How To: Run World Of Warcraft (WoW) in Linux Using Wine
Games, Linux, Video December 20th, 2007
World Of Warcraft is one of the most successful games in history, with 9.3 million subscribers and counting. Believe it or not, the beta test of World of Warcraft actually had a Linux client. It’s true! When the game shipped, support for Linux was dropped and the game never shipped with a Linux client.
What a shame! The good news is, there’s been some positive collaboration between members of the Linux developer community who work on and contribute code to projects like Wine, Cedega and CrossOver. Because of this, installation and configuration of World of Warcraft is a snap for those of you who are interested in getting rid of your Windows partitions lying around if WoW is your game of choice.
We have 8 steps to complete to play the game:
1. Configure 3D drivers with Envy.
2. Install WINE and fonts.
3. Configure WINE.
4. Download (or install from media) the actual game.
5. Edit config.wtf
6. Create a Registry key
7. Install a Linux specific AddOn
8. Launch the game!
1. First, we need to check to see if we have correct and working video card drivers that will work with the game. Open a terminal and type in this command:
glxinfo | grep rendering
It should return with something like this:
direct rendering: Yes
If it says “no” then we have to install the right drivers.
If you have an ATI or nVidia card, the quickest way is to use Envy. Head on over to the website and snatch a copy of the script. Scroll about halfway down and you’ll see the link that ends in .deb - that’s what you want if you’re running Ubuntu or Debian.
Open up the Envy .deb file once it’s done downloading, and we should be prompted with an installer program, just hit the install button and follow the prompts. After it’s installed, we will need to start up the script by going into the Application Menu, then System Tools, then select Envy.
Select “Install the NVIDIA driver” (or ATI driver) and press Apply. This process takes about 5 minutes to complete, so go make a sandwich and reboot your computer when it prompts you to do so.
Don’t worry if it seems like it’s not making progress - just be patient. After rebooting, run the glxinfo | grep rendering command again, and this time it should respond “yes” this time.
2. Then, we are going to install two items before we can actually start installing the game.
a. WINE allows us to run Microsoft Windows executable files
b. To make things look pretty, we need to download two different font packs.
In Ubuntu 7.10, the following command will install all three items in short order. You can open a run dialog box by pressing Alt+F2 simultanously (or open a terminal), then paste in the following:
sudo apt-get install wine msttcorefonts ttf-xfree86-nonfree
Type in the password for your user account, and follow the prompts. After that command completes, we’re just about done preparing the system and can install the game *almost* as easily as in Windows.
3. Configuring Wine
By running the winecfg command, we can choose which sound driver to use (OSS or ALSA), and also switch compatibility modes - just like XP and Vista have done for quite some time, WINE allows us to switch between different operating systems to allow for better compatibility with various programs.
Some users have reported that switching WINE to use NT 4.0 compatibility, issues with patches or installations have been resolved. If you run into problems, you may want to try here first. I left it on Windows XP mode the entire time and had no problems, but your mileage may vary.
4. We need to download and/or install the game from media.
I personally have an old account that has been sitting dormant for approximately a year, and I’ve thrown away my installation media. The easiest way to install WoW and TBC is using the original CDs, but if you don’t have them, or have a pretty fat internet pipe, Blizzard helpfully provides online downloads via BitTorrent, so that’s the method I’ll document here today.
Since I’m showing how to install via download, here’s the two links you need. The first one is to download the original WoW game installation files, and the second link requires you to login to verify that you actually have The Burning Crusade expansion enabled on your account before you can get the BT download program for TBC from Blizzard.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/files/pc/wowclient-downloader.exe
https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/download/clients/pc/bc-downloader.html
Both of these files utilize BitTorrent technology to allow users to download the entire game, except for the latest patch. These files are updated pretty often, so you usually don’t need to install more than one patch after you’ve got the game installed.
To run them, just open them up just like you would on a Windows computer. They should automatically open up in WINE, and after you select a download destination, you’ll have a pretty familiar window staring you right in the mullet.
NOTE: Your internet bandwidth is going to be sucked up completely by the download client. If you need to browse the web or anything in the meantime while you download over 4GB of data, select the View menu in the download program and select preferences, then uncheck download from peers.
When these are done downloading and installing, we can go and get a few tweaks setup so that everything will run smoothly once the game is downloaded.
5. We need to setup the config.wtf file inside your WoW folder, by default it is located in the ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/ directory. If it doesn’t exist, login to the game once, and just exit right out. The game will create a default one for you.
We need to append a few items to this file to use the OpenGL rendering engine (instead of DirectX or Software rendering) and make sure we have everything setup to run properly under WINE.
You can run this command to edit the file:
gedit ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/wtf/Config.wtf
Then paste these lines at the end:
SET gxApi "opengl"
SET ffxDeath "0"
SET ffxGlow "0"
SET SoundOutputSystem "1"
SET SoundBufferSize "150"
6. Next, we create a registry key and value.
The following instructions to modify the registry are taken directly from the Ubuntu wiki page and is licensed under CC-BY-SA.
a. Find this key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\
b. Highlight the wine folder in the left hand pane by clicking left on it. The icon should change to an open folder
c. Right-click on the wine folder and select [NEW] then [KEY]
d. Replace the text New Key #1 with OpenGL
e. Right-click in the right hand pane and select [NEW] then [String Value]
f. Replace New Value #1 with DisabledExtensions (Notice it’s case sensitive!)
g. Then double click anywhere on the line, a dialog box will open.
h. In the value field type GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
It should look like this:
7. Now we can install a Linux-specific AddOn for the game so that the graphics options are able to be modified in-game without crashing. Download this file and unzip it.
applytoforehead-4.zip
Copy the entire extracted ApplyToForehead-4 folder into the following location:
~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/Interface/AddOns/
If the Interface or AddOns folder do not exist, go ahead and create them.
8. We can launch the game from the desktop shortcut, or create one pointing to the wow.exe file within the WoW folder.
You should end up with the launch executing flawlessly:
Now just hit the Play button and enjoy the most addicting game since slot machines. On the character selection screen, make sure to enable out of date AddOns so that ApplyToForehead is loaded properly.
That’s it! If you have problems with running the game, please leave a comment and I’ll attempt to answer it, or look for support channels via the following wikis:
Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft
Anything else: http://www.wowwiki.com/Linux/Wine
And for your enjoyment, here’s a video. 
Tags: front mullet, Linux, tbc, the burning crusade, Video, Wine, world of warcraft, wow
I wouldn’t use envy.
envy is very dangerous to your system.
Instead it would be better to either use Ubuntu’s restricted drivers, or if you don’t use Ubuntu just install the drivers from the cards website (Nvidia, ATI..)
I think the name of that config file is kind of interesting
Oh just watched the video, what is that song you had playing?
Oh and I got you beat
7950GT OC 
I got an AMD X2 6000 though…
Nice video, which recording program do you use?
Amber by 311 is the song.
I used the ubiquitous recordmydesktop with the gtk-recordmydesktop GUI package.
I’ve been waiting for the nv9 series to come out to upgrade. AMD? Pssssh
I tend to think upgrading to the 2nd best video card every 2nd generation is usually the best price:performance:longevity ratio.
Hey I love my AMD chip
I WAS going to do a SLI setup but newegg decided to stop selling my card shortly after I got mine
As for now my system has more than enough power for me, so I’m happy
I tried to use record my desktop back on mandriva a while ago but it was buggy, maybe it will work better now
Love the song by the way^^
I love my Intel chip too! I’m looking forward to a quad core upgrade in the near future, which should make for an interesting comparison.
Newegg is the only place I buy technology products, other than brick and mortar shops. Newegg rocks.
Yup, I built my system all from the parts I got off there, just recently got my 22″ LCD from them too
Newegg Rocks!
envy is great for a custom compiled kernel, very convenient, although if you do not know what it exactly does do not use it.
I got the error message that “World of Warcraft was unable to startup 3D acceleration” I followed the instructions pretty carefully, but will double check. Any suggestions? Thanks…great how to!
I’ll vouch for abadtooth. Envy completely ruined my system.
Anyways, nice guide.
yikes! Envy killing systems? No good, no good at all!
It did that to a 7.04 install I had on one of my other systems, Fortunately I was using that system to test it and a couple other things out without disturbing my main computer.
I was actually following a guide to installing Compiz-Fusion when the guide said to use envy… I followed it to the letter but it broke it :\
Michael…
The unable to open 3d acceleration error typically means you’re not using the proper GLX engine for your driver.
In Gentoo with an nVidia card I know it’s:
eselect opengl set nvidia
Im new to linux and have installed Ubuntu 7.10 for my first linux…i followed the instrucitons and have World of warcraft working but i have 2 problems..first i can only do 1x video setting in wows video setup…i have a nvidia 7300 512 meg video 16x yet it only is showing a 1x setting…second i have it set to full now windowd and if i shrink or i guess you say alt esc to get back to ubuntu my sound disapears out of the game i have to exit and go back in to get the sound back..
thanks again for the hints they helped… if you know how i can do please put it in steps im a complete noob to linux
Trident5-
You can change your video settings in your config.wtf file but I’m not sure what setting you’re looking for. I’m guessing it’s antialiasing which is defaulted to use application settings. You can change that at the driver level in the nvidia-settings application.
As for the sound Issue, I’m thinking it has to do with wine and dmix when mixing a stream from a second application. I normally run Ventrilo on one desktop and WoW on a second desktop. If I switch to the desktop running Ventrilo, select Ventrilo, hit my Push to Talk and then switch back to WoW I get my game sound back.
When I run the gedit ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/wtf/Config.wtf
in he Terminal it opens some window woth nothing in it and I past the
SET gxApi “opengl”
SET ffxDeath “0″
SET ffxGlow “0″
SET SoundOutputSystem “1″
SET SoundBufferSize “150″
in it and try to save it, it says File not found.
It is in there because I opened it myself.
What is happening?
Zach: You need to run the game first and let the game create the original Config.wtf file, before trying to edit it, otherwise it wont work.
just go in the folder and do it i done it and got it working..trust me it works
Envy didn’t kill my system, it actually helped me in installing my nvidia drivers without any issues.
Awesome tutorial. I will try this out. Thanks!
when i run wow, it runs but it is really bad quality, laggy and the characters are incomplete
can anyone help me?
[...] to install , I used this guide which also tells you how to install your GFX and get WoW running. How To: Run World Of Warcraft (WoW) in Linux Using Wine | fsckin w/ linux When I test out the rendering command I get a NO and (LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT set) , what does that [...]
Great write up. I like this a lot. This is one of the best Linux hack sites that I have found. Keep up the great work.
I do suggest trying to get the video drivers set up without the use of envy if you can. I haven’t had any problems with it, but it will need to be removed if you upgrade to the new os version. Other then that, I haven’t had any trouble with it. Envy has helped me with a very stubborn ATI x850xt that I was having trouble getting to work with anything more then the basic drivers.
Well i have a HD radeon 2600 pro and it barely works..then i tried my legacy card downstairs all dusty..and it works…soo i wonder why>?
Hello, I’m very new to Linux, and I am trying to get WOW working. I have read a lot of the forums and guides to get it working. I have it almost there, but I’ve run into an issue that I am not finding anyone posting about.
When I launch Wow, my character models do not show up, I can see their weapons and armor, but no character. When I select one of them, the game loads, but freezes a few minutes into the game.
I’ve tried modifying the wtf file, but if I add:
SET gxApi “opengl”
SET ffxDeath “0″
SET ffxGlow “0″
The game won’t load at all, I’ve tried changing the SET gxApi “d3d” as well with the same results.
I have done the registry hack and loaded the applytoforehead add on as well.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Um I followed this guide and got everything to boot fine until I installed Burning Crusade
I cant see the login screen properally its just like black with 2 weird off gray login bars and a black box for a cursor its really weird but i can find my way to login neways and when i get into the game the interface loads fine but the world is black… the spells and peoples names are still there… i have no clue whats going on help plz?
Hello Wayne,
first i want thank you for the guide,but i nothing do with the registry and it works very good
My System..
Prozessor (CPU): AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1700+
Geschwindigkeit: 1 298,76 MHz
Gesamtspeicher (RAM): 1 011,7 MB
GeForce 7600 GS
Betriebssystem: Linux 2.6.22.5-31-default i686
Aktueller Benutzer: Arti@linux-ejhw
System: openSUSE 10.3 (i586)
KDE: 3.5.7 “release 72″
greez zel
I am planing to install Ubuntu (Getting tired of Microsoft) - I have WoW installed on my XP already.
Do I need to reinstall wow for it to work on Ubuntu?
Great guide (= a motivation for me proceed towards installing Ubuntu)
Yup you have to reinstall WoW tried to migrate wow to linux but i get an error that it says something i forgot O.o
Michael: You may not need to reinstall WoW - Repatching everything is going to be a HUGE pain in the neck, I would try running WoW in WINE by just running it from the currently installed directory… either back it up, or run Linux from another partition.
OK - Thanks for the answer; it is giving self-confidence that it is a good idea starting to use Linux
I followed the steps and I got WoW running, but I face one small problem. My character and everyone else is invisible (including the npcs). The environment loaded beautifully though. When I don’t run the game in OpenGL mode everything loads, but I have a terrible frame rate. I use ATI Drivers. Any help would be appreciated!
Solved: I seem to be able to fix everything by setting my config.wtf file to something very Similar to this one!
http://www.idlebyte.com/gallery/images/public/WoW/Config.wtf
Not everything is exactly the same I made some changes. This might help some other people having the same problem I did!
Great guide by the way!
-Don
Muted i had same problem and your solution worked, thank you! but one problem still, every like 2 sec the background on the desktop flickers through, any1 know how to fix it?
I have the same problem as Muted, but I tried using that wtf file and got the same results.. Could you let me know what you changed in the file and I will try that?
Thanks
I’ve emailed Muted requesting he post or send his config.wtf file so we can have a look at it.
-Wayne
ah found the solution to my problem a few posts up, if your game flickers every 2 secs, disable your visual effects. did the trick for me
Yo man. This is the best walk-through HANDS DOWN !! For the past 6 months I’ve struggled and struggled through configuration, after freakin configuration - to no avail. Then finally I find your corner of the Internet. Keep it up yo! You ROCK! Ubuntu ROX!
Boogie: Good news!
sinteres: I emailed Muted and he provided his config.wtf file. Perhaps this will help, just make sure to edit the resolution or change it ingame to suit your needs.
Thanks again Muted!
Awesome guide! and nice video!
Thanks alot for this guide this is what i really was looking for.
Wow Runs superfast in ubuntu!
Thanks again!
Danny
Oy!
I have this issue where my launcher is stuck trying to download the latest patch. All the previous patches were successfully downloaded and installed, but this last one just won’t move.
Anyone got the same issue or know what may be causing this?
i have a problem even starting wow after patches
[IMG]http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg87/quwel/wowerror.png[/IMG]
not after patches i mean when im done it just crashes
when i try to run it (latest patches) sorry for triple post[IMG]http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg87/quwel/wowerror.png[/IMG]
Well i have a problem with installing the cd’s.it tells me that some application is preventing the wow disc to eject. please may you help me its sooo anoyying
how to i unsubscribe from getting emails when ppl post comments here, the page it links u to in the email doesnt seem to have anything for unsubscribing. unless im blind
QUOTE: # Valenther | March 21st, 2008 at 3:15 am
Well i have a problem with installing the cd’s.it tells me that some application is preventing the wow disc to eject. please may you help me its sooo anoyying
————-
Valenther - when WINE locks up and doesnt eject your CD, simply open a terminal (nterm, gnome terminal) and type: wine eject. Hope this helps!!
hey guys i just downloaded the new ubuntu 8.04 iso. i am wandering how i can go about dual booting this with xp. i do want ubuntu as my os but not until i am certain it will work properlly. Basically i want to be able to choose whether to run my current(xp) or ubuntu. WoW MUST work as well :p
sorry for the noob questions. i am a total noob when it comes to this kind of stuff.
oh.. .and my machine is a lenovo t61 .. brand new. and i am verry scared of messing something up
Well great guide i got everything to work i ditn get the regestry key added but it still works the performance i will say is a little bit jumpy anything i can do to fix that? im running ubut the newest one and i have a 8600gts vc
Great guide! I followed it step by step on Ubuntu 8.04 and it worked like a champ without a hitch.
Thanks a ton!
I finally decided to try out Heron and one of the big “Could I Switch To This Full Time” issues I had was if Ubuntu could play WoW.
I followed this guide and it worked flawlessly. Thank you so much. There’s no better time to switch to Linux!
first of all kick ass guide, simply amazing…. I’ve been curious about running wow on linux for months, although I had never tried linux I had heard about the stability, so far I’m liking it as this is my first day running it, although it is quite complicated, but I’m sure a lot of stuff I do in windows would be to someone else
Anyways a couple questions as I haven’t got wow up and running yet since I’m downloading it
I have 2 computers, I put linux on this one I’m on now downloading wow after following your instructions to install wine and so on (I also after much frustration installed beryl or compiz whatever you want to call it).
Anyways wow is up and running on the other computer which is networked and I can read all the drives, perhaps I could copy that over, actually I’m currently copying it after thinking that I could copy into the wine directory or whatever it is refered to as in linux…
I read something about you running ventrilo, I’m gonna assume you do that about the same way as you do wow, is there anything I should know to install that? I run multiple copies of it in windows all the time, but I read there’s problems with the push to talk not working right unless you’re directly on vent…… I’m in a big guild raiding sunwell, so vent is a must….. also I’m kinda curious what is your performance difference from windows to linux? does it run mods and all that?
I read a couple places that it’s a lot better, but I’m curious about frame rate and such….
this computer isn’t quite as good as mine, it has a better processor but everything else is meh…. my computer is amd 3000 2gb ram, 512 ati saphire card, this one is amd 4000 x2 I think 512 ram and 128 nvidia video
I’m tryin on this one first because obviously if it runs amazing on this one mine is just going to frickin rock, and I’m a little hesitant on switching fully as I have used dos/windows since before windows even came out, like back in the day lol I was farely young but I do remember when it came out.
Any tips or feedback about the switch and all else mentioned would be much appreciated, I know this is long and I do apologize. Spent all day getting this far (updating linux from 7. whatever to 8.04 or whatever it is now took forever) so I just don’t want any set backs, or maybe just I’m worried I won’t like it.
Hope to hear back
Alan
I just sent you an incredibly long message with the wrong email address to reply to, I just set it up inside of linux and realized….
please reply to this one instead of the last
Heya! i used Ubuntu 7.10 and WOW runned without any prob.. now i installed Ubuntu 8.10 and here i cannot use shift-click to seperate stacks of items/link items/gear in chat, and also cannot use ctrl-rightclick to show items in the dressroom. any suggestions? right now im updating to newest wine and see if the probs still there.
Greethings,
Danny
I will try to describe the problem as well as I can to help anyone else who runs into this. I finished installing the games and doing all of the previous steps. But when I started WOW, just a black screen would come up and an error. I could hear the sound but no video. I was hoping this would create the config file but it didn’t. Hoping beyond hope as the noob that I am, I decided to just make a folder called config and paste the code that mute posted. It worked beautifully and now the game runs. If anyone does have a better way to have handled that, I would love to know but it seemed to work alright.
Problem solved .. solution : needed to upgrade wine 0.9.59 to 0.9.61
Hey, asked in the ubuntu forums, might as well ask here too. My computer has Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset family as a fake graphics/video card and I am pretty sure the driver isn’t working like it’s supposed to. Envy works with ATI & nvidia, so what an intel girl to do? Any suggestions?
I was able to get WOW to work on my version of Mandriva Linux. The graphics are wonderful and smooth and crouded areas run with little to no lag. However when I enter any building the graphics become really squirly especially the parts on the screen where there is text. Any suggestions on how to fix this?
I have WoW installed on my Ubuntu on my laptop, and I finally got it so that when I open WoW the mouse moves fine, but the sound and the video glitch a lot and I can’t figure it out. It seems like i’ve tried everything. Help?
Lindsea you say you have intel Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset, I am assuming this is a laptop. My suggestion would be checking for any drivers from 3rd party or google the model of video card on ubuntu and u should get people having same problem and there might be a solution. If not I suggest if this is a laptop get a better one, HP offers couple laptops for under $1000 with geforce 8600gt graphics card just my opinion. If you still cant get it working email me I will be looking into this situation you got going and try to respond to you. Going back to my problem I have installed wow in wine everything works but when I launch wow I my mouse pointer wont move its like its frozen anyone know what the solution is to this problem.
Hey, when i start up WoW, its completely un playable, as it runs at about 0.5 fps, maybe lower, please help me, as ive gotten rid of my Windows partition, im using the lates wine from http://www.winehq.com., and the glx rendering thing came back as a yes.
I almost forgot,, the Wwow Launcher doesnnt work either.
This is by far the best how to for Wow I’ve seen. I followed each step as listed and worked the 1st time. I’ve been trying to get wow to work for months. Thanks a bunch for posting this.
I really got a lot out of your site. If I did not get side tracked I might have been up and running in one day. Instead, I got the black screen of death at log in screen. Another try I got no graphics on login screen and no graphics in game. I got fatal errors. I’m sure I’m missing a failure or two. BUT I went back to where I started, this page, and finished what I had started using muted config.wtf file and all was fine. I got an ego again and tried to change detail and distance after taking out of windowd mode. My mini map is now bright white. I went back and installed those config files again and same problem. CAN you help me with this problem? Sincerely, Eric
Reflecting, one of my biggest problems was the screen flickering to the desktop throughout the game. My FPS was 40+. This tormented me for days. It was the easiest of all the fixes. Turn the appeance graphical effects to non while you are running wow.
Hope you get something out of my torment.
Eric
I have read since last post that ATI is working on a solution to the minimap problem and that other cards may not have a problem.
My minimap works intermitently usually outside.
Eric
[...] if I tried to go Indoors from Outdoors. The two sites I found very helpful with this problem are: fsckin and wowwiki. Doing what they said I got my WoW to work marvelously. It even works at better [...]
ok guys this is possible, anyone can follow these steps there very easy and mostly copy and paste. one thing i would change would be config wine to give u a emulated desktop. you do that by going to the graphics tab and checking the box …. thanks alot now i can play wow awesome =)!
my wow screen flickers all the time, other than that works perfect.
how do i fix the flickering?
im using a dell inspiron 6000
1.8ghz processor
1gig ram
radeon x300 gfx card
60gig harddrive (running wow off 500gb external harddrive)
I used Erics solution to the flickering screen as I was using Compiz Fusion with all the shiny bits enabled. Turning Visual Effects to “None” fixed that and this is running flawlessly.
Oh and btw I simply migrated the whole WoW folder from my Vista Ultimate machine (no comment) and it’s just worked without a problem. I did however have to use the Config.wtf supplied by Mute though as I was getting a rendered enviroment but no buildings or characters. I did have to mod it a touch as things like default Realm name and my location (I’m in the UK) are obviously different so be aware of this people.
Andre take a look at your appearance settings as mentioned above.
Top guide, well written and everything covered.