Warhammer Online, now with 100% more Mac support
by Eliot Lefebvre 
Oct 29th 2009 at 10:00AM
Filed under: Fantasy, MMO industry, Warhammer Online, News items
There have been some big changes in Warhammer Online of late -- that's undeniable. But the game is pressing steadily onward, making a major change that oddly hasn't altered a single element of the gameplay. No, this change is entirely targeted at the players, as the game has now launched the Macintosh version of its client. They've been hinting at it and talking about it for quite some time, but it has gone live and is available, complete with full support for the game's free trial for any Mac gamers still on the fence regarding whether or not they want to dive in.
Certainly there's been some discussion among the game's community about whether or not the Mac client has been necessary or even desirable, with the common statement being "well, everyone can just run Boot Camp for it." But there's no doubt that a native solution is better than a workaround, and it makes the game more appealing to people who would prefer not to fuss around with Boot Camp. Take a look at the official question-and-answer page to see the details about the new client, or if you'd rather be a malcontent, start demanding Warhammer Online for Linux next.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lagwolf said on 11:12AM 10-29-2009
Yes, bootcamp is a bit of pain initially, but once set up its a joy to use. WAR ran wonderfully on my Macbook Pro.
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TexRob said on 11:33AM 10-29-2009
I'm sure the 10 people still playing WAR are excited about this.
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Celestian said on 11:39AM 10-29-2009
You think out of those 10 people someone uses a MAC? HAH!
TexRob said on 3:05PM 10-29-2009
lol, downvote me, but I actually have a clue about what I am talking about. I have 3 40s, two of which are RR50+, one who is RR60+. The game could have been great, but like others have said, they totally screwed it up by not addressing issues. I could list 100 bullet points of bugs that are STILL in the game. I've never seen a company care less about bugs/exploits than Mythic.
As far as comments about their next game, I seriously doubt you see another Mythic MMO.
As for my original comment, there should be 1 out of the 10 people that has a Mac:
http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/10/15/apple-market-share-continues-to-grow/
Chris said on 11:49AM 10-29-2009
It is not running native on the Mac, it is actually using Cider which is a form of Cedega for the Mac.
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Tom said on 11:59AM 10-29-2009
Too late. I did resubscribe for 2 months to show support for the Mac version, but MMO game vendors need to release their Mac versions day 1 with the PC version if they want to attract customers. I had friends that played it at launch, and would have played with them more. But having to reboot to play was enough of a hinderance compared to just playing WoW that I rarely bothered. And now I don't know anyone playing, so I'm not interested.
While I don't like Cider ports, it's at least a step in the right direction. Next time, if Mythic has a client out day one, I'll be more interested.
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RJGiskard said on 1:09PM 10-29-2009
I tried the Mac client, and the performance was quite poor compared to running in Boot Camp. I don't think it's fair to call it 'native'. It's more an emulation wrapper around a Windoze app, I think, so performance is going to be hit compared to running the app under Windoze. Unlike WoW, which has a completely native Mac client.
And since I'm no longer booting into Boot Camp, I guess that means I need to continue to give WAR a pass. Just like CoX - used to love that game, but the Mac client isn't properly native, and performance isn't what it should be.
Come on, devs - let's get PROPER Mac clients - not flimsy emulation wrappers. Many of us don't want to have to boot into Windoze just to play the occasional game.
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Archmage said on 1:38PM 10-29-2009
As previously stated, this is NOT a native client. I'm not sure why the author stated that. The performance is not on par with the "native" Windows version. I was excited to try the Mac client, and loved WAR initially. But the bugs and problems with the game (some of which are reported to have existed since beta) finally drove my friends and I away.
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