Mac not launching game.

Romilly · October 2018

The game patched (I assume successfully), but now when I press Play nothing happens at all.

Grrr....

Romilly · October 2018

Macbook Pro Mid-2015, El Capitan, 10.11.16

Aelthwyn · October 2018

Same issue here. The update got to 100% but now when I click play, the button turns dark momentarily like it's registering the click but it doesn't actually open the game. I've tried restarting my computer, but that made no difference. I also tried Repair under Game Options, that also did not help.

I'm also using El Capitan 10.11.16

Lady_Scorp72 · October 2018

I believe the minimum requirements changed to High Sierra with this patch:

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@Steeler195

As of the Mojave update, macOS no longer supports OpenGL. In order to continue supporting the majority of our Mac players as of Update 20 (Murkmire), ESO will be upgrading from OpenGL to MoltenVK; this means the minimum system requirements for Mac have changed as detailed below. If your Mac does not support MoltenVK, it may no longer run ESO after the update.

The new minimum system specifications for Mac will be as follows:
Operating System: macOS High Sierra v 10.13

Model: Late-2013 27-inch iMac and Newer

Hard Disk Space: 85 GB free HDD space

Internet: Internet Broadband Connection

From this thread:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/441885/why-can-i-not-access-game-after-latest-update-today-22-october#latest

Romilly · October 2018

Well thanks a million Zenimax. Ruined my day, and now I have to upgrade my operating system because you are too incompetent to keep it working?

How about a couple of extra days of ESO+ to compensate.

Juju_beans · October 2018

It's not Zeimax/ZOS. Apple is dropping support for OpenGL. Games that play on Mac must switch and only those Mac's with a metal capable GPU can run those games.

The same just happened with the latest Blizzard wow expansion..the minimum Mac requirements changed.

smacx250 · October 2018

Juju_beans wrote: »

It's not Zeimax/ZOS. Apple is dropping support for OpenGL. Games that play on Mac must switch and only those Mac's with a metal capable GPU can run those games.

The same just happened with the latest Blizzard wow expansion..the minimum Mac requirements changed.

Well, in all fairness the same level of OpenGL is still supported as it has been in the past. Seems foolish to rush something to production that drops customers, doesn't perform as well as what it replaces, and is all done sooner than it's needed. Frankly, bad decision made by someone in ZoS at some level. I've ended my ESO+ due to this mess (mostly putting my year old computer below the new min spec and cutting my FPS to 1/2 to 1/4 of what it was before the patch).

Romilly · October 2018

Ok, it is now 7.30pm. I've lost 4 hours of game time at least, and at least half of my remaining sanity.

1) Mojave upgrade left me with a blank screen. Hard power-down and reboot brought me back to El Cap.
2) Mojave upgrade then took an hour.
3) Mojave upgrade then had deleted my desktop picture of my kid I've had for 6 years somehow... Recovered that.
4) Mojave upgrade then had messed up my 2-finger scroll so I couldnt read webpages easily, had to fix that.
5) Mojave upgrade had switched me into keyboard mouse mode - its really hard to type searches when half your keyboard is missing.

Most of this crap is on Apple. But given that OpenGL was working just fine, it seems un-necessary to force us to upgrade the OS. Worst, it was borderline criminal of you not to actually DETECT that on the launcher, and to warn us we would need to upgrade.

ProfesseurFreder · October 2018

A horrible decision, handled ineptly. ZOS has behaved here like rank amateurs.

I loved this game, and in one unannounced stroke, overnight from yesterday to today, ZOS killed it. I'm so upset.

EulogyL · October 2018

I can't get the game to do anything and I have a late 2017 IMac. Do I need to upgrade to Mojave to make the game work?

olle.linuxeb17_ESO · October 2018

The same problem. All repairs, updates, re-installation did not help and - voila! New OS?
Pardon me guys, but I don't want to change OS, does it mean I can't play my fav game?

Or I should switch to PC? lol

EulogyL · October 2018

I upgraded to Mojave and it works great now.

jonoville · October 2018

My wife has been playing ESO for years and has an iMac 2011.. 2.8gh ..i7 which has been running it fine till she got this same problem.
Does this mean even if she upgrades to Mojave she won't be able to run it now unless she BUYS A NEW COMPUTER???
If this is true this will cut their player base by a lot as I would guess many play with older computers than 2013

kenjitamura · October 2018

jonoville wrote: »

My wife has been playing ESO for years and has an iMac 2011.. 2.8gh ..i7 which has been running it fine till she got this same problem.
Does this mean even if she upgrades to Mojave she won't be able to run it now unless she BUYS A NEW COMPUTER???
If this is true this will cut their player base by a lot as I would guess many play with older computers than 2013

Since the 2011 imac you listed seems to use an HD 6000 series graphics card it will not support metal. Metal requires HD 7000 series or higher from AMD.

She'll either need to buy a new computer or, and I really don't recommend this, replace its graphics card to play. Replacing the graphics card in a 2011 imac sounds like a pita and a half but it has been done: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card-upgrade.1596614/

You'd need to be able to use suction cups/credit card to pry off the screen without breaking it. And you'd need an imac compatible graphics card as they need to have custom mac firmware.

Romilly · October 2018

I still have a problem with Mojave -- if I close my laptop while the game is still running (even in character screen or login), then I CANNOT type my password on the lock screen when I wake it up.

This was NOT a problem before. Clearly an interaction between the Mac and ESO. But fix it please having to hard-reboot my laptop is not acceptable.

kenjitamura · October 2018

Romilly wrote: »

I still have a problem with Mojave -- if I close my laptop while the game is still running (even in character screen or login), then I CANNOT type my password on the lock screen when I wake it up.

This was NOT a problem before. Clearly an interaction between the Mac and ESO. But fix it please having to hard-reboot my laptop is not acceptable.

Did you happen to do a clean install? It's not really a good idea to upgrade to a new OS from a prior OS as it more often than not will result in a lot of bugs. The chances are fairly good that if you back up your important files, wipe the computer, and do a clean install the OS will behave much nicer for you. Or at least that's my experience with Linux and Windows but I imagine it also carries over to Mac.

DearLady · February 2019

I'm not sure if this will help anyone here but I've been going around and around online practically all day trying to figure out WTH was wrong with my game. I've always run this game on my Mac just fine but recently after upgrading to Mojave it became inoperable. I tried everything suggested on many different forums, in many different posts, all over the internet and nothing was working. I must have done a clean install of the game at least 5 times on two different machines hoping that the next time would work but every single time when I hit play nothing would happen, OR I would get a huge error code / send report to apple window...

THEN I finally found this page:

https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/42796/~/what-should-i-do-if-my-2018-macbook-pro-wont-launch-the-elder-scrolls-online?

I have a 27" iMac that's less than 2 years old, and I also have a brand new MacBook Pro. This fix (either making a new UserSetting altogether or replacing my old one) made the game open and work just fine... For now. I didn't get to run it for a long period of time so I'm not sure if crashing or other problems will ensue *crosses fingers* but at least the game is opening and running now.

Druachan · February 2019

DearLady wrote: »

I'm not sure if this will help anyone here but I've been going around and around online practically all day trying to figure out WTH was wrong with my game. I've always run this game on my Mac just fine but recently after upgrading to Mojave it became inoperable. I tried everything suggested on many different forums, in many different posts, all over the internet and nothing was working. I must have done a clean install of the game at least 5 times on two different machines hoping that the next time would work but every single time when I hit play nothing would happen, OR I would get a huge error code / send report to apple window...

THEN I finally found this page:

https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/42796/~/what-should-i-do-if-my-2018-macbook-pro-wont-launch-the-elder-scrolls-online?

I have a 27" iMac that's less than 2 years old, and I also have a brand new MacBook Pro. This fix (either making a new UserSetting altogether or replacing my old one) made the game open and work just fine... For now. I didn't get to run it for a long period of time so I'm not sure if crashing or other problems will ensue *crosses fingers* but at least the game is opening and running now.

I just received a new MacBook Pro 2018 today and migrated my user account from my old MBP and had the same problem and followed the steps you highlighted and it is working no problem, thanks for that I'd have been doing repair after repair or screwing around with settings to no avail.