FFXIV Mac Early Access (confusing wording on site)

[Naylia]

The treatment is likely the same a PS3/4 players. You have to buy a client per platform that it was developed for...Windows, OS X, PS3, or PS4. I have multiple copies of many SE games and find them internally consistent on this front regardless of what the rest of the world does.

For the two FFXIV + Heavensward bundles, they seem to be assuming that you must be new, and hence they may not be planning to provision early access privileges for those two bundles. If you notice on the store, select the PC or Mac Bundle and go to the preorder tab....there is no mention of early access.

If early access is established by download of the new client, you may not be able to download it in advance.

I will be buying a preorder PC digital CE client for my desktop and I'll buy the Mac client for my laptop as soon as it's actually available since it confers no additional benefit to buy it early. It won't surprise me to not see the Mac client download available until 6/23.

[Joeni]

The treatment is likely the same a PS3/4 players. You have to buy a client per platform that it was developed for...Windows, OS X, PS3, or PS4. I have multiple copies of many SE games and find them internally consistent on this front regardless of what the rest of the world does.

My problem with this logic is that, for Mac users, we're not on a separate platform (in a physical sense) since it's all the same machine and the development was just porting via a WINE wrapper, which is nowhere near as much work as making a new game. The point is moot, if SE wants to view it differently, of course, but it doesn't feel like a very fair way to handle it, especially as other companies view PC/Mac as a ubiquitous environment in terms of licensing traditionally.

Either way, I guess I'll have to buy the PC CE and hope that the Mac client is released later, because paying £49 just to play on a different OS on the same machine is a wretch.