From Sony’s “EverQuest” game FAQ: “Q. Will PC/Mac users play together on the same server?A. No, Mac users will play on servers expressly created for the Mac community. There are several reasons for this, but the most compelling are game play related. Since most of the Mac users will be first-time customers of EQ, they will receive the best value and enjoyment out of the game by starting on an “even playing field”, and not having to compete with PC users who have a substantial head start in time.
Also, over time we have continually made refinements to the play characteristics of the game, the rarity or abundance of certain items, etc. In deference to players who may have legitimately obtained an item before we considered it fully tuned, we often leave these in play on existing servers, even if they are slightly unbalanced. A fresh server set with existing rules provides the most balanced environment we can establish; and we feel the gains in enjoyment of playability outweigh the potential negatives.
We do understand there are a few Mac owners who also own PCs and are currently playing EverQuest, who would like to keep their PC characters and move them to Mac servers. Unfortunately for the reasons discussed here that would not seem to be fair to new Mac users playing for the first time.
Q. With PC and Mac users on separate servers, won’t the Mac server have less players?A. We will scale the number of Mac EQ servers using the same balance factors we do for PC, resulting in roughly the same player densities per server. This way there will always be plenty of other Mac EQ users to play with.”
We’re not kidding. Sony might have made a boo boo here; a petition entitled, “Same Servers For Macintosh Everquest Players” has already been started. See the petition here. The Sony FAQ we referenced is here.
