ESO and MacOS Catalina

Carmina

So, let's see. Another maintenance today.... Do we get an updated launcher? Must be one of the next updates, if not today, if they keep their promise and launch it before Catalina....

C.

Coorbin

For those of us on Catalina beta already, we'll have to get a copy of the new launcher either via Steam or through direct download depending on account type. That's kind of a drag, because it means we have to wait for either Steam or the launcher download server to host the new patcher, whereas folks on Mojave will just get a patcher update. It will almost certainly take longer before the patcher update is available on Steam.

The above is going to be true no matter when the 64-bit launcher comes out. I'm not claiming it is coming today. Currently reinstalling ESO from Steam to see. The patch is released, because my Windows box is already patching.

Coorbin

No 64-bit launcher via Steam yet.

Carmina

Hold on.... Are you saying there IS a 64 bit Launcher app somewhere? I am not talking Steam, I am talking about ZOS' Launcher....

Carmina

(turns out there is. I have been talking to SSN, and they provided ZOS with a 64 bit Launcher some time ago)

Vivifier

Hi. First of all let me say that i know nothing about programming or how os's truly work, I am not affiliated with anyone on mentioned below BUT i love games. I play on a mac for a year and a half now and i love it. I dont play eso currently or bought elsewyr yet. The game is good i love the story and the combat style and I do believe ZOS are trying, but mac gamers are the weak link in being catered to.
I play another mmorpg right now. The particular mmo's launcher is developed by codeweavers ( the profit making company that supports wine , yes wine) and is currently playable in both mojave AND catalina with a minor bug in catalina that keeps a boot banner/window open while you play , which is a minor bug imo.
Somehow codeweavers made wine launch and play in catalina. It somehow utilises metal ... yeap metal +wine. To me that's great news all over and it could provide for a solution long term for many games.
I watched the bethesda show this year on twitch and to me it seemed that bethesda are too deep in developing a huge amount of games that I do hope they support better than eso mac client and launhcer. I do think the launcher will be ready by catalina but i think it will come with new problems that they ll fix or "fix soon" eventually.
The reason I post this is to say that i ve seen other mmos making 64bit clients for windows and if the codeweaver cookery gets out in winehq then there will be alot more mmos playable on mac, so dont fret. Have some havegraven's tonic and sit back and enjoy

Edit: not metal but vk ( moltenvk) , i checked this from the games dx11 log file

Coorbin

Vivifier wrote: »

Hi. First of all let me say that i know nothing about programming or how os's truly work, I am not affiliated with anyone on mentioned below BUT i love games. I play on a mac for a year and a half now and i love it. I dont play eso currently or bought elsewyr yet. The game is good i love the story and the combat style and I do believe ZOS are trying, but mac gamers are the weak link in being catered to.
I play another mmorpg right now. The particular mmo's launcher is developed by codeweavers ( the profit making company that supports wine , yes wine) and is currently playable in both mojave AND catalina with a minor bug in catalina that keeps a boot banner/window open while you play , which is a minor bug imo.
Somehow codeweavers made wine launch and play in catalina. It somehow utilises metal ... yeap metal +wine. To me that's great news all over and it could provide for a solution long term for many games.
I watched the bethesda show this year on twitch and to me it seemed that bethesda are too deep in developing a huge amount of games that I do hope they support better than eso mac client and launhcer. I do think the launcher will be ready by catalina but i think it will come with new problems that they ll fix or "fix soon" eventually.
The reason I post this is to say that i ve seen other mmos making 64bit clients for windows and if the codeweaver cookery gets out in winehq then there will be alot more mmos playable on mac, so dont fret. Have some havegraven's tonic and sit back and enjoy

Edit: not metal but vk ( moltenvk) , i checked this from the games dx11 log file

ESO already uses MoltenVK. Running games via Wine emulation is suboptimal for a lot of reasons, mainly because there's a performance cost to translate Windows API calls to native Mac functionality. There will always be little annoying bugs here and there and reduced performance with emulation. It's better to write a native Mac port for the game, which is what ZOS did for ESO (and thank goodness for that). MoltenVK is indeed a good technology, and it can be used both with native MacOS games and within Wine.

Coorbin

Also... currently Wine/CrossOver rely on 32-bit mode in macOS for much of their functionality. I'm not sure what's going to happen to Wine when Catalina releases and 32-bit mode goes away. They may find a workaround to run 32-bit code inside a 64-bit Mac process using emulation, but there will probably be many bugs and a performance impact.

So, saying that the future looks bright for Mac gaming because we have Wine isn't really helping things. ESO runs like crap via Wine emulation on Linux or Mac. It's much better to demand native ports from developers.

Carmina

Just to say this again: The LAUNCHER is not being developed by ZOS, but by a company called Solid State Networks. SSN has provided ZOS with a 64 bit Launcher some time ago.

The game client for ESO is 64 bit for some time now and, as @Coorbin stated, is using MoltenVK, which is an implementation of Metal. The switch to MoltenVk happened with Murkmire, wich is also the time when the game was so broken that it was not playable anymore.

Currently, there are two blocks of problems in game. The one block is related to the Launcher. This one is simple. That is the part that will not work in Catalina. Not might, not perhaps, not buggy... it will just not work at all.

The second block is all the known bugs in the game. Frequent crashes. Spinning toon. Low frame rates....These are all related to the game client and are honest bugs that need to be fixed.

I am criticising that Zenimax does have a 64 bit version of the Launcher, but does not provide us with it, thus making people who are in the Catalina Beta program unable to use it. Repercussions are that a) it is questionable whether the Launcher will be provided in time for the Catalina launch, and b) whether it will work once it is launched. Apple's intention of dropping 32 bit apps is well known for quite some time now, and it is just another sign of ZOS's total disregard of Macs and their users how they handle this.

They panicked when Apple announced that OpenGL was gonna be deprecated soon, but the 32 bit thing did not phase them at all...

C.

Kaytlin

Well hopefully they will get a 64bit launcher working for the release of Catalina that will fix the spinning toons at launch requiring resetting the system preferences each time the game launches.

Fix the inability to properly quit the game.

Fix the horrendous lag that is present with the client.

I am half tempted to take the ferry next weekend to the ESO party at game con here in Seattle area and ask them in person when they plan to take care of the Mac users. Would love to see their responses in person.

I am hoping that Gina's response above is actually true and not like the BS that comes out of POTUS press offices, lol. So far she has been a good press secretary clone.

I am in the Catalina Beta test program and the game will not launch either from the launcher or from the game client itself. Launcher makes sense since it is 32bit, but the game client itself is 64 bit so not sure why it won't launch.

TIme will tell. After all ESO has been screwed up now for 3/4 of a year, with little or no corrective action by the developers.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

What Gina said is true. Just keep in mind that she did not provide any dates which means that technically there is a commitment to introduce change some time but no commitment to any particular date (such as Catalina launch).

Gattopardo

Well Gina gave a timeline on the previous page that it will be out at the latest when Catalina launches, which at this point has no official release date, maybe it comes before that, maybe it comes on the same day.
The constant posting of new discussions about the launcher filled with (false) predictions, lies and hearsay of someone maybe talking to somebody's cousin's girlfriend's sister will not speed anything up or give more messages, was tried enough by now.
As we will probably have to redownload or reinstall the new launcher anyway, there will be heads up beforehand I would guess. So maybe some people can actually go back to report real bugs and problems.

Coorbin

Well you know what they say: the squeaky wheel gets the grease! There’s only so many developer hours at ZOS, and there’s way more stuff for them to fix across Windows, Mac, and the consoles, plus a lot of cross-platform stuff that has been broken for years. If no one complains about it, they’ll assume Mac users are fine running Mojave for another year or two just to run ESO, long after everyone else has completely moved to 64-bit.

ZOS already knows that, statistically, Mac is their smallest platform by far. If we don’t become a “vocal (extreme) minority” and demand a working game, we won’t get a working game on our platform — it’s that simple.

The only way for the public to influence the decisions of large corporations is to dogpile on them with bad PR when they ignore you, shaming them into doing the right thing. The right thing here is to release a 64-bit launcher before the release of Catalina. If that doesn’t happen, I’m going to get YongYea and other games media youtubers to cover this.

Wonderczech

Hi guys, I'm very new to the Mac stuff as I only recently got a MacBook (2015 with Catalina latest beta) for some development and user testing. Just yesterday I spent few hours trying to resolve why the downloaded ESO installer does not run at all with no further error message or any other explanation. Before I spend some more time with this issue or send any tickets, might that be because this discussed issue with 32-bit apps not runable on Catalina? Other installers worked fine, there are no restriction on the MacBook and I have all admin rights available. Thanks!

Natala

@Wonderczech Yup that would be it! They haven't released the 64 bit launcher so it can't run the launcher which means ESO can't get updates and therefore even if you had ESO downloaded already it would stop running after the first update anyway. If you browse the thread you can see a couple people who've tried the Catalina beta and run into the problem!

This entire topic is basically about how ESO does not run on Catalina and ZOS is aware of its upcoming release and has promised the launcher will be updated before Catalina is out. Considering Catalina's official launch is probably no more than a month out they're cutting it a bit close and it doesn't help you guys on beta at all.

lolmer

Just commenting to subscribe to this thread (as I don't see an option to just subscribe without posting) as one of my computers was updated to Catalina for necessary testing for another project, so that computer is now unusable for ESO.

PS: So it's now September and Catalina is Officially coming out in "about" 22 days (September 23 is the current estimate). We may want a launcher to test on both Mojave (to make sure you don't break existing non-updated OS X) and Catalina (for those of us on the insider beta program (often to help test other projects)...

morwynne

I am both running Mojave and Catalina on the same machine, I just boot off my external drive when I want to update or run Catalina.

I'd love to test the 64 bit launcher....if you need any testers.

Carmina

Finally decided to cancel my subscription and install Catalina. As usual, I got an email asking me why. I told them why. Did not even get a reply....

THAT is what ZOS support is all about. Or not. Simply non-existing. No communication. No announcements. No nothing.

Yay Zenimax.

C.

P.S. Playing WoW Classic now, Blizzard's launcher is 64 bit for years.

Marvilius

So it seems that on tuesday September 10th there will be the Apple event. So i suppose to launch catalina is about the next week.....

Are you guys seeing that too?

demerdecanswrath

Marvilius wrote: »

i suppose to launch catalina is about the next week.....

Expect Catalina at the last week of September, most likely.

Carmina

Most rumours and experiences point to a Catalina release one week later, so that would be 9-17 oder 18. Which still gives ZOS time, come on, all will be fine.

Actually, it is expected that ZOS will announce the end of the support for the Mac client. The Apple business has not been lucrative enough for Zenimax, and rumours are that senior management has decided to make ESO a pure Windows game.

C.

AyeshaBelladonna

Carmina wrote: »

Most rumours and experiences point to a Catalina release one week later, so that would be 9-17 oder 18. Which still gives ZOS time, come on, all will be fine.

Actually, it is expected that ZOS will announce the end of the support for the Mac client. The Apple business has not been lucrative enough for Zenimax, and rumours are that senior management has decided to make ESO a pure Windows game.

C.

Bull****. They wouldn't have spent the time and man-hours on making the game Metal compatible just to turn around and junk us. They also wouldn't worry about the 64-bit client. quit spreading unsubstantiated bs and fear mongering.

AyeshaBelladonna

The ZOS responses during the 'Murkmire Crisis" was not "go buy a Windows Machine". Did they tell some folks they would have to buy a new computer? yes. Why? because those folks were running machines that were flat out too old even by Apple standards. That isn't the fault of ZOS, that's the owner of the mac expecting to buy a machine 10yrs ago and NEVER have to upgrade to stay relevant. Apple moved us past OpenGL. yay, good news for us! ZOS is one of the few supporting our shift right from the get-go, albeit with a little TOO much enthusiasm after they jumped in with both feet in Murkmire and yeah it was a little rough... but i have yet to see any evidence of anyone in ZOS pushing people to Windows machines. Is it possible someone got frustrated enough with a crybaby saying " but a new mac wiil cost me thousands of dollars!!!" and they said " well a min spec windows machine is far cheaper so that is always an option" yeah probably. i would have too after the hundreds of calls they probably had to put up with when so many Mac users suddenly couldn't play because they were too old. Lets be realistic here. we will likely be fine, we have no concrete evidence they don't want to support us anymore, they are working on our 64-bit client, and 90% of the people giving both sides involved major grief are the ones that had unrealistic expectations about their machines to begin with.

demerdecanswrath

AyeshaBelladonna wrote: »

The ZOS responses during .... to begin with.

Thank you. Amen.

Carmina

We will see. Actually, @AyeshaBelladonna, your post is so wrong in so many places I am not even going to go there. If you are a ZOS/Apple fanboy talking, that is fine, I get it. But if you are not able to see that even with a fully fledged current Apple system, ESO is running much slower than on Windows, and that alle the problems with the client and the launcher (which, btw, are two distinctive apps, and the client has been 64 bit for a long time, which is btw due to the fact that Windows is 64 bit for some time) have not been fixed at all, then I am sorry.

The signs point there, and the people from ZOS talking openly point there too.

As I said. We will see,

C.

P.S. I am actually happy if I am wrong, and you are right. That would be awesome

alterfenixeb17_ESO

Carmina wrote: »

We will see. Actually, @AyeshaBelladonna, your post is so wrong in so many places I am not even going to go there. If you are a ZOS/Apple fanboy talking, that is fine, I get it. But if you are not able to see that even with a fully fledged current Apple system, ESO is running much slower than on Windows, and that alle the problems with the client and the launcher (which, btw, are two distinctive apps, and the client has been 64 bit for a long time, which is btw due to the fact that Windows is 64 bit for some time) have not been fixed at all, then I am sorry.

Ok, this part is not accurate too:

1. Windows were 64 bit systems for much longer time than just past 5 years. In fact all OEM's with Windows 7 installed had 64 bit system installed out of the box right from system release (and that was over 10 years ago).
2. 64 bit clients were introduced at the time when at least some of the core client components (such as renderer) were completely seperate and Apple did not announce yet any schedule for dumping 32 bit platform support. Which means it would be more beneficial to first port Windows client and then Mac
3. Which brings to the last one: ZOS started porting with Mac client - 64 bit Mac client was released (not beta) a few months before beta of 64 bit Windows client.
4. There was a time when situation was exactly opposite if we talk performance. Mac were running game better than Windows systems, yes.
5. Company has already a long history of leaving issues unattended on all platforms. Yes, it is tiresome. No, it does indicate nothing about shutting down some platform. Otherwise they would be left with no platform to be maintained as even Windows client would have to go.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

AyeshaBelladonna wrote: »

I would have too after the hundreds of calls they probably had to put up with when so many Mac users suddenly couldn't play because they were too old.

Yes, which is why I am glad that it was not the case for Murkmire. Just as a few facts:
1. Murkmire complains were also from people using i.e. Vega 64. While currently Vega RX 64 can in ultra settings pull easily around 60 fps and in some internal locations even up to 100 after Murkmire release it was rather 20 - 30
2. I had back then iMac with GeForce GTX 775M. Right after Murkmire using medium settings I could pull up to 10 fps on that. After next few patches however ZOS actually improved things and I started to get like 30 fps using high settings in client. Yes, definitely my GPU suddenly became somehow newer...
3. The most annoying part about Murkmire was not that performance drop in the beginning. It was what happened next with next DLC. They did not yet fully fixed performance issues and yet constant crashing every few minutes started.

Sorry but people with hardware not officially supported left relatively fast. Most of it came from those that according to ZOS could and should be able to play.

FierceSam

ZOS have a clear challenge. They need to update the launcher, but they also need to ensure it is backwards compatible for those many players who cannot immediately upgrade to Catalina.

I use my mac for actual real work, which brings in the money that pays for ESO. Pretty much all my third party software vendors are saying "don't upgrade to Catalina because we don't know if our software will work on it", so clearly I am not upgrading immediately. Indeed I won't update until I KNOW that all the software I use for work will actually function, which usually takes at least 6 months (my industry standard is 12 months btw). I don't want to be the one who spends half a week doing the QA that my software provider should be doing, that just annoys me, wastes my time and costs me money.

ZOS need to bring out an updater which can cope with a managed migration to Catalina over at least 6 months. Or they might as well toast the Mac client and give up. However, I would assume that a well built 64-bit launcher would function equally well on El Capitan and Catalina OSes.

Knowing ZOS I am not convinced that option 2 doesn't sound way more attractive to them.

And with Apple's gaming platform just announced there will be lots more choice for mac gamers

demerdecanswrath

Let's be optimistic about the performance issues. There is an entire news article, frequently updated, which tells all.

One thing I'm not optimistic about though, is the executables themselves, not the code base.

1. Launcher.app needs 64bit, high DPI Mac treatment ASAP. The launcher's back-end handling the installation, patching and repairing will definitely be updated as stated in the official notice come Update 25.


2. eso.app is dreadful. It's a shadow of it's former glory, there only to load the game code and nothing else. No window controls, a pieced together IO interface with laggy/disappearing cursors and a macOS character menu constantly popping up when playing, lack of Dark mode (it's a single line of code in info.plist), a roll of the dice for perma-black-screen whenever the game is quit, no auto language switching thus showing blocks when launched with a non-latin character set enabled, no interactivity with macOS, do I have to keep writing?

Actually enjoying ESO at this state is borderline impossible. I've been logging in for an entire YEAR just to speed up my mounts and do a quick dungeon. No quests, no PvP, no nothing. There's no enjoyment when I know I might have missed some notifications, or playing in windowed mode, or playing with Mission Control just to get the cursor to show again -every-time-I-open-any-menu.

Thanks for updating us on performance ZoS, but what about actual macOS client development? Cause there is literally none at the moment.

cc @ZOS_GinaBruno , @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Carmina

The discussion over this is kinda getting out of hand. This is not about compatibility issues with other software producers. I am running Catalina, and everything works fine, except:

1. The ESO Launcher (32 bit)
2. UnrarX (32 bit)
3. Audio Hijack, which uses a kernel extension which does not work in Catalina anymore

Everything else is fine. We are talking about a Wrapper here. The actual game is 64 bit for quite some time as stated above. It is the Launcher we need. And again, ZOS knew this for I am tempted to say years, they have the updated Launcher from Solid State Networks for quite some time now, yet they just fizzle out, as usual. No updates, no information, nothing.

The amount of posts in this thread alone is worrying.

I say it again (and I can live quite well with that funny word "fearmongering"): Mac support will be dropped, there is too much development and too little profit in it. All signs point there.

C.

BTW I got a reply to my cancellation email. They said they are sorry to hear this, they can understand though and they will forward this to development. Yay.

P.S. Because this came up before.... Does anyone here really believe we got some bad hardware crybabies in this thread? I do not think so. Pretty much all of what I read is pretty substantiated, and I am confident everyone posting here has hardware that would be perfectly capable of running ESO. Using arguments like that sound a LOT like hidden ZOS employee to me.