Maintenance for the week of April 22:
• [COMPLETE] PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – April 22, 4:00AM EDT (08:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – April 24, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – April 24, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
State of ESO on the Mac 2020
So, here we are. Almost 1.5 years after Update 20, which brought about more harm than (intended) good to our beloved ESO.
The Good
- The Mac codebase supports Metal.
- ZoS finally spoke with contracts, blog posts and more than pinky promises for those messy performance issues.
- 64 bit Launcher.
- We got two truly epic chapters.
The Bad
- The Mac codebase actually supports MoltenVK (a Vulkan library for Metal), which IMO is a clear pick for short term profits over long term customer sat and code robustness, but I'll let you be the judge of that.
- ESO support probably had 0 training on the Mac. I've been suggested the same 2 unhelpful cue cards for 6 entirely different issues, and the conversation never developed further.
- No integration with other clients like Discord (specifically bothers me but I could also not care that much).
The Ugly
- The eso.app is left for dead at this point. It only loads the game .dat files. Not a single tiny piece of integration with macOS.*
- Unless an issue is seriously firing up this part of the forums, there is not a tiny shred of communication (except maybe cue cards).
I've gone through the entire cycle of anger, frustration, acceptance thrice over with this horrendously maintained codebase and now I'm just doing a reality check with you all to see how you view this issue as well.
*
no true full screen/close options, macOS character menu popping up randomly, no dark mode, disappearing cursors, no Retina option support, no auto-keyboard switching to English (when a non latin character keyboard is enabled, leading also to white boxes for keyboard hints), poor PS4 & Xbox controller support (their drivers are now built into macOS Catalina) and doesn't really belong here but the Launcher needs some of these features mentioned here.
P.S.: I just hope you describe in the replies below some of your experiences as well, to provide a holistic view of what it means to play ESO on a Mac and maybe, just maybe, a director gets to see this and we get something more than an acknowledgement .. and something less than an eye roll.
Edited by demerdecanswrath on January 15, 2020 6:45PM Characters:
- Arien Larethian (High Elf Templar)
- Relus Demerdecan (Redguard Dragonknight)
- Elisia Bonaire (Breton Nightblade)
Proudly playing and producing content on a 2018 15" MacBook Pro.