Folks,

WAR on the Mac is not a likely scenario for the following reasons:

1) WAR's client is being built on a PC-based rendering engine that has not been ported to run under a Mac's native OS. The cost of porting that engine would be quite high, difficult and potentially a nightmare for us going forward. If we don't have a native version of the game, we would have to rely on Cider,

2) if we have to rely on Cider, then there *might* be a performance hit from using it. How much that hit is, we can't say but there might be a hit. We know more as development and release of other EA titles occur. We will be in touch with the guys at Dice and we will be able to get the full scoop from them on the impact of using Cider. If we have to rely on Cider and take a performance hit,

3) Then the graphics chipset on the Mac would have to be at least equivalent to what our specs are for the PC version. That is not the case with most Macs and certainly would not be the case when we release WAR. The most likely result would be that performance on the game would be significantly worse than on a PC and we won't do that and,

4) As we continue to expand WAR after release, we will do what we did with DAoC, continue to raise the specs for the game as hardware improves (while keeping backwards compatibility for a long-time). If we do so, it is unlikely that the Macs will keep up in terms of graphics hardware and that would mean that Mac users/version would be way behind the PC users. From what I've read on the web, using Cider means that PowerPC Macs or any Mac that isn't an Intel Mac won't be able to run the games at all so Macs that are a year or two older won't be able to run it. This decreases the potential market size for this game significantly as well.