Is there an updated World of Warcraft (WoW) HowTo?

[Minot]

Is there a newer World of Warcraft HowTo? The one I found (https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-448640-highlight-warcraft+howto.html) appears to be several years old. I've never played WoW before and am interested... if I can get it running properly on my Linux machine. Thanks!

-MINOT-

[Letharion]

To my knowledge, "It just works"(TM) (Often enough atleast, see http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=14154)
But it was a long time since I tried.

Don't know about "new", but have you seen: http://www.wowwiki.com/Wine ?

[hackerError]

WoW with wine is to the point that there's no HOWTO needed.

all you need to do is

emerge wine.
mount the cd
(or download the web installer)
wine path/to/installer &

(if you are using multiple cds to install)
unmount your cd
eject it
insert next cd
mount cd
click next

and you're done!

to run:

wine path/to/WoW.exe

Done.
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Before you insult someone, it is often best to walk a mile in their shoes.

That way when you insult them you're already a mile away and have their shoes.

[Hyper_Eye]

You will most likely need to run the game in opengl mode to get acceptable performance though. Pass the -opengl parameter to enabled it.
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Gentoo Gaming Videos

[hackerError]

To be honest I've had similar results using -opengl and not using it.

Haven't tested it thouroughly as it "Just Works" for me.
_________________
Before you insult someone, it is often best to walk a mile in their shoes.

That way when you insult them you're already a mile away and have their shoes.

[brumbrum]

I have to comment on this one!

I started playing WoW 4 months ago, and it worked fine, very fine.
Then I reached level 58, and installed the TBC-addon...

This new world (Outlands) was not working as good as the WoW Classic world. It glitched, it crashed and it had FPS lower than 40 all the time.

After that when reaching lvl68, I installed WOTLK, and this new world (Northrend) had big problems. I had to lower the details-settings, the range and all possible graphic-settings to very low, and still it is slow.

When you get to a detailed area, for example the city Dalaran or if there is many players in the main city of outlands (Shattrath? spelling?), the game often crash, the graphic has 1-3 fps, and graphic gets corrupted very easy if you move the camera to fast.

So:
WoW Classic works very fine. No problems at all.
WoW TBC works, but sometimes crashes and has big problems with FPS.
WoW WOTLK is playable, but you have to restart the game very often. The game crashes and/or the graphics get corrupted very easy. The game is almost unplayable in some areas.

I am compiling Wine 1.1.16 right now, and is going to test if this may contain some fixes for WOTLK.

To be honest I am thinking of installing WindowsXP to be able to play WOTLK without the big problems that I have... I havn't done it yet, but if the crashes or graphical problems isn't fixed anytime in the near future, I will have to do it.

Another problem that I have, that is wine-related: If a game/application uses OpenGL, I have to kill and restart X before being able to start the game again, else the game is sending up error-messages about not beeing able to find any compatible graphics card.

My setup is:
Amd64x2 6000+
4gb RAM
Nvidia 8800GTX 320MB

[witchlight]

WoW runs pretty much like advertised as out of the box.

If I run it with -opengl I get avg 80fps where as in windows I get a measly 60fps. GO NIX!
The only problem I have is that if I play for an couple hours it will crash. I think it has to do with the hardware driver for nix but I'm not 100% yet.
I'm using the stable Nvidia driver and going to the newest might fix it I don't know ... I had the same trouble in Ubuntu/Xubuntu. My grafix card also is passive cooling so maybe its running hot in nix for some reason??? Hence the extra 20fps?

My gf/wife runs it fine on her machine out the box with no flags at all and no crashes.

I should note that it does not crash in windows but in windows Half-life will bsod after an hour and it runs fine in nix.. more weirdness.

My Hardware

AMD 6400+ Black edition
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe
Nvidia NX8600GT
2g Ram

[eccerr0r]

It mostly works as-is. Just some quirks left. And potential hardware issues.

Anyone know if the WoW minimap works in opengl on ATI fglrx yet?

So far I've resorted to running in d3d mode... my R-HD 3650 in Linux (D3D) is somewhat slower than my R8500 in Windows (Native, of course)...
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

[MaximeG]

Hi,

WoW indeed runs pretty much out of the box with Wine
If you need some extra information, you can browse wineHQ website.

I'd recommand to use the opengl flag anyway (anyone claiming the opengl flag is useless performance wise is wrong, really :p )

The only problem is that the OpenGL engine from WoW is not as good as the D3D one (lack of support/development from Blizzard) , although still is better in terms of performance under Linux. You'd have something like :

On Windows : WoW D3D > WoW OpenGL
On Linux : WoW OpenGL > WoW D3D

With about the same performances for OpenGL on both plateform.

The only (obvious) thing OpenGL engine doesn't support is the brand new casted shadow functionality.

Besides of that, it runs flawlessly apart from one or two rare random crashes (but I had them on Windows too) even when running KDE 4 and Compiz at the same time.

Of course, everything above is when you use an nVidia card. I don't know if the behavior is the same with an ATI card.

Platform :
Gentoo ~arch x86_64
WoW WOTLK
Wine 1.1.18
nVidia 9600 GSO
nvidia-drivers 180.44
Linux 2.6.29
alsa in kernel

Kind Regards,
Maxime
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Future is wide open.