Official Discussion Thread for "Letter from Matt—ESO’s Future Mac Support"

linuxlady · November 2020

Anyone has a video of ESO running on the m1 chipset?

linuxlady · November 2020

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

With this I actually understand why the issue isn't quite as simple as it seems.

Xbox One and Playstation 4 both use AMD x86-64 chips. Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 also use chips with this same architecture, and x86-64 is the standard architecture Intel uses (the name deriving from the original Intel chips such as the 386 and 486).

When it comes to ARM, however, the basic instructions the CPU understands are completely different. The machine language itself is different. That matters enough - for one the core client would have to be compiled in the entirely new instruction set, but also probably programming changes to adapt to the architecture. I'm willing to bet there are instructions exclusive to x86-64 that don't have a comparable operation in ARM. Almost certainly this is the case, because ARM stands for Advanced RISC Machine, and RISC stands for "Reduced Instruction Set Computing". The launcher would have to detect which architecture the system is running on and download updates just for that client itself.

It's possible to do. But it isn't easy. The ARM version of ESO would be prone to crashes, especially at the start, due to the different architecture, and the complicated codebase that would have to be combed through with a fine-toothed brush to iron out all of the instances of incompatible instructions being called.

ESO is not like Doom. It's not going to be running on refrigerators anytime soon, unless those start supporting Stadia.

And yet somehow, rosetta2 manages to do it on the fly with minimal impact on performance

and your assertion is incorrect that the launcher would have to detect which game to d/l. they would have to convert the launcher and be run on M1 and then it would just d/l from a different location. Please lets think. Nay saying seems to be the social norm around here but the reality is if they can make the game they can solve a simple problem like d/l the correct version.

linuxlady · November 2020

That's odd, i didn't read it that way as listed here in this news article. https://www.ruetir.com/2020/11/18/bethesda-vs-apple-mac-support-for-the-elder-scrolls-online-will-be-phased-out/

agegarton · November 2020

Support for Mac users - and the Mac platform as a whole - has been utterly shocking for the past 3 years or more. Serious bugs go unfixed and users are generally left in the dark for a long time, if they get any communication from ZoS at all. Yes, even worse than PC/EU!!

This feels like a move intended to gradually withdraw Mac support entirely, or push Mac users into Stadia.

It's a shame, as higher end Macs have more than enough capability to run ESO well. I was able to retain my Mac, but bought a PC for gaming. I appreciate that not everyone is so fortunate. To my mind, this is just another group of players who will go looking for something else to play.

With the current state of the game, especially the game on EU servers, it might not be long before the only people left are die-hard, try-hard, or farm bots !!

BlueRaven · November 2020

linuxlady wrote: »

That's odd, i didn't read it that way as listed here in this news article. https://www.ruetir.com/2020/11/18/bethesda-vs-apple-mac-support-for-the-elder-scrolls-online-will-be-phased-out/

That link is not working, I think, can you relink it please?

Toanis · November 2020

linuxlady wrote: »

I think apple has made the right choice with their recent development of their own silicon and i do think people will see the value of it and support it.

Well, WoW also ran on PowerPC Macs. The PPC architecture was actually designed in the 1990's by a consortium of Motorolla, IBM and Apple, so it's neither really Apple's first "own silicon", nor the first Mac with a RISC CPU. The PowerPC era ended In the mid 2000's because nobody wanted a desktop computer that was incompatible to virtually everything, WoW still supported PPC Macs until 2010, and now we've come full circle.

ARM is quite a bit older than PPC and was a very niche design until mobile devices became a thing, and power consumption and heat generation of complex instruction set CPUs suddenly became a huge issue. In the end, the M1 is just a licensed ARM design, similar to Bionic or Snapdragon.

The difference to PowerPC is that there are now billions of phones and tablets using the same architecture. No doubt that there will be ports, the question is whether there will be games that use the Mac to capacity. In the end, Apple doesn't really want gamers as customers, they want people doing creative work on a computer that has to be simple, functional and good looking.

BlueRaven · November 2020

Apparently the new “fanless” MacBook Air is running at speeds equivalent to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, it’s crazy.

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/11/12/first-apple-silicon-geekbench-results-m1-macbook-pro-air-mac-mini-analysis/

linuxlady · November 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

linuxlady wrote: »

That's odd, i didn't read it that way as listed here in this news article. https://www.ruetir.com/2020/11/18/bethesda-vs-apple-mac-support-for-the-elder-scrolls-online-will-be-phased-out/

That link is not working, I think, can you relink it please?

how odd the whole site appears to be down this morning... gist was they claimed zeni was phasing out mac support... whole site is down at the moment it seems.

linuxlady · November 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

Apparently the new “fanless” MacBook Air is running at speeds equivalent to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, it’s crazy.

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/11/12/first-apple-silicon-geekbench-results-m1-macbook-pro-air-mac-mini-analysis/

and imagine what the mac mini would do with actual heat sinking and unconstrained by limitations of battery power

kamimark · November 2020

You'd think that with unlimited Microsoft money, ZOS could hire one Mac developer and buy a couple Mac minis to build & test on.

Or as posted, they could just carry on as they have been, they haven't had any Mac developers in years, certainly never test on Mac, and never fix Mac bugs except by accident. Which is why I quit buying crowns, just ESO+. Now I guess I can cut that out, too.

So, after 6 years, well over $1000+ customer, I'll be in game only as a freebie until the next set of ARM Macs are out (I need slightly more than the M1 provides).

While I'm often annoyed by Blizzard the company, at least they support their customers and aren't too cheap to pay for a Mac developer or two. Guess I'm back to WoW.

linuxlady · November 2020

kamimark wrote: »

You'd think that with unlimited Microsoft money, ZOS could hire one Mac developer and buy a couple Mac minis to build & test on.

Or as posted, they could just carry on as they have been, they haven't had any Mac developers in years, certainly never test on Mac, and never fix Mac bugs except by accident. Which is why I quit buying crowns, just ESO+. Now I guess I can cut that out, too.

So, after 6 years, well over $1000+ customer, I'll be in game only as a freebie until the next set of ARM Macs are out (I need slightly more than the M1 provides).

While I'm often annoyed by Blizzard the company, at least they support their customers and aren't too cheap to pay for a Mac developer or two. Guess I'm back to WoW.

And i'm sure you will get it. I don't know what the 27 inch imac will do but i bet it will have something on par with discrete graphics cards and a chip with even more punch than an m1... it would really have to to be taken seriously given how much the m1 offers on their low end products... the next round of graphics cards by amd are rumored to be using the 5 nm process so i would expect them to use the next gen amd graphics cards or something on par with them.

BlueRaven · November 2020

Personally, I am going to continue playing ESO like I am now, until I can’t. I am not going to go out of my way to buy a pc just for eso. When (or if) I do get a gaming pc it will probably be for the next fallout/elder scrolls/cyberpunk type game and eso will not be a factor at all in my next computer purchase if it be pc or Mac. And I will do so when I want to.

However, I really am beginning to resent eso and if this section of the the studio came out with a new game I would not purchase it, even if I had a pc. (And this is from someone who still does not stop at Exxon stations.)

Druachan · November 2020

Toanis wrote: »

linuxlady wrote: »

I think apple has made the right choice with their recent development of their own silicon and i do think people will see the value of it and support it.

Well, WoW also ran on PowerPC Macs. The PPC architecture was actually designed in the 1990's by a consortium of Motorolla, IBM and Apple, so it's neither really Apple's first "own silicon", nor the first Mac with a RISC CPU. The PowerPC era ended In the mid 2000's because nobody wanted a desktop computer that was incompatible to virtually everything, WoW still supported PPC Macs until 2010, and now we've come full circle.

ARM is quite a bit older than PPC and was a very niche design until mobile devices became a thing, and power consumption and heat generation of complex instruction set CPUs suddenly became a huge issue. In the end, the M1 is just a licensed ARM design, similar to Bionic or Snapdragon.

The difference to PowerPC is that there are now billions of phones and tablets using the same architecture. No doubt that there will be ports, the question is whether there will be games that use the Mac to capacity. In the end, Apple doesn't really want gamers as customers, they want people doing creative work on a computer that has to be simple, functional and good looking.

hmm, now you're just trolling. Also if you watched the actual presentation Apple mention improved performance in gaming several times, and they also talk about it often with iPad and iPhone presentations. I work in tech in a world thats almost all windows, I've not had a pc in my house since 1999, its been Macs all the way, not a problem. As Jobs said it's like giving a glass of ice water to a guy trapped in hell.

Now, it's annoying that Zos are dropping the Mac client because it's one of the few games that runs on a Mac. Having invested 4 years+ and been an ESO Plus member for that whole time, that doesn't make me want to do that again.

Env_t · November 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

Apparently the new “fanless” MacBook Air is running at speeds equivalent to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, it’s crazy.

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/11/12/first-apple-silicon-geekbench-results-m1-macbook-pro-air-mac-mini-analysis/

that tests is fake and wrong btw

BlueRaven · November 2020

Env_t wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Apparently the new “fanless” MacBook Air is running at speeds equivalent to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, it’s crazy.

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/11/12/first-apple-silicon-geekbench-results-m1-macbook-pro-air-mac-mini-analysis/

that tests is fake and wrong btw

Uh-huh.

“In Cinebench R23, the M1 handily beat both the 4c/8t i7-1185G7 and 8c/8t Ryzen 7 4700u. Ryzen 9 5950x dominates it easily, even limited to 8 threads—but remember, only 4 of the M1's cores are high-performance.“ -Arstechnica

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/hands-on-with-the-apple-m1-a-seriously-fast-x86-competitor/

BlueRaven · November 2020

linuxlady wrote: »

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

With this I actually understand why the issue isn't quite as simple as it seems.

Xbox One and Playstation 4 both use AMD x86-64 chips. Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 also use chips with this same architecture, and x86-64 is the standard architecture Intel uses (the name deriving from the original Intel chips such as the 386 and 486).

When it comes to ARM, however, the basic instructions the CPU understands are completely different. The machine language itself is different. That matters enough - for one the core client would have to be compiled in the entirely new instruction set, but also probably programming changes to adapt to the architecture. I'm willing to bet there are instructions exclusive to x86-64 that don't have a comparable operation in ARM. Almost certainly this is the case, because ARM stands for Advanced RISC Machine, and RISC stands for "Reduced Instruction Set Computing". The launcher would have to detect which architecture the system is running on and download updates just for that client itself.

It's possible to do. But it isn't easy. The ARM version of ESO would be prone to crashes, especially at the start, due to the different architecture, and the complicated codebase that would have to be combed through with a fine-toothed brush to iron out all of the instances of incompatible instructions being called.

ESO is not like Doom. It's not going to be running on refrigerators anytime soon, unless those start supporting Stadia.

And yet somehow, rosetta2 manages to do it on the fly with minimal impact on performance

and your assertion is incorrect that the launcher would have to detect which game to d/l. they would have to convert the launcher and be run on M1 and then it would just d/l from a different location. Please lets think. Nay saying seems to be the social norm around here but the reality is if they can make the game they can solve a simple problem like d/l the correct version.

It looks like ESO is running really well on a M1 MacBook Pro.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/jw0e5r/has_anyone_tested_eso_on_the_new_m1_macbooks/

Env_t · November 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

Env_t wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Apparently the new “fanless” MacBook Air is running at speeds equivalent to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, it’s crazy.

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/11/12/first-apple-silicon-geekbench-results-m1-macbook-pro-air-mac-mini-analysis/

that tests is fake and wrong btw

Uh-huh.

“In Cinebench R23, the M1 handily beat both the 4c/8t i7-1185G7 and 8c/8t Ryzen 7 4700u. Ryzen 9 5950x dominates it easily, even limited to 8 threads—but remember, only 4 of the M1's cores are high-performance.“ -Arstechnica

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/hands-on-with-the-apple-m1-a-seriously-fast-x86-competitor/

and in R20 intel better
lets wait for independent tests but not this fake lol

linuxlady · November 2020

https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/18/m1-macs-can-now-run-windows-apps-and-games-through-crossover-20/

In addition to rosetta 2 there is also crossover version 20

Mikoto · November 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

linuxlady wrote: »

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

With this I actually understand why the issue isn't quite as simple as it seems.

Xbox One and Playstation 4 both use AMD x86-64 chips. Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 also use chips with this same architecture, and x86-64 is the standard architecture Intel uses (the name deriving from the original Intel chips such as the 386 and 486).

When it comes to ARM, however, the basic instructions the CPU understands are completely different. The machine language itself is different. That matters enough - for one the core client would have to be compiled in the entirely new instruction set, but also probably programming changes to adapt to the architecture. I'm willing to bet there are instructions exclusive to x86-64 that don't have a comparable operation in ARM. Almost certainly this is the case, because ARM stands for Advanced RISC Machine, and RISC stands for "Reduced Instruction Set Computing". The launcher would have to detect which architecture the system is running on and download updates just for that client itself.

It's possible to do. But it isn't easy. The ARM version of ESO would be prone to crashes, especially at the start, due to the different architecture, and the complicated codebase that would have to be combed through with a fine-toothed brush to iron out all of the instances of incompatible instructions being called.

ESO is not like Doom. It's not going to be running on refrigerators anytime soon, unless those start supporting Stadia.

And yet somehow, rosetta2 manages to do it on the fly with minimal impact on performance

and your assertion is incorrect that the launcher would have to detect which game to d/l. they would have to convert the launcher and be run on M1 and then it would just d/l from a different location. Please lets think. Nay saying seems to be the social norm around here but the reality is if they can make the game they can solve a simple problem like d/l the correct version.

It looks like ESO is running really well on a M1 MacBook Pro.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/jw0e5r/has_anyone_tested_eso_on_the_new_m1_macbooks/

Pretty much as I said. It'll work in Emulation just not native support. All this outrage over nothing.

LionsX · November 2020

Microsoft/ZOS shareholders and executive don't care about you, period. As a corporation the sole purpose of their business is to make money and reward the shareholders. The reality is there is probably not enough regular existing mac subscribers that will be upgrading to the new M1's to justify the SUBSTANSIAL investment to port the client. If you think it is easy to do or not that expensive you need to pull your head out of the sand, everything now a days is expensive. Judging by the letter it sounds as if there isn't a strong enough mac subscription base to really support it as it is, but they continue to do so in a minimal fashion out of respect for the current players.

KairanD · November 2020

I don't use Windows since April. I've switched to GNU/Linux - Ubuntu, to be precise. Now version 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla). I play ESO and the vast majority of my Steam library (like 90%) exactly as I used to play on Windows 10. ESO runs with the same performance. The game runs using Proton, an implementation of WINE developed by Valve. WINE is a translator (not an emulator) and that's why the impact on performance is minimal.

On ARM Macs, there are people working on a Rosetta + WINE implementation. I don't know exactly how it works, but Rosetta seems to be another translator. There will be more impact on performance, but I think it's going to be pretty playable. On GNU/Linux, using WINE is totally free. I don't know how it's going to be on Macs. Codeweavers is certainly going to charge for their software (CrossOver).

linuxlady · November 2020

KairanD wrote: »

I don't use Windows since April. I've switched to GNU/Linux - Ubuntu, to be precise. Now version 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla). I play ESO and the vast majority of my Steam library (like 90%) exactly as I used to play on Windows 10. ESO runs with the same performance. The game runs using Proton, an implementation of WINE developed by Valve. WINE is a translator (not an emulator) and that's why the impact on performance is minimal.

On ARM Macs, there are people working on a Rosetta + WINE implementation. I don't know exactly how it works, but Rosetta seems to be another translator. There will be more impact on performance, but I think it's going to be pretty playable. On GNU/Linux, using WINE is totally free. I don't know how it's going to be on Macs. Codeweavers is certainly going to charge for their software (CrossOver).

it works so much better imho on manjato linux -arch based- than ubuntu -debian based. Even so i look forward to seeing what they come up with.

All these arguments about how hard it is to port this game to arm sound like they are mostly coming from people who lack reasoning skills or are perhaps impaired by some form of recreational medicine. The stupidity of the arguments astounds me so. I mean really? People can implement wine to translate the commands on the fly but a full port is just so hard ???????

The new macs are impressive considering their architecture... Though for me it would be a bit of a downgrade on the graphics end to use it for gaming. Can hardly wait to see the new imacs and what kind of arm chip there is available for them.

linuxlady · November 2020

Mikoto wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

linuxlady wrote: »

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

With this I actually understand why the issue isn't quite as simple as it seems.

Xbox One and Playstation 4 both use AMD x86-64 chips. Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 also use chips with this same architecture, and x86-64 is the standard architecture Intel uses (the name deriving from the original Intel chips such as the 386 and 486).

When it comes to ARM, however, the basic instructions the CPU understands are completely different. The machine language itself is different. That matters enough - for one the core client would have to be compiled in the entirely new instruction set, but also probably programming changes to adapt to the architecture. I'm willing to bet there are instructions exclusive to x86-64 that don't have a comparable operation in ARM. Almost certainly this is the case, because ARM stands for Advanced RISC Machine, and RISC stands for "Reduced Instruction Set Computing". The launcher would have to detect which architecture the system is running on and download updates just for that client itself.

It's possible to do. But it isn't easy. The ARM version of ESO would be prone to crashes, especially at the start, due to the different architecture, and the complicated codebase that would have to be combed through with a fine-toothed brush to iron out all of the instances of incompatible instructions being called.

ESO is not like Doom. It's not going to be running on refrigerators anytime soon, unless those start supporting Stadia.

And yet somehow, rosetta2 manages to do it on the fly with minimal impact on performance

and your assertion is incorrect that the launcher would have to detect which game to d/l. they would have to convert the launcher and be run on M1 and then it would just d/l from a different location. Please lets think. Nay saying seems to be the social norm around here but the reality is if they can make the game they can solve a simple problem like d/l the correct version.

It looks like ESO is running really well on a M1 MacBook Pro.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/jw0e5r/has_anyone_tested_eso_on_the_new_m1_macbooks/

Pretty much as I said. It'll work in Emulation just not native support. All this outrage over nothing.

i dont see any outrage on behalf of people wanting new macs supported. I just see people asking for their pc's to be supported. The outrage i have seen is from all the naysayers with ridiculous arguments about how hard it is to port and ask the launcher to d/l the correct architecture and other such nonsense.

BlueRaven · November 2020

Linus Tech tips

https://youtu.be/4MkrEMjPk24

Conclusion, the base line M1 is screaming fast.

linuxlady · November 2020

https://news.softpedia.com/news/apple-working-on-insanely-fast-m1x-processor-for-the-macbook-pro-531648.shtml

linuxlady · December 2020

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/12/apple-silicon-linux-support-project?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+d0od+(OMG!+Ubuntu!)

linuxlady · December 2020

did you see the scaling options on the lappys? air and pro both come with 2560x1600 res that scale to 1680x1050, 1440x900, and 1024x640. there is no 1080p resolution the laptop will scale to on the 13 inch monitor. the case may be different on an attached monitor though as the mac mini can def scale to 1080p, 4k, and 6k... isnt it interesting that they deliberately chose not to support 1080p on the laptops native monitor..

morwynne · December 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Terrific. 🙁

It’s not like Mac support was that great to begin with. Software issues (dramatically dropping frame rates, complete OS system crashes when porting to some areas) that have been present since as far back as Summerset still have not been fixed. And this just seems like an excuse to drop Macs altogether.

That report is fairly depressing. I can’t imagine that the porting is THAT difficult, it’s not like the system software is vastly different, both the new chip macs and the current ones have the same version of the OS.

I know the “ink” is not dry yet on the deal, but I am wondering how much the buyout is playing into this.

Likely the Mac player base isn't large enough, and it would take significant developer time as well to port (Eso is a massive game).
So those together likely point to having little to no monetary gains from a full on port to the new Macs.

Can't say I'm surprised, the bottom line is always going to be the most important, and likely this decision didn't come from the devs.

Uh-huh. Meanwhile...

“Blizzard announces World of Warcraft will run natively on Apple Silicon from day one”

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/11/17/blizzard-world-of-warcraft-will-run-natively-on-apple-silicon-intel-big-sur-analysis/

Well I didn't want to go back and play WoW again, but since these guys don't want my money next time I upgrade my computer I guess they will. FFXIV is upgrading to work on Big Sur, maybe they'll get an M1 version going. Its better anyhow, you can play your same characters in the same world on the same server on any/all - PC, Mac, Xbox or Playstation.

linuxlady · December 2020

morwynne wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Terrific. 🙁

It’s not like Mac support was that great to begin with. Software issues (dramatically dropping frame rates, complete OS system crashes when porting to some areas) that have been present since as far back as Summerset still have not been fixed. And this just seems like an excuse to drop Macs altogether.

That report is fairly depressing. I can’t imagine that the porting is THAT difficult, it’s not like the system software is vastly different, both the new chip macs and the current ones have the same version of the OS.

I know the “ink” is not dry yet on the deal, but I am wondering how much the buyout is playing into this.

Likely the Mac player base isn't large enough, and it would take significant developer time as well to port (Eso is a massive game).
So those together likely point to having little to no monetary gains from a full on port to the new Macs.

Can't say I'm surprised, the bottom line is always going to be the most important, and likely this decision didn't come from the devs.

Uh-huh. Meanwhile...

“Blizzard announces World of Warcraft will run natively on Apple Silicon from day one”

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2020/11/17/blizzard-world-of-warcraft-will-run-natively-on-apple-silicon-intel-big-sur-analysis/

Well I didn't want to go back and play WoW again, but since these guys don't want my money next time I upgrade my computer I guess they will. FFXIV is upgrading to work on Big Sur, maybe they'll get an M1 version going. Its better anyhow, you can play your same characters in the same world on the same server on any/all - PC, Mac, Xbox or Playstation.

no reason it should be any other way...

lygerseye · December 2020

Microsoft Office apps now run natively on M1 Macs... So Microsoft wasn’t the reason. Seems it’s strictly a ZOS decision.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/12/15/4-ways-microsoft-365-is-improving-the-experience-for-mac-users/