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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."
This type of thing is not a major issue for companies like Wolfpack and Blizzard, makers of Shadowbane and Worlds of Warcraft. Both chose to go with more open standards, and have cross compatibility with no issues.
Verant choose 3dfx Glide way back when, and then DirectX. It's not a wonder they coudn't easially make a Mac client that could play in the same worlds as the PC users. I would have bought Mac Everquest in a heartbeat for the EQ LANs my friend throws, but alas, stupidity prevailed and they released a non compatible game.
The lesson at the end of the day? Open standards makes life easier. Closed standards puts you into a tough position eventually.
Now I know that some people are going to jump to the conclusion that SOE deliberately forgot to tell anyone for eight months that they had pulled the plug. Presumably, such people will speculate that this was a cynical move to maximise profits and squeeze every last penny out of loyal and hopeful customers.
Well, the fact is that those people could not be closer to the truth. They are entirely correct.
PlaneShift is a pretty nice open source MMORPG, it's still in development and I don't really know about the current userbase though. Check http://www.planeshift.it
:)
:)
Eternal-Lands is also looking good and should be farily playable http://www.eternal-lands.com
I don't really know about the current userbase but I'm about to try it again
Also there is Arkanae https://arkanae.dev.java.net/- I don't really know anything about that one though.
Then you have WorldForge which I really haven't had any luck with, and I don't really think it is in a playable state anyway (http://www.worldforge.org).
In addition to those you have http://www.genecys.org/ - don't really know much about that one either.
So theres a few going on
for all you Mac players, well it's scary but you'll need this now. Best wishes.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Well they are universal. Besides endian issues the only reason for not making the Mac version compatible with the PC is they likely didn't want to update the Mac client software as often as the windows software. My best guess is they wanted a mac version but with the intention of not keeping it as up-to-date as the pc version all along, thereby cutting the costs for the Mac side of things.
Bad decision as far as I'm concerned. Having multiple platforms of the same software has always kept my code a bit cleaner and more modular.
In particular, the final everquest expansion that was included in the game ("Planes of Power"), has only 5 of the 14 or so areas usable, although 2 of the 5 are non-fighting "travel" zones, and about 90% of the time working through the expansion is spent in the 9 areas we don't have access to -- so we payed for an expansion that is largely unusable.
We're not talking "active development" meaning new expansions. We're talking being able to play context that exists (GM's have taken people there, so it does exist, you just cannot zone into it) that was advertised on the package.
I don't think that's an overreaction to expect to be able to use the entire purchased product.
In addition, up until the mentioned email was received from the Executive Director of CS, the Service Reps who were responding to questions on Sony's forum were stating that a patch was under development -- which is clearly not the case.
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.
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.