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World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

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Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#51

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #38
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those games you list are bloated games that are really only fueled by nostalgia players now. When is the last time Blizzard really innovated and made something we all had to play like Diablo I and II, Starcraft, and of course WoW? I don’t think it can anymore. It sold its soul to Activision and all the passionate people are gone, judging by their recent games.

However you want to trash them, the fact is that they maintain 3 of the top 20 games viewed on Twitch at this moment.

And McDonald’s is the top fast food chain but that doesn’t make it good. Rather it caters to the lowest common denominator, something Activision-Blizzard has excelled at. I’m talking about quality.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#52

Post by Talanes »

yreg wrote: post #17
wmichelin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for Overwatch, RIP. Also Diablo 3 has always run terribly on MacOS. Pretty much only WoW runs decently. Maybe Starcraft 2 used to be okay but it since became way worse.

They probably ported WoW because they cannot afford to drop support for platform where they have tons of existing paying customers. If they truly cared about the Mac, they would release Overwatch for macOS. It runs just fine on modern Macs via bootcamp.

It does certainly feel like they forgot about Mac when they got the console base with Overwatch.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#53

Post by falcolas »

yreg wrote: post #14
jimbob45 wrote: post #8

For anyone out of the loop: Blizzard is a dead, dead company for many reasons, some political, most game-related, all stemming from mismanagement. Yes, they make money now, but their IPs have lost the goodwill they once had with their customers. I’ll hold my excrement until I see a similar announcement from Epic.

They are consistently making wildy successful games over many genres: Warcrafts, Starcrafts, Diablo, WoW, Hearthstone, Overwatch. I wouldn’t be so trigger-happy to call a company dead just because it has been a few years since the last major title. Same goes for Bethesda.

The most recent of Blizzard’s mainline games was released about 5 years ago. The second-to-most recent a decade. Diablo III, HOTS, and Starcraft are all now in maintenance mode, with no new development. Warcraft III was recently “remastered” into oblivion, replacing the original game for all its fans.

Only WoW and Overwatch are currently active, and both are fueled mostly by their microtransactions. Yes, WoW has a subscription, but despite having a fraction of the player count they used to, they’re making more money than ever thanks to those microtransactions.

Reportedly, DI, D4 and Overwatch 1.5 are in development, but how long will that last now that the last of the old guard leadership (saying nothing about the talent) from Blizzard of old is gone?

Blizzard, the company of old that we loved for its innovative and polished games which were released when they were ready, is dead. There’s nothing left but the name and thoroughly flogged IP.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#54

Post by 127 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #8

For anyone out of the loop: Blizzard is a dead, dead company for many reasons, some political, most game-related, all stemming from mismanagement. Yes, they make money now, but their IPs have lost the goodwill they once had with their customers. I’ll hold my excrement until I see a similar announcement from Epic.

Yes, dead company when it comes to creativity, taking risks and building innovative products. Dead company when it comes to making money? No, not at all.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#55

Post by cdolan »

slg wrote: post #35
Impossible wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might start to make sense to do "upscaled iOS ports". iOS is lucrative enough that many developers will support it anyway. Adding mouse+keyboard support and gamepad support isn't insane and I believe Apple Arcade games require gamepad support. You won't get the highest end AAA games, but those games usually aren't coming to Mac anyway

>You won't get the highest end AAA games, but those games usually aren't coming to Mac anyway But even if they didn't come to Mac they were always available through bootcamp or emulation. Is it simply not an option on this new hardware? That seems like an important step back.

I never found Bootcamp nor Parallels/emulation to sufficiently play a modern video game. A $3k mac always underperformed a $500 desktop windows PC in my experience

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#56

Post by ogre_codes »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #19
arsome wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we'd see a serious boom in Windows on ARM if ARM vendors had a performance benefit to offer and Microsoft implemented a backwards compatibility layer as Apple has in this case. The difference here is in the offering. Microsoft was making a tablet offering where they're just not competitive with no ability to use x86 software while Apple here is offering much more - backwards compatible and all. Until then the…

> Microsoft implemented a backwards compatibility layer as Apple has in this case Windows-on-ARM already has 32-bit x86 emulation - and 64-bit x64 emulation is coming soon: * https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on... * https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315733-64-bit-x86-emul... I haven't looked too deeply, but it seems to use the same WoW (Windows-on-Windows) mechanism that's been present in…

Running x86 code via Rosetta on the MacBook Air is significantly faster than it is running on the previous generation. With the Surface X, that isn't remotely the case. It's a pretty major gap.

This is from the Verge's review of the Surface Pro X:

> The worst part is that even if an app installs, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a great experience. Photoshop installs and opens just fine on the Surface Pro X, but the usability of it is terrible. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20950487/microsoft-surfac...

Maybe it's improved since then? Everything I've heard suggests there is a pretty big performance penalty running x86 code on Windows ARM. If there is a significant performance hit on the M1, the performance gains of the M1 are so good, it erases the difference.

The only way an emulation layer works is if the new platform is fast enough to erase that difference. When Apple moved from PowerPC to x86, it nearly did. With this transition, Apple knocked it out of the park. Microsoft? Not so much.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#57

Post by will4274 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #24
yyyk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both behaviours make perfect sense for the respective companies. Apple is selling hardware (and now services), the software at most should break even. Apple gets obvious benefits from its approach - verticle integration, hw sales... Microsoft sells software. MS doesn't care if the platform is x86 or ARM. Why would it? MS gets paid either way. As far as its concerned it would offer the option (to make Windows future-p…

Microsoft cares because if Mac laptops have twice the battery life of windows laptops, nobody will blame Intel

Won't they blame Dell/Toshiba, not Microsoft? In my experience, users think of the vendor as being entirely responsible for battery, even when the software may be using it inefficiently.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#58

Post by falcolas »

adewinter wrote: post #43
yreg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are consistently making wildy successful games over many genres: Warcrafts, Starcrafts, Diablo, WoW, Hearthstone, Overwatch. I wouldn’t be so trigger-happy to call a company dead just because it has been a few years since the last major title. Same goes for Bethesda.

In fairness, the only real moneymakers from that list are Overwatch and Hearthstone. We could maybe add WoW to that list due to the die hard players still paying a subscription (if that's still a thing?) but Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft and basically hibernating IPs at this point. None of those hibernating IPs have seen any major movement or releases in _many_ years. Starcraft is still viable as it's considered to…

According to ACTI, WoW is making more money than ever, largely thanks to the microtransactions they added. Their subscription numbers haven’t maxed out again, but their revenue has.

And isn’t that something.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#59

Post by Talanes »

adewinter wrote: post #43
yreg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are consistently making wildy successful games over many genres: Warcrafts, Starcrafts, Diablo, WoW, Hearthstone, Overwatch. I wouldn’t be so trigger-happy to call a company dead just because it has been a few years since the last major title. Same goes for Bethesda.

In fairness, the only real moneymakers from that list are Overwatch and Hearthstone. We could maybe add WoW to that list due to the die hard players still paying a subscription (if that's still a thing?) but Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft and basically hibernating IPs at this point. None of those hibernating IPs have seen any major movement or releases in _many_ years. Starcraft is still viable as it's considered to…

The subscription is still a thing. I briefly looked into it early into lockdown when I was completely off work for a month and a half: they wanted 15 bucks a month, and were still charging $50 for an expansion that was about to be irrelevant. I don't know how/if they're drawing in any new or even returning players at that steep a buy-in.

Re: World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon

#60

Post by bredren »

aidenn0 wrote: post #24
yyyk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both behaviours make perfect sense for the respective companies. Apple is selling hardware (and now services), the software at most should break even. Apple gets obvious benefits from its approach - verticle integration, hw sales... Microsoft sells software. MS doesn't care if the platform is x86 or ARM. Why would it? MS gets paid either way. As far as its concerned it would offer the option (to make Windows future-p…

Microsoft cares because if Mac laptops have twice the battery life of windows laptops, nobody will blame Intel

Agreed. People blamed Apple for Intel’s foibles up until a few days ago.
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