Unless they asked on forum or on eq troubleshooting faq or submitted a ticket. Then they would be told that they should try it windowed and they should be able to get in. Which is pretty much the same as dozens of other bugs that people ask about and get workarounds for. So you ask why should they have to do a workaround? Because its less disruptive to the game than forcing this fix on everyone that didnt have an issue.
It would be one thing If they actually fixed something...but all they did was kick a can to a different set of players.
They should have forced all new installs to start in window mode. There is a setting for that which is now being totally ignored, mine is set to not open in a window. If we can switch to full screen at char select (when we remember) why can't the game do that automatically for us if we have the setting to not open in window mode. It will be interesting to see if they fix the current UI bug when switching from windowed to full screen or allow players once again to automatically log in full screen.
Forcing people who can't get the game to launch at all to search for a solution is less disruptive then asking players to return to full screen mode when launching the game? With everyone who still plays EQ keep asking what happened how do you expect new and returning players who to find a workaround on a forums they likely don't even know exists?
You would rather have new and returning players not be able to play the game at all so that existing players don't have to switch to full screen mode or just transition to a windowed UI?
New installs? Force anyone having this problem to uninstall/reinstall so that they can play the game? How are they supposed to get this information out to these players when existing ones are having trouble finding that this change was in the patch notes?
This is EQ. Its very common for people to have to search for solutions. And like I said in the post you replied to there are several options besides the forums where they can get support help. Consider the alternatives. option 1. A very small percentage of the very few new players cant launch. Look for help in the EQ support page, which is to the left of the button they just pushed to download the game. Told to launch in windowed and switch to full screen after game starts every time. option 2. Long time players are forced to launch in windowed mode every time but dont forget to switch back before you enter world. If they forget then their ui gets screwed up and they have the distasteful option of recreating it. Bad option. Point being that you cant expect people to remember every time. Thats not normal. If they do forget it cant be a major fix to fix it, especially being that its the game devs error thats the larger part of it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- edit: also, iiuc the crash is caused by new installs defaulting to 640x480 which isnt supported by their card. Couldnt the new players just change the resolution one time and be done with it? Meaning they dont have to keep doing it.
There is no point in arguing with someone who automatically takes a contrary position for the sake of making yet another post and provoking a response. When people do respond, it encourages this behavior. Having said that, forcing the game to start in windowed mode was a terrible change. A real software company would fix the bug or work with the people who are having problems.
From what I've read the black screen was only occurring on new installs. Forcing the majority of players to now have to move UI elements to there desired location when they forget to switch to window mode at char select. Is not an acceptable fix. They need to give players back the option to log in in full screen or fix their new bug of moving UI elements when in windowed mode and switching back to full screen.
You would rather have new/returning players who can't launch the game research what they need to do in order to play then take a little time when you play to switch back to full screen or just switch your UI over to windowed mode? Why do you expect new or returning players to put much time into researching how to get around a bug that was resolved by the fix they put in place? Personally I prefer a method that doesn't make it harder for new/returning players to join the game even if it means a little more work for existing players who want to stay in full screen mode.
You want to make it harder for new/returning players to join the game when they run into the bug that prevents them from launching the game?
And what do you do for all the players who have an existing install with the bug? How are you going to let them know that they need to uninstall and then reinstall the game to fix it? Seems like they didn't have a lot of good choices and chose the one that would best help the players who had this issue.
Fix the the bug properly and no one has a problem. Or how about they default to windowed mode after install, but give an option to permanently launch in full screen mode after. This current fix is not acceptable.
Please explain how full screen play could provide any benefit over windowed ? How, exactly, do you think playing full screen could possibly be considered cheating ?
If they want people to reinstall to 'fix' this bug then they need to change the default install location to somewhere not under the Windows User folders because that location is known to cause all sorts of issues. Somewhere completely unrelated to windows, e.g. c:\games\everquest\ is much better.
And I am sure that is what they would have preferred to do, but in the end they would prefer that everyone can log in even if it forces people to manually switch back to full screen mode.
A lot of people are making an assumption that they did this without good reason. We know that they said this was done as a work around for a bug that was causing people to not to be able to log in.
