WOW petition (Linux)

McClane

Please sign anyone interested.

petition

p.s > This is on the Unix forum too but it deserves to be here as well. Please don't move/delete it.

p.s2 > Could someone make this a sticky for a couple weeks ?

angelofdeath

signed

Saviour_Angel

signed

MrShadow

still banging on the ole linux drum I see

best of luck

Shadow

A$$A$$IN

Done

Memnoch

i'd love to support your cause and sign, but that would be dishonest since I don't have/use linux and therefore wouldn't purchase a Linux copy of the game or play it on that platform. Wish you the best of luck with it anyway

koneko

I'll sticky it, but personally I think it's a bit of a lost cause. Blizz won't be interested, not enough people need/want it (and I don't think petitions represent how many people do, people sign it because people ask them to).

McClane

Well i agree that its probably pointless as Blizz has been more or less anti-Linux/Open Source more then anything. I don't think they were impressed with the project FreeCraft which allowed you to play WC2 textures etc on a native linux game engine.

But more and more companies are porting their applications to *nix, the most recent being Nero.

14000 signatures isn't exactly large but it does show them there is a lot of interest.

lazygit

Played it using Cedega on Suse 9.3 with no problems

McClane

Played it using Cedega on Suse 9.3 with no problems

Same on Gentoo 2005.0, because of Linux the networking actually works better, i.e > Less lag, spikes. (I assume this is because of Linux).

The point is we shouldn't need an extra application like cedega. Games and applications in general developed for Linux run better then their counterparts on Windows. Take Quake 3 for example, much better performance on Linux then on Windows.

We shouldn't have to run an extra layer between the game we want to run and the OS we want to run it on.

zAbbo

Is that a CVS build of Cedega ?

A lot of the FPS's work natively in linux these days like UT2004 / AA / Doom3 etc.

quozl

Considering it's fully playable already on Linux under Cedega I don't see them doing this. They've even said they have no intentions of it. Also despite using Linux as my work and home desktops I wouldn't really want them spending resources on a Linux port and the extra support problems when they have more urgent things to work on and their technical support is already paper thin.

lazygit

McClane wrote:

The point is we shouldn't need an extra application like cedega. Games and applications in general developed for Linux run better then their counterparts on Windows. Take Quake 3 for example, much better performance on Linux then on Windows.

I agree that a lot of the more common FPS work on Linux natively and they work very well...

but its the less common games that need the Cedega app, not all developers can afford to develop cross platform games and even tho we all hate MS linux is still a small market on the home desktop where 99% of gaming is done.
Cedega 4.3 is excellent by the way.

and nope.. it was a simple rpm install of cedega for me.. no messing about with cvs.

i would switch to Suse completley now except for the trouble i am having with my wireless network card, im using ndiswrapper to wrap the windows network drivers and for some stupid reason i have to reconfigure wlan0 every time i bounce the box.

McClane

Considering it's fully playable already on Linux under Cedega I don't see them doing this.

Oh more then likely not. I just hope they'll consider porting their next game b4 release.

but its the less common games that need the Cedega app, not all developers can afford to develop cross platform games and even tho we all hate MS linux is still a small market on the home desktop where 99% of gaming is done.

In all honesty and fairness, there isn't THAT much work involved in porting a game that uses OpenGL and even games which use D3D, the work involved could hardly be called Enormous. They can port Doom 3 to the XBox, they can port to Linux.

i would switch to Suse completley now except for the trouble i am having with my wireless network card

www.ubuntulinux.org <-- Best hardware support Linux Distro EVER. I haven't installed it on a pc where it hasn't detected & configured everything itself. (nvidia/ati drivers excluded obviously).

McClane

btw Linux market share is not as small as you think.

Think about it, a lot of game companies think porting to linux isn't financially rewarding yet a company is making money from making an application to make those games run on Linux. And they obviously are making money.

plus IDC predictions, Linux home desktop share to reach 8% by 2007, and linux desktop in enterprise to reach 20% by 2008.

quozl

McClane wrote:

In all honesty and fairness, there isn't THAT much work involved in porting a game that uses OpenGL

True, I'm sure Blizzard could do it and they even have it running on a Unix (Mac OS X) already but

They can port Doom 3 to the XBox, they can port to Linux.

this is where I think it falls down. There was a lot of money in porting Doom3 to the Xbox. I don't think Blizzard would sell many more copies by porting to Linux, especially as most Linux users who really want WoW can run it under Cedega. Just the purists can't, and I can sympathise with their stance.

Plus aside from the cost of porting it to Linux there would be the added support costs. Training staff who probably come from a MS background and increasing the already probably large variety of problems they encounter. If they port it to Linux and then don't offer support, just say "here's a Linux version, if you break it you get to keep the pieces" then what is the advantage of that over WoW running on Cedega? Cedega doesn't seem to make a noticable difference speed wise.

Rev Hellfire

Personally I'd prefer them to ignore linux and keep there resources on improving things for the majority.

If you want to be beardie then just play rogue.

Deadwing

get a copy of windows tbh. faster than waitin for blizzard to release wow on linux

McClane

this is where I think it falls down. There was a lot of money in porting Doom3 to the Xbox. I don't think Blizzard would sell many more copies by porting to Linux, especially as most Linux users who really want WoW can run it under Cedega. Just the purists can't, and I can sympathise with their stance.

1. You said it yourself, they have already ported it to OSX which would mean very little effort to get it onto Linux.

2. Even though people run it on Cedega they would still prefer to have it natively and there are a good number of those people. couple that with the fact that you need to be bad i.e > (you need to do certain things of questionable legality to get it to work) and the fact that people who want to play the game are much less inclined to actually pay for it when its not native.

i.e > Paying for a game is an option nowadays quite frankly and a lot of people who run Cedega who wouldn't use a pirated native game do use pirated games for Cedega because a) You never know when its going to stop working and b) A game under cedega is slower, more unstable and probably lacks features.

McClane

Personally I'd prefer them to ignore linux and keep there resources on improving things for the majority.

I understand where your coming from but some people can't stand using an insecure, second class operating system like Windows.
The simple fact is a lot of game companies are making Linux ports these days (Quake's, Doom's, Unreal's, Wolfenstein, ET, Savage etc.). Theres obviously a market there for it its just some are slower to react then others.

get a copy of windows tbh. faster than waitin for blizzard to release wow on linux

Why would i want to do that to my PC and myself ? :cool:

quozl

McClane wrote:

1. You said it yourself, they have already ported it to OSX which would mean very little effort to get it onto Linux.

And my point was that the porting was not the biggest problem, the support was.

couple that with the fact that you need to be bad i.e > (you need to do certain things of questionable legality to get it to work) and the fact that people who want to play the game are much less inclined to actually pay for it when its not native.

I don't believe you have to do anything in any way questionable to run WoW on Linux using Cedega.

i.e > Paying for a game is an option nowadays quite frankly and a lot of people who run Cedega who wouldn't use a pirated native game do use pirated games for Cedega because a) You never know when its going to stop working and b) A game under cedega is slower, more unstable and probably lacks features.

You're saying Cedega promotes piracy? I think that's a bit far-fetched. And you're also saying that "A game under cedega is slower, more unstable and probably lacks features.", which while true for many other games doesn't seem to be true in the case of WoW. Probably because they have specifically tried to support WoW.

I honestly believe they'd be better off spending their time focusing on their server code and not stretching themselves further with another client.

quozl

McClane wrote:

The simple fact is a lot of game companies are making Linux ports these days (Quake's, Doom's, Unreal's, Wolfenstein, ET, Savage etc.). Theres obviously a market there for it its just some are slower to react then others.

Note how 2/3rds of the games you mention are by Id? i think that was more of a personal crusade of John Carmacks than a commercial success to be honest. Although it's one of the many reasons I like the man so much.

McClane

And my point was that the porting was not the biggest problem, the support was

Many companies who have brought out a linux version of their software state "Here it is, if it breaks don't come crying to us.". So i think thats a non-issue.

I don't believe you have to do anything in any way questionable to run WoW on Linux using Cedega.

I don't know if its been fixed since but WC3 refuses to detect the CD through Cedega, hence a no-cd patch is required. Not exactly legal.

You're saying Cedega promotes piracy? I think that's a bit far-fetched.

No i'm saying that people who wouldn't pirate software (games) would not want to buy the application (game) and run it under cedega which they have to pay for and not get the full performance/any guarantee that it will be working tomorrow with the latest updates.

A lot of people i know wouldn't pirate an mp3 but you can't justify buying a game + cedega and having a "It might work most of the time" sticker attached to it.

I honestly believe they'd be better off spending their time focusing on their server code and not stretching themselves further with another client.

Well that means a lot of people who want to play the game, can't. I for one won't run it on Cedega and a lot of other people refuse to use Cedega because of your first point. "Why port it when u can play it with Cedega" is something thats not good for Linux.

Note how 2/3rds of the games you mention are by Id? i think that was more of a personal crusade of John Carmacks than a commercial success to be honest. Although it's one of the many reasons I like the man so much.

Off the top of my head but there are more.

Yeah Carmacks meant to be a right *nix head. Apparently his window manager is full of really bright contrasting colours because his eyes are so fecked and he can't see them otherwise.

quozl

McClane wrote:

I don't know if its been fixed since but WC3 refuses to detect the CD through Cedega, hence a no-cd patch is required. Not exactly legal.

There are no cd checks in WoW so I don't think playing it under Cedega can be construed as in anyway dodgy. Plus if you own the software are you not allowed using a no-cd patch? I honestly think that is legal, except in countries with a DMCA equivalent. You may be breaking your terms-of-service, but thats a civil matter, not a crime. All moot for WoW anyway.

Not just to nitpick with you, I do agree, a Linux native version would be nice and I'd like one. But I wouldn't want them to use any precious Blizzard resources on one when they could be throwing them at the server instabilities or the crappy tech support.

As it is I'm posting this while Bladefist is crashed. Now a truely stable WoW server is something there'd be no arguments against , except maybe from WoW Widows