Despite the Legion alpha, Blizzard still developing for Mac
@faience
Blizzard has a long history of developing games for Mac. Even when the platform was less popular than it is now, early games like Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft were released cross-platform. So it was a shock to find out that Overwatch, Blizzard’s first all-new franchise in 16 years — the most recent previous franchise being 1998’s StarCraft — was not coming to the Mac.
Odder still was the lack of a statement or explanation from Blizzard to long-time Mac fans, many of whom had stuck with Blizzard games for so long because of their cross-platform support. Instead, the lack of support was mentioned, like an afterthought, at the bottom of an unrelated article announcing the Overwatch beta. So it’s no surprise Mac users were concerned when they found out that the Legion alpha did not run on their favorite platform.
Was this to be the end of Mac support for a game we’ve been playing for 11 years now? It turns out the answer is no.
I have to say, I was disappointed when I received my own “Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Legion Alpha” email. It explained that all I had to do was launch Battle.net and run the installer to play:
Launch Battle.net. Once you’re logged in, select World of Warcraft on the left, and then use the dropdown menu near the Play/Install button to select the Alpha: Legion option. Click Install, and then Start Install in the window that appears.
Wait for the install process to complete and the Play button to activate, and then press Play to enter the game.
And yet for Mac users, these simple instructions did not work — all without a word from Blizzard. Was this Overwatch all over again?
In fact, the first information we had came, not from Blizzard itself, but from forum MVP Omegal, who reported:
It installs everything on mac except the application binaries. They are missing from CDN which means when you try to click “play” it’ll fail to find valid binaries and abort.
We did get word last month that WoW7 will be supported on Mac, so I wasn’t worried about that.
A Blizzard response came later, with Support Agent Glaxigrav chiming in to say:
It’s no surprise Mac players were concerned by this but, again, Glaxigrav responded:
I wanted to address any concerns about the growth and cultivation of Mac talent at Blizzard. We’re actually up to double the size of what the Mac Engineering team was in the last year, and continue to seek out new people! The most recent Software Engineer position for Mac Development can be found here.
With that in mind, we’re definitely working some additional stuff for Mac into Legion, including Metal support. To move the WoW engine forward, we’re also going to be taking non-Metal support to OpenGL3 (up from OpenGL2 in Warlords and previous).
In this instance, there were some issues with Binary upload and we’re going to be addressing that in a future build. There’s no good way to address the frustration that the test environments have had on Mac, but I’m definitely making sure that feedback has been heard.
It’s reassuring, at least, to know that the Mac team is hard at work and growing to support more games… though many players are still somewhat bitter over Overwatch, and this new development hasn’t helped.
Please consider supporting our Patreon!
Join the Discussion
Blizzard Watch is a safe space for all readers. By leaving comments on this site you agree to follow our commenting and community guidelines.
