Guild Wars on MAC= More People

I don't think it would be a bad idea, and honestly, it wouldn't be hard for Anet to do. In addition to adding more people on the servers, it would also make a bunch more money for Anet. Money that could be spent on hiring new people, and funding server costs.

I think Jeff Strain once said "We go where the people go, and most people are on PC". Well yes, but people still use MACs, and although I personally don't like them, its more money in Anets pocket, and it would add alot more people to our servers !

The MAC version could be downloaded online just like the PC version, and both would run together, like Starcraft PC and MAC. I personally don't think it would be "impossible" to do.

More people and almost no cost to Anet.

Good Idea?

It may cost them more money to redo the game to run on it than it would get them from people buying it. But, then again, who really knows.

I like it. Do you think Boot Camp might have some influence on Anet's decision?

I'm thinking of getting a Mac soon. I hope GW runs perfectly using Boot Camp.

Between Vista and the MS Spyware, I was also considering a Mac. Hoping GW considers cross platform play... I do not favor going to Vista and spending hours on the phone if I descide to upgrade the mobo, or CPU.

My friend plays GW on his MacBook pro with Boot Camp. It works really well for him.

As for a direct port to Mac OS...meh. With their kind of development schedule, I'd rather that they just focus on the new campaigns.

No cost? There woul need to be a significant code alteration needed. Five more customers would hardly be worth the effort to port it over.

I don't think Guild Wars is written in Java, so it's not cross platform. So making a Mac version of Guild Wars is like...completely rewrite the engine. Which will take a year or 2 to develop.

Now, if the Mac is running on Windows XP(which is entirely possible), it wouldn't need Anet to make a GW for Mac OS.

Honestly my next computer will hopefully be a Mac and I intend to somehow find a way to play GW on it, so I must check out this Boot Camp!

Just another data point, GW works beautifully on 24" iMac under bootcamp.

This "boot camp" you guys speak of, sounds highly arousing...

Never officially, end of story. Too expensive, time-consuming and not enough revenue.

The only possible situation I see a mac version in the future would be;

Stockmarkets collapse!
Today, all the computers in the world running windows decided to crash.

Around noon today, all windows computers connected to the Internet committed seppuku to bring honour back to Microsoft. After struggling along the past two decades the computers finally had enough. --No more bugs! read a blue screen earlier today, mere moments before the computer exploded sending shards of burning plastic over the room. Similar incidents have been reported all over the world.

The computer news sent stockmarkets plummeting, and only 4 hours after the incident was a fact Microsoft filed for bankrupcy. --I've never seen anything like this, said a baffled Bill Gates, repeating it over and over again staring blankly into the air.

In unrelated news, Apple shares are up 5000% and Steve Jobs announced they've aquired Microsofts old production plants and "will finally start spewing out proper computers."

-edit-

Please, don't take this the wrong way, I'm not trying to badmouth osx. I use it myself on a daily basis, and it is, by my standards, better then XP. But as long as the amount of gamers on OSX is as low as it is, no game companies will put cash into it as long as they have the slightest competition (WoW).

thats the sad fact of having one particular Os domminating the market to a near monopoly, they get sloppy on development, competion helps raise quality, which is lacking somewhat.

then again, the hassle of making software cross platform...

There is so few people using macs that porting a game to that platform is pointless especialy as I imagine AN is already working on a new engine anyway so porting an old engine is not a wise choice.

I hope to see a Mac edition as well. I find myself playing way less these days because I myself too has switched to a Mac.

And with regards to those who think it is not worth it due to the "lesser amount of people", well the Mac population is the upper tier of computer users. Unlike PC users Mac users are actually willing to burn moolah.

Guild Wars is strictly a Direct X game. To port GW would be to rewrite the game to use OpenGL. And its most likely not worth it due to the lack of a sizable Mac user base.

Who the heck buys macs to play games anymore?

Exactly. I don't believe I've heard of a hardcore gamer who uses a Mac. The potential market value for Mac gamers is likely not worth the development effort of training/hiring a new team of developers to handle to port and maintenance for Macs.

GW on mac = spending less time on IRC at work

Honestly I don't think there would be enough *new* customers to make this worth it.

There are like 4 gamers in the world who use Macs.

Until Apple gets 35-50% market share, games will be strictly Windows-only. That, of course, happens after Steve Job punches out God.