HOWTO: WoW under 6.06 with Wine - NVIDIA/ATI

[tokyovigilante]

People on these boards seem to be struggling a lot with WoW, so I thought I'd turn my experiences running it into a wee Howto. These steps worked for me, I've tried to generalise them as much as possible.

It's broken down into 4 steps: Sorting out your system, installing Wine, and installing then configuring WoW. I'm assuming you know what hardware you have, that you can install Ubuntu/Kubuntu, and can drive the terminal, at least to the extent of copying and pasting commands. If not, seek guidance elsewhere, and return when you are ready, grasshopper. On with the show!

[tokyovigilante]

A. Sorting out your system.

1. Obviously the first thing is a clean install of K/Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS, fully patched, on a system that exceeds the minimum requirements for WoW, ie video card with Hardware Transform and Lighting and 32MB VRAM, anything recent from Nvidia or ATI should do the trick. Intel integrated may struggle a bit with performance. A fast processor, lots of RAM and 5+ gigs of hard drive space are also desirable.

Its important to note Wine only runs on i386 and amd64 kernels, sorry ppc guys, you're stuck running under MacOS.

2. Does sound work? If not seek help elsewhere, I don't know enough to debug all possible sound issues. One note I will make from my own experience is that WoW needs to run in OSS compatibility mode. We'll go more into this later, but for now, if you are running KDE (Kubuntu), open sound in the System Settings, and set the timeout at the bottom to 1 (one) second. This releases the sound card when KDE is not using it, and allows sound in WoW.

I don't know what the situation is in Gnome, as it uses a different sound server. If anyone wants to fill me in, please do. No-one seems to have had too much trouble under Gnome with sound anyway.

3. Does video work? type

glxgears

at the terminal. If you get some nice 3d spinning gears, hurray. If not, then you need to install and configure the proprietary drivers appropriate for your architecture. I suggest the easiest way is to use the repositories. Heres a good guide for ATI users and here for NVIDIA. If the binary NVIDIA drivers don't work for you, try tseliot's envy script.

4. Once you have sound and video, proceed on to installing Wine.

[tokyovigilante]

B. Installing Wine.

Latest Version = 0.9.22. The patched .deb in the torrent is patched for NVIDIA and ATI, but untested for ATI as I don't have the hardware, so let me know!

WoW will not work with anything under 0.9.16-18 or so, and it is best to install the latest version for all the bugfixes and performance goodness.

The method depends on whether you are using 32 or 64 bit.

32 bit NVIDIA and ATI users:
Download and force-install the patched version:
http://files.pablasso.com/opensource...22-1_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture wine_0.9.22-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get -f install
winecfg

64 bit NVIDIA and ATI users:
Download and install the patched version:
http://files.pablasso.com/opensource...22-1_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i  wine_0.9.22-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get -f install
winecfg

If the mirror is down, here's the torrent: http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/490360/999695/

Finally...
If winecfg pops up, hurray! Check you have version 0.9.20/21 installed. Change the sound output system to OSS, map /media/cdrom to D: and proceed to part C. If not, check back to see you haven't missed anything, and repeat the above steps. If still nothing, post SPECIFIC info about your system, steps taken, output of

glxinfo | grep direct

, and

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I'd like to hear any torrent problems/feedback you have as well (other than it's slow, I know - it's my first one.

Thanks very much pablasso for hosting the build.

[tokyovigilante]

Part C

(If WoW is already installed in Windows, copy the WoW directory to somewhere in your home directory and go to part D. If you later have problems running or configuring WoW, delete the WTF, WDB and Interface directories from your copied install.)

Insert your WoW CD/DVD. Some people have had issues installing from CD when changing discs, if you do try copying the disc contents to your hard drive. If you are copying to the hard drive, put all the Installer Tome.mpqs in the same directory as Installer.exe and run from there.

Otherwise -

wine /media/cdrom/Installer.exe

The installer will (should) pop up. The buttons will most likely be blank. Just click the big one, and it will carry on. The licence agreement may also be blank, again just carry on. If you are asked to install the Mozilla control, say yes and Wine will download and carry on. Installing to the "c" drive actually puts it in your /home/user/.wine directory. I prefer to stick it under /home/me/Games/WoW.

Once the install has completed, go to part D.

[tokyovigilante]

D. Configuring and running WoW.
Assuming you have changed the sound option in winecfg to OSS, we'll set WoW up to use this. Change to the directory you installed WoW in:

cd /home/<wow directory>
   cd WTF
   nano Config.wtf

Add these lines to the bottom:

SET SoundOutputSystem "1"
   SET SoundBufferSize "50"

(everyone says 100ms for the buffer but I think thats too noticeably laggy, 50 seems fine to avoid the crackling and other bugs)
Ctrl-X and Y to save.

Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for:

cd ..
   wine WoW.exe -opengl

I suggest disabling full-screen glow effects, this can double your framerate, and I certainly can't tell the difference.

(If you have an ATI card, -d3d instead of -opengl may give you better results, but bear in mind Wine's Direct3D support is less well implemented than OpenGL at the moment, so try -opengl first)

The patching system should function as well under Wine as on Windows. Again, you may be prompted to install the Mozilla control, say yes to allow you to read the patch notes.

Now take the battle to the cowardly Alliance! (You're all proud members of the Horde right? )

If you have errors at any stage, read them carefully, and try to work out whether they're about sound, video, configuration etc, then take all practical steps to solve the issue. I'm happy to answer any queries and help with problems, but I've got limited time with school, and I'd like to think you'd done everything you could first.

If you do need to ask for help, feel free, but PLEASE post all relevant information, ie hardware type, software versions (Ubuntu, Wine and drivers), and SPECIFICS about the errors. I'm far more likely to be able to help you easily that way.

Remember that your performance is highly unlikely to be as good as in Windows, even with optimal hardware and configuration. Having said that, I get 40-60fps with everything on, so good results are possible.

Also, my experience is primarily with 64 bit and NVIDIA hardware, so I'm more likely to know whats going on if thats you too. Anyway, good luck, and happy questing!

[autrui]

still working on this, but in ten minutes i'm already three times as far along as i was the last time u and i communicated!! it's installing, whcih if i remember from my last windows install, will take forever. plenty of time to post my appreciation!

thanks so much!!

(can't wait to get to the update patches! )

autrui

(for the horde!!)

[tokyovigilante]

still working on this, but in ten minutes i'm already three times as far along as i was the last time u and i communicated!! it's installing, whcih if i remember from my last windows install, will take forever. plenty of time to post my appreciation!

thanks so much!!

(can't wait to get to the update patches! )

autrui

(for the horde!!)

Stunning, don't forget if you still have that Windows install, you can just copy over the World Of Warcraft folder to your home directory, will be heaps quicker, and you won't have to patch.

[autrui]

Stunning, don't forget if you still have that Windows install, you can just copy over the World Of Warcraft folder to your home directory, will be heaps quicker, and you won't have to patch.

hopefully i didn't speak to soon. i had not yet changed discs, and when i did, things didn't swim. copied all the cds to HD, now it's asking to insert disc 2.. how do i tell it to go to my disc2 folder instead?

::edit:: just put all the Installer Tomes from discs 2-5 into the disc 1 folder.

(and yeah, i wiped windows off my OS drive like a day after i started running ubuntu. and my girlfriend says i fear commitment!)

thanks,

autrui

[tokyovigilante]

I added a wee bit to the guide about mapping your /media/cdrom to drive D: in winecfg, try that and see how you go. If you are copying to the hard drive, put all the Installer Tome.mpqs in the same directory as Installer.exe and run from there.

I highly recommend to everyone who plays WoW to go and put down a couple of bucks on the trial DVD, it's basically the full WoW client on a single disc, and will install into Linux under Wine with a minimum of fuss.

[MakLeod]

Very nice guide thank you! So far I am at step 4 installing WoW, but it seems to have slowed to a standstill on disc 3. The drive isn't being accessed at all. This happened to me when I installed Starcraft last night...but eventually it finished installing but took FOREVER =) Any ideas as to why it hit a brick wall?