NCSoft Launcher and Linux

As of Issue 21, the NCSoft Launcher will become required for playing City of Heroes. Until now, I have been playing City of Heroes under Linux, but the NCSoft Launcher currently does not function in Linux. I now have a few options:

1. Buy and install a copy of Windows. This is probably the simplest solution, but also expensive and undesirable for a number of reasons.
2. Stop playing City of Heroes. Also simple, also undesirable.
3. Hope for a technical solution that allows me to continue playing City of Heroes in Linux. Unfortunately, making the Launcher work in Linux is not a top priority for NCSoft, Paragon Studios, or the WINE team, so the chance of this is poor.

(Incidentally, I don't have harsh words for any of the previously mentioned developers over this. Linux has never been an officially supported platform for City of Heroes, and the fact that City of Heroes can be made to run under Linux has always been a happy accident rather than anyone's intended goal. The number of Linux users who play MMOs is vanishingly small, and with a launcher in hand that functions on all of the targeted platforms, it makes no business sense to create another launcher to support only a tiny minority of your customers. I have enjoyed the ability to play City of Heroes on my platform of choice, and I'll be sad if that is no longer possible, but it's not something I can summon legitimate outrage over.)

Is anyone else in the same situation, and if so, what are your plans?

Well, mine's easy as I'm just dual-booting into one on occasion to poke around. Currently the COH launcher still works - but if they move to NCSoft "only," well, it'll be "Just stay in Windows to play."

Which is my answer most of the time *now,* TBH. It's on there mostly as an experiment.

je_saist, IIRC, has been following that longer than anyone else I'm aware of.

See my Guides and Tutorials

unfortunately all of the tricks I had in mind are... well... not working.

The OSX launcher isn't much use either. It was written within Xcode and from first viewpoint, doesn't seem like it is going to be an easy port.

I really don't have much "good" news for Linux users. I'm pretty much the only Vocal forum poster on the subject, and if everything works right under Cedega or WINE, Paragon Studios will just get a Windows Xp compatibility tag... maybe with an odd looking video driver signature. As far as the beancounters are concerned, Linux users are a market they can safely ignore.

Unless NCSoft decides to rewrite their launcher in a cross-platform toolkit that isn't crapware; e.g. QT; Linux users are basically going to get screwed.

My plan is to use the launcher on a Windows computer (actually, a Windows virtual machine) to download updates, copy the updates over to my Linux system, then launch the CoH client from the command line like always. As far as I can tell, the only way CoH detects that it's been run from the launcher is the presence of the "-project coh" command-line parameter, so not actually using the launcher shouldn't be a problem.

Does the launcher run in a VM? If so you could share the .wine/drive_c and point the launcher in the VM to the wine installation directory to update. Saves the reboot/copy time. Should also be able to run the VM headless and allow auto updating if you have the horsepower.

chalk me up as another disappointed player who can no longer on his linux machine

Linux users might want to check out this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=267988

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Sadly I could not find any tricks. Even attempting to use Cedega, or whatever it's called, failed.

So I shelled out some cash for a windows machine just for gaming.