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The Queue: Soul man
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Yesterday Alex featured Cab Calloway blasting out Minnie the Moocher, a song that while was around for a long time was truly made epic by his performance with the Blues Brothers. And this lets me tie in perfectly to wish my brother Logan a happy graduation from high school next week. Logan and many of his friends were in their jazz band, and he often dressed up as the Blues Brothers when appropriate. And in lieu of that, today's reading music is the Blues Brothers' "Soul Man" performance from the 1978 SNL season. The good old days. 5 years before I was born.Hokiebuddy asked..."With the revamp of the bear and cat forms for Druids will there be any more Druid revamps in design such as the travel, swimming, or flying forms? Also will this spill over into other races and classes i.e. Warlock and Paladin mounts, Warlock minions, Shadow Priest shadow form, etc..."
CCP Games drops Linux client support for EVE Online
One of the nicer aspect to EVE Online, in terms of accessibility, is that you can play it across the trinity of operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. The latter two have been made possible through the CCP Games partnership with TransGaming Technologies, via their Cider and Cedega technology, respectively. Unfortunately, while the Mac client has attracted (and retained) a number of users, the same cannot be said for the EVE Linux client. We received word from affected players over the weekend that CCP is dropping support for the Linux client, but it's official as of this morning. CCP Whisper stated, "I am sorry to announce that from the 10th of March onwards CCP will no longer be officially supporting the Linux operating system. The low amount of users of the Linux client did not justify the degree of additional complexity having three operating systems imposes on our development and release schedules." He states that he and CCP Games are fully aware of the disappointment this will cause but the resources the company has devoted to Linux support could be put to better use elsewhere, in ways that benefit more players.
Mac and Linux client improvements roll out today in EVE Online
EVE Online has a much smaller playerbase than some of the other top-tier MMOs on the market. Despite this fact, CCP Games was willing to provide an even smaller subset of players -- Linux and Mac users -- with an EVE client, via Transgaming's Cedega (Linux) and Cider (Mac). While the 'premium' Trinity graphics are only supported on the Windows client, this writer can attest that the Mac client has improved a great deal since its release. That said, there have certainly been some issues with providing a stable client for multiple operating systems. The Empyrean Age 1.1.2 patch for Mac and Linux, which was scheduled to deploy during downtime today, should bring with it numerous small fixes to these clients. On the Mac side, Empyrean Age 1.1.2 changes how autopatching works, improves issues with international keyboard layouts, and especially resolves the issue with how station interiors display. If the changes go through smoothly, this funky anomaly will be no more. This gallery may be a last look at the black, translucent interiors of stations that some Mac users have been reporting:%Gallery-33952%
The state of WoW on Linux
During the dev panel a few minutes ago, Tom Chilton told us something interesting about playing World of Warcraft on the Linux platform -- Blizzard has actually had it working. For "compatibility purposes," they apparently had an internal build of the game that worked on Linux. But unfortunately for Linux users, they have no plans at all to bring the final game out on the system. They didn't expound much more than that, but of course we can imagine all kinds of reasons they'd hesitate to release a Linux version, first and foremost being that in terms of gamers on the platform, the marketshare just isn't there.Of course, this doesn't mean you can't ever play WoW on Linux, it just means you can't do so off the shelf. WoWWiki has some really great information on how to play WoW with WINE (which just, by the way, reached a 1.1.0 release, and allows you to play Windows programs on other platforms). Transgaming's Cedega is also supposed to work with World of Warcraft (and you probably won't get banned), and Codeweaver's CrossOver also is approved to work with World of Warcraft on Linux.So there are ways to play it, but you might have to do some tweaking. Still, we wish they'd told us more about why they don't want to release the client they builtt
WoW bans handed to Cedega users
Cedega has always been World of Warcraft-friendly ... until yesterday. It appears that Blizzard's automated anti-hacking scan is no longer making nice with TransGaming's Linux software, as numerous Cedega users have suddenly been banned from WoW.If you feel you have been wrongfully shamed by the Blizzard overlords, by all means, contact Transgaming (via thread or email), which is working with Blizzard to resolve this issue.
Bans coming in for Linux players
Cedega is a handy piece of software that many use to run World of Warcraft on their Linux machines. And it's apparently been working well for everyone -- until yesterday, when numerous Cedega users began to report being banned from World of Warcraft with the following generic message in their mailbox:This account has been found to have employed third party software designed to automate many aspects of the World of Warcraft game play experience. Such software runs contrary to the essence of World of Warcraft and provides an advantage over other players. In addition, use of this software can lead to exploitation and destabilization of the World of Warcraft server economy. As such, this account has been closed and will not be reopened under any circumstances.While ominous, it sounds to be a case of a problem with Blizzard's automated anti-hacking scans. TransGaming (makers of Cedega) is currently working with Blizzard's engineering team to resolve the issue -- and has been told that it wasn't Blizzard's intention to ban Cedega players. If you're a Cedega player who has suddenly been banned, Transgaming is offering to help reinstate your account -- let them know you've been banned and give them your account name, either via this support thread or e-mail to their support team.[Thanks to Pat and Druid dude. Cedega links via Slashdot.]
Cider promises Windows games in Mac OS X
TransGaming, makers of the Linux-based gaming virtualization software Cedega (née WineX), have announced an ambitious Mac OS X variant known as Cider (like Apple cider, get it?). Unlike Cedega, Cider is not being targeted towards end-users, but rather to publishers and developers eager to capitalize on the growing Mac OS X userbase but wary of investing in a niche platform. With Apple's new Intel-based Macs capable of running Windows natively, Cider's allure is from its ability to run Windows games from inside Mac OS X. No dual booting necessary. How does it work: "Cider is a sophisticated portability engine that allows Windows games to be run on Intel Macs without any modifications to the original game source code. Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel-Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs. Games are simply wrapped up in the Cider engine and they work on the Mac."Our spidey sense is alerting us to the grist-filled rumor mill called "the internet" which is currently vibrating with its semi-annual Mac expo buzz. Monday kicks off WWDC, which promises "the world's first look at Leopard," the next version of Mac OS X. And, if we were a betting blog, we'd put our money on Apple announcing some sort of built-in virtualization software (å la Parallels). But we're not, so we won't. Regardless, software like Cider promises another end to the Mac gaming doldrums, if Apple doesn't beat them to it. [Thanks, KBeat]
