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

Wine is a free open source implementation of the proprietary Win32 API, and attempts to enable Windows applications and games to run on Unix-like operating systems. DirectX support in Wine leaves much to be desired, but when run in OpenGL mode, World of Warcraft is one of the Windows based games that is best supported by Wine at the moment. It runs especially well on Nvidia video card hardware, though many ATI and even Intel users report good results.

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

Installing Wine

The unofficial deb file of the current version of Wine (0.9.30), 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 the unofficial 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. For help on adding repositories, see the ["Repositories"] page.

1. Open a terminal(also called a console, CLI, and command prompt) and choose one of these two commands to run, based on your version of Ubuntu:

   For Ubuntu Edgy (6.10):

    sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/edgy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

   For Ubuntu Dapper (6.06):

    sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/dapper.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

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

2. Now do these three commands in a terminal:

    wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
    sudo apt-get update
    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 Installer.exe

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

3. Some dialogs during installation may appear blank or garbled, and the installer may even hang for up to 5 minutes at 100% CPU, while appearing to be doing nothing. Simply wait and click next when possible.

Alternatively you can install WoW in Windows and then just copy the entire World of Warcraft folder over from your Windows installation.

Or if you have lost a CD, do not have access to a cd drive or simply don't wanna bother with patching and messing with the CD's, you can download the trial version, which is the full game prepatched, from the blizzard torrentlike downloader.

[http://www.wow-europe.com/shared/wow-com/downloads/files/wow-trial/WoW-enGB-Installer-downloader.exe] (Europe Version) [http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/files/pc/wowclient-downloader.exe] (US Version)

They work very nicely with wine. Note: Missing Burning Cruisade downloader.

Configuration

SET SoundOutputSystem "1"
SET SoundBufferSize "150"
SET gxApi "OpenGL"

Major opcode of failed request: 142 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 3 (X_GLXCreateContext)
Serial number of failed request: 14
Current serial number in output stream: 15

This can be fixed by typing:

$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx

Note: in contrast to the first tweak this one will not enhance performance very much or even not at all for some users, and it is also known to be more troublesome with errors, therefor it will not be worth the effort for most users and should be considered being more oriented for advanced users who enjoy the 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

You should be able to play WoW using the shortcut on your desktop, or if you installed WoW using Wine's standard installation path, you should be able to play WoW by running this command:

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/WoW.exe

If you installed WoW anywhere else, just edit the above command to correctly reflect to path where WoW.exe is found.

You can make a Gnome menu entry by doing the following:

wget http://www.kde-files.org/content/files/41569-wow-icon-scalable.svg
sudo mv 41569-wow-icon-scalable.svg /usr/share/icons/
sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/wow.desktop

Add this to the text editor window, which should have appeared after the third command, change <username> in the Exec= line to your computer login username, and save:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=World of Warcraft
Name[hr]=World of Warcraft
Exec=wine /home/<username>/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/WoW.exe
Icon=41569-wow-icon-scalable.svg
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Game;
StartupNotify=false

Note: Remember that you should also edit the Exec= line to reflect your WoW installation path, if you've installed to a special location.

Voice chat

OSS(old/legacy): Doesn't allow you to use software mixing. Meaning only ONE application will be able to use sound at a time.

ALSA(new): Allows software mixing. Meaning several programs can use sound simultaneously.

However, the ALSA driver in Wine doesn't work very well with WoW, which is why this howto asks you to configure Wine to use OSS.

So you see the problem:

• WoW runs in Wine, ergo uses OSS
• Ventrilo runs in Wine, ergo uses OSS

• The Linux version of TeamSpeak is based on OSS

Only one of these applications will be able to use sound at a time, but this can be solved by using [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/alsa-oss alsa-oss], which channels OSS applications through ALSA, making them them work more or less like regular ALSA programs.

ALSA-OSS is installed by running this command:

sudo apt-get install alsa-oss

aoss wine /path-to-program/TeamSpeak

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

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

• If you have troubles running the installation or even the game itself, you may need to get a few .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)

  • [http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?riched20 riched20.dll]

  • [http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?riched32 riched32.dll]

  and place them in /home/<username>/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32. You will, however, need a Windows license to use these files.

  Note: Remember to change <username> to your personal computer login username

• If you have problems with sound stuttering you may have to increase or decrease the sound buffer a bit. It's configured by changing the value of the SET SoundBufferSize line in wtf/Config.wtf. Anything from 50 to 250 may cure your problem. Bear in mind that excessive buffer size may create audio sync issues.

• When the patch program starts, it may ask something about Mozilla ActiveX. Select "No".
• 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 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 in d3d mode. Do this by running WoW with this command in stead of your usual one:

   wine wow.exe -d3d

  or you can change this line in wtf/Config.wtf

   SET gxApi "OpenGL"

  to

   SET gxApi "d3d"

  run the game and change the settings, and then change the line back. If this causes the display to be inverted or otherwise corrupted, don't be concerned. The display will right itself once you switch back to opengl. Running in d3d mode is simply so you can set WoW's video options.
• If WoW crashes on startup under opengl, but runs with d3d, try disabling 'fullscreen glow effects' by adding this line to wtf/Config.wtf:

   SET ffxDeath "0"

Support and discussion