In a letter from Matt Firor, the Studio Director for Zenimax Online Studios and developer of Elder Scrolls Online, it has been noted that Apples new ARM CPU Macs will not be supported, and due to the ARM CPU’s not supporting bootcamp additionally, dual booting will not be available.
The letter is quick to the punch, detailing exactly why ZOS has decided not to attempt support for the new Macs that will no longer run on Intel CPUs. The workload to transition the game to a whole new architecture would be too much work, so while running ESO on x86 emulation may be possible on the new Macs, it won’t be officially supported, and the player base on Mac is just not large enough to warrant such an expense of developing a new client. Especially with better, simpler options on the table.
It is a huge undertaking to port a product as old, large, and complex as ESO to a new CPU, with no certain outcome of success. Because of these factors, we will not be porting ESO to run on the new ARM-based Macs. ESO will continue to run on Intel-based Macs, and we will support it as long as there is a large enough Mac user base to warrant it. While it will be technically possible to run ESO via x86 emulation on the new Macs, expect a subpar gaming experience that we will not officially support.
The recommendation of ZOS is to log in on an intel-based mac, A PC, on Stadia, or any other cloud-streaming service that utilizes the same account data that Mac uses. Elder Scrolls Online has just released a slew of fixes for their recent update, Markarth.
