the original porters certainly were'nt involved) has killed EQ Mac. The failure will no doubt be seen by many within SOE and other companies as an example of the un-viability of the Mac platform (or even non Win32 platforms in general) for gaming and in particular MMO games. Thankfully companies like Blizzard and Wolfpack are proving that this is not the case.