Eq automatically into window mode

I tried looking around different forms, has anyone seen the reason for this change? Besides pissing a lot of people off that is.

I have been using windowed mode for years, makes it easier for me to choose to open a second account. Windowed mode you can size the window to your comfort, mine are just inside the border of the screen so i am sure no part of game is invisible. Also i leave a margin on the left side where i have icons that can be clicked to do other things- open new account, open browser etc.

Cool story, except my copy of EQ I want in windowed mode already opened in windowed mode, now I have to fix five other copies to stay full screen. If they wanted to make it a change for new players/installs (lol) go for it, but no reason to muck with everyone who already had it correct.

Excellent question. What exactly was the problem with letting players choose whether they loaded into full screen or windowed mode?

Is there a more permanent fix besides pressing alt+enter at character select? The eqclient files on my 2 laptops I like to run fullscreen still have "windowedmode=false" but the game seems to ignore that.

It was posted in the test threads that there was a serious bug and this ended up being the fix for it.

Automation is against TOS

It'd be really cool if this ever got fixed or explained.

It was explained in the test patch thread when it was introduced. It is a workaround that was preventing fresh installs from being able to launch the game as in some cases it would do nothing but crash the game. The only way I see this changing is if they are able to put in a fix for the crash bug that caused them to make the change in the first place.

This time the cure was worse than the disease.

How do you figure? The slight inconvenience of having to go into full screen at character select versus some people not being able to play the game at all?

The issue was that the default resolution for the game would crash the game when it tried to launch in fullscreen. Not sure if this only affected newer GPUs/Monitors. I guess they figured this was the easiest fix.

In order for the user to fix this themselves they would need to go into the eqclient.ini file and change the resolution settings or set it to windowed mode there. The launcher doesn't have the newer resolutions available to pick from.

Thousands of people who play EQ having to press extra keys to get into full screen mode (and many with multiple boxes) is not a slight inconvenience, it's downright annoying.

There is a silver lining. At least we now know someone at Darkpaw cares about new players installing EQ for the first time. New players are good for the health of the MMO and the company. Addressing the churn rate for for this MMO is progress indeed.

That is still a lot better then not being able to play the game at all. I remember seeing posts saying people who can't launch the game should just search for solutions on the internet yet we see plenty of posts asking what happened and not even seeing this change in the patch notes.

They could play the game, they had to go in and fix a text file one time ever. Now we have _no_ way to start in windowed and the frequent resetting of the ui file they're doing is hitting other things as well, I'm losing my xtar settings as well on every box which means dealing with full screen and fixing that every time. Go ahead and make the default for a new EQ installation windowed mode, but stop wiping our freaking settings.

If you want a mostly fullscreen windowed experience(I know, not the answer for most) adjust the windowed offsets in the eqclient.ini. These settings work for my monitor, not sure it's a one size fit all thing or not, may need adjustment.

WindowedModeXOffset=-9
WindowedModeYOffset=-31

Then also turning on the option to overlap taskbar in game, and reset the resolution to fill the screen.

Works perfect for me, mostly, tiny sliver on the right side of the screen, but if I try to adjust it any further right it bleeds over onto the second monitor. No pesky window frame at the top.

Just an option for people.

And how are they supposed to know what is causing the problem? If active players are not even aware of a change that was posted in the patch notes how do you expect new and returning players to find the fix for a crash bug?

The proper fix would be to change the default to use windowed mode. There is no reason to force windowed mode if we explicitly change options to use fullscreen.

I am guessing there is a reason why they didn't do that.

Alt+Enter at character select is the fix here. I'm not sure why people are having such an issue with this. Is it really taxing your patience that much to hit two keys before you log into the world? If that is the case, I wonder how you have the patience to play EQ, or any game for that matter.

I don't know if they will come up with a more long term fix for whatever bug this was intended to remedy, but for now the solution for people who wish to play in fullscreen mode is so simple that its almost comical. Be patient, summon the strength and courage to hit Alt+Enter at character select and hopefully eventually they will find a better fix for the issue.

The issue is that if you forget to Alt+Enter, and log in, your UI gets completely destroyed because the "windowed mode" layout vs "full screen mode" layout aren't scaled or translated. Yes, it keeps track of them independently, but when you forget and log in, then hit Alt+Enter to go to full screen once you are in the game, your UI thinks it is running at the windowed resolution.