This howto is for installing and playing World of Wacraft using Wine under Ubuntu-x86.

World of Warcraft can also be played under Ubuntu by using Cedega. This howto, however, does not address Cedega.

Installing Wine

The unofficial deb file of the current version of Wine (0.9.26), from [http://www.winehq.com WineHQ], works out of the box for most users. Others will probably want to try to compile Wine from source in order to play WoW. Instructions can be found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BuildingWineFromSource

Latest Wine from uofficial WineHQ repository

For full instructions on installing Wine see the ["Wine"] page.

[http://www.winehq.com WineHQ] provides the newest versions of Wine packaged for Ubuntu. To use these, you need to add the WineHQ repository and then install Wine with Synaptic. For help on adding repositories, see the ["Repositories"] page.

1. Add the repository:

   • For Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft): Add the following repository, deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt edgy main

   • For Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake): Add the following repository, deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt dapper main

   • For Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger): Add the following repository, deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt breezy main

Note that these repositories are recommended on the WineHQ website: http://winehq.org/site/download-deb

2. Update the package cache using sudo apt-get update or by clicking 'Reload' in Synaptic

3. Install Wine using sudo apt-get install wine

Installing WoW

1. Copy all of the files from all of the CD's to a directory on your hard drive (overwrite when prompted).
2. Then start the installation by opening a terminal and doing these commands:

cd /<path-to-directory>/
wine Install.exe

• Replace <path-to-directory/> with the right path to the directory where you copied all the files.

Alternatively you can just copy the entire World of Warcraft folder from a Windows installation.

Note: The installer may appear to hang with cpu @ 100%. Give it about 5mins, and it will eventually continue.

Note: Need confirmation on if this bug exist in Wine 0.9.26

Configuring WoW

WoW will run best using OSS. Run 'winecfg', select 'Audio', then select 'OSS Driver' as Wine's sound driver.

Next, add the following to the file WTF/Config.WTF in your WoW directory.

SET SoundOutputSystem "1"
SET SoundBufferSize "100"
SET gxApi "OpenGL"

Optional performance enhancing tweaks

The following tweaks are are gathered from this tread on Ubuntuforums.org: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=303509&highlight=wine

Tweak #1

This is a simple registry edit for Wine that reportedly may dramatically increase the framerate in game for both ATi and nVidia users.

1. Open a regedit window with this command regedit

2. Find this key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\

3. Highlight the wine folder in the left hand pane by clicking left on it. The icon should change to an open folder

4. Click right on the wine folder and select [NEW] then [KEY]

5. Replace the text New Key #1 with OpenGL

6. Click right in the right hand pane and select [NEW] then [String Value]

7. Replace New Value #1 with DisabledExtensions (Notice it's case sensitive!)

8. Then double click anywhere on the line, a dialog box will open.

9. In the value field type GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object

Here's what regedit should look like once you have finished adding this new key and it's value.

http://appdb.winehq.org/appimage.php?iId=4640

Tweak #2

The idea with this tweak is to create a script which will allow you to launch WoW on a dedicated X server, which may give you a little boost of FPS.

This tweak is also known to be far less effective than the first one, and being more troublesome with errors, therefor it should be considered being more oriented for advanced users who like a challenge.

1. nano -w ~/launch-wow.sh

2. Put this content in your newly created file:

 
X :3 -ac &   # Launches a new X session on display 3 
cd "~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft"   # Goto WoW dir 
sleep 2   # Forces the system to have a break for 2 seconds 
DISPLAY=:3 /usr/X11R6/bin/wine WoW.exe -opengl   # Launches WoW

3. Press Ctrl+o then Ctrl+w in order to save your file & quit nano.

4. Don't forget to make your script executable with this command chmod +x ~/launch-wow.sh

5. Launch the script with ./launch.sh while being in the home user directory

If you have installed WOW anywhere else than in your standard Wine drive c, then you will have to replace the directory path found in the line that starts with cd"~/.wine... in the script, to the path where you have installed.

Playing

Now you should be able to play WoW by using the shortcut on your desktop or using the command wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/WoW.exe

Voice chat

You need to be able to mix sound in order to run WoW simultaneously with voice chat programs like TeamSpeak and Ventrilo. The problem is that in Linux there are two different sound interface architectures available OSS and ALSA

OSS: Doesn't allow you to use software mixing. Meaning: Only one application will be able to use sound.

ALSA: Allows software mixing. However, the ALSA driver in wine doesn't work very well.

The Linux version of TeamSpeak is based on OSS, and because Wine is configured to use OSS in order to get sound in WoW to work, you need to use alsa-oss, which channels OSS applications through ALSA, making them them work more or less like regular ALSA programs, in order to get voice chat to work while playing WoW.

ALSA-OSS is installed by running this command:

sudo apt-get install alsa-oss

And then one uses it by starting the programs with the "aoss" command, something like this: Code:

aoss wine /path-to-program/TeamSpeak

aoss wine /path-to-program/Ventrilo.exe

aoss wine /path-to-program/WoW.exe

Troubleshooting

• To get WOW to run, you may need to get two .dll files from a windows installation or here:

  • [http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcp60 msvcp60.dll] (MD5: 6050bcc1b23f3df7a1876cbdcbac8232)

  • [http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?mfc42 mfc42.dll] (MD5: 7e4d1b552ee1dfa859ba9033b3670590)

and place them in .wine/drive_c/windows/system. You will, however, need a Windows license to use these files.

• If you have problems with sound stuttering you may have to increase the sound buffer a bit. Excessive buffer size may create create audio sync issues.
• When the patch program starts, it may ask something about Mozilla ActiveX. Select "No".
• Some dialogs during installation may appear blank or garbled. Simply click next.
• You may have trouble with the gnome-panel/kicker showing up above the WoW "window". Make sure you have used the configuration settings above or set Gnome's fullscreen hotkey.
• If you are using CONTROL in your switch workspace key combo, you may need to reassign it to avoid inteferance from WoW.

• If you experience freezes, it may be related to the hardware survey. To disable this option:

rm '~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft/WDB/Survey.MPQ'
chmod 555 '~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft/WDB'

Note: This no longer appears to be an issue with Wine 0.9.16 and WoW 1.11.0. Need confirmation

• If you try to configure WoW's video settings (Vertex Shaders/Pixel Shaders etc) while running opengl, WoW may crash. The workaround is to configure WoW's video settings while running WoW with d3d. If this causes the display to be inverted, don't be concerned. The display will right itself once you switch back to opengl. Running d3d is simply so you can set WoW's video options.

wine wow.exe -d3d