EverQuest Coming to Mac OS X 57
Anonymous Coward writes "EverQuest is coming to a Mac near you, as reported on GameSpot. Sony is planning to release it on Mac OS X sometime next year. You can also find details on Apple's website. Scott McDaniel, vice president of marketing for Sony Online said 'Combine the power and stability of Mac OS X with Apple's outstanding desktop systems and you've got an incredible gaming environment that'll take full advantage of EverQuest's huge and seamless 3D world.' (sounds good to me =)"
Re:jesus christ (Score:2, Insightful)
As for EQ, I had an account active for quite some time, because of the low-ish system requirements that allowed me to game on an old AMD K-6 333 with a cheap Voodoo3 card. (I prefer to keep my Mac free for doing other things, and the gaming PC sat next to it for when I felt like wasting some time.)
When the Shadows of Luclin expansion came out, they upped the requirements for all users, not just the ones who bought the expansion, so I chose to close my account rather than buy a new gaming PC.
My guess is that the Mac version's system requirements will be so rigid that it would probably demand tieing up my main G4 workstation (even though a well-coded port of that game really should be able to run fine on an old iMac G3-400... we all know that it won't though, eh?)
I'll pass, thanks. Neverwinter Nights for Mac will probably blow it out of the water anyway. If the Mac port of EQ came out two years ago, I would have been all over it... now I just don't care.
There's a lesson here for game design shops, though. Simultanious development efforts == Loyal Mac customer base. Bungie knew it, Blizzard has learned it. Even if your releases are a month or three apart (as with NWN), it will still profit you much more than porting a long-obsolete game and trying to sell it at new-release prices. Macs may be only 5% of the overall computer market, but keep in mind that over half of that other 95% is made up of office PC's that will never, ever be used as gaming stations, so efforts to build a simultanious Mac port actually reaches a proportionally larger unrealized market than you may have considered.
Re:Odd timing. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Lower startup cost. A $60 set of three books and a handful of dice is all you really need for a group of 5 or 6 friends to start playing. (Others are available, but ya don't really need 'em.)
2. You get to actually talk to the people you are gaming with, face to face. This allows you to beat the living crap out of anybody who is being a jerk, a feature which MMORPG's sadly lack. Also, you never need to look at the fucked-up hybrid shorthand that all the shitty typists on EQ inevitably resort to. If you were never an EQ player, you have no idea how annoying it got to see "r u cleric? heal plz." every time some Iksar monk saw you carrying a hammer.
3. More room for creativity.
4. No monthly fees.
5. If you were one of those geeks who played the original D&D back when you were in Junior High School, there's the spiffy nostalgia value.
6. No spawn points, no camping, no repetitive quests, no worries about 250 other players going on the exact same "epic" quest as you at any given time.
7. The originality of the stories are limited only by the imagination of the cleverest person in your group.
Neverwinter Nights looks like it might emulate the DM-run roleplay experience fairly well in some ways, and I'm sure I will waste a little time playing it, but it can't completely replace the fun you can have with a weekly or bi-weekly gaming group. Anyway, that's just my opinion. YMMV.
Re:Odd timing. (Score:2, Insightful)
We see it every day, some company is to blame for someone being weak at heart...
In the end, its not realy their fault that your friend is weak... Some make it other parrish...
If you think that way, just dont buy the game when it comes out, simple as that...