The state of WoW on Linux

by Mike Schramm Jun 28th 2008 at 3:15PM

During the dev panel a few minutes ago, Tom Chilton told us something interesting about playing World of Warcraft on the Linux platform -- Blizzard has actually had it working. For "compatibility purposes," they apparently had an internal build of the game that worked on Linux. But unfortunately for Linux users, they have no plans at all to bring the final game out on the system. They didn't expound much more than that, but of course we can imagine all kinds of reasons they'd hesitate to release a Linux version, first and foremost being that in terms of gamers on the platform, the marketshare just isn't there.

Of course, this doesn't mean you can't ever play WoW on Linux, it just means you can't do so off the shelf. WoWWiki has some really great information on how to play WoW with WINE (which just, by the way, reached a 1.1.0 release, and allows you to play Windows programs on other platforms). Transgaming's Cedega is also supposed to work with World of Warcraft (and you probably won't get banned), and Codeweaver's CrossOver also is approved to work with World of Warcraft on Linux.

So there are ways to play it, but you might have to do some tweaking. Still, we wish they'd told us more about why they don't want to release the client they builtt

Tags: cedega, codeweaver, compatibility, crossover, linux, tom-chilton, transgaming, wine, wow, wwi08

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Hardware, Worldwide Invitational

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Hangk Jun 28th 2008 3:32PM

Professional Linux geek here. World of Warcraft is actually one of the best-supported Wine apps around -- apparently there's some crossover between Wine devs and WoW players. Given that it works so well under Wine, Blizz probably sees little reason to release an official Linux port, since basically everyone who wants to play WoW under Linux is already doing it. Plus, having released an official Linux port, Blizz would then be responsible for supporting it, under many different Linux distros, versions, drivers, and hardware, and they can hardly be blamed for not wanting to deal with that.

mdhowle Jun 28th 2008 8:56PM

As opposed to supporting Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and all the versions (service packs, hotfixes), drivers and hardware among them? You're making it sound like Blizzard should take control of a distribution's support. They don't need to be that involved.

doyesac Jun 28th 2008 3:48PM

I've been running WoW under Linux/WINE and it's fan-tabulous. There is nothing off-the-shelf about it -- you have to be proficient in researching potential problems and installing Linux packages -- but I easily forget I'm running WoW on a $400 Linux box and not my old $1200 Macintosh.

And yes, if you are smart about where you get your hardware, and are willing to build your own system, a $400 is more than capable of handling the Warcraft client. Spending another $200 and I'll be in the uber-performance realm.

If anyone is thinking about joining the Linux/WINE ranks I'd highly recommend giving it a try.

vanye111 Jun 28th 2008 4:13PM

I've messed with it a little but (Ubuntu, Hardy Heron) but it's not working out so well right off the bat. I start it up, and the screen keeps blinking before it even gets to the login prompt - I've got the portal in the background and it blips between my desktop.

Peterix Jun 29th 2008 7:02AM

mdhowle:
Two things: you have to disable the compiz effects first - they don't work well together with 3d apps yet. Get something like the Compiz Fusion Icon to do that. Then make sure WoW runs in OpenGL mode instead of Direct3D.

Some info:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=11329

More info, don't run weird stuff - it's for a different distro. Many of the performance tweaks still apply though:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Install_and_update_World_Of_Warcraft_with_wine#OpenGL_Registry_Edit

mdhowle Jun 29th 2008 3:04PM

I'm not sure why this was directed to me. Compiz works fine with WoW. You may want to if your system's specs aren't very high. Yes, you should run in OpenGL instead of the default DirectX.

Jano Jun 28th 2008 4:08PM

Most of the sells go to people unable to deal with linux, therefore you need more than just releasing. You don't want to release anything at all that is not well supported, its bad PR. Right now Blizzard can say: we have the best support of the gaming industry (before making easy jokes really compare with other games).

Aaron Jun 28th 2008 4:24PM

It is indeed a lot of effort to start providing support for linux, seeing how half the posts in WoW's tech support forums on EU and US gets ignored, so it needs a lot of improvement still and better error checking.

thethirdmoose Jun 28th 2008 5:09PM

Pretty much the only recent games released for linux are enemy territory: quake wars, UT2k4 (and soon UT3), and doom 3. I wish more devs would release for linux, then i wouldn't ever need to reboot my computer

mdhowle Jun 28th 2008 6:29PM

Also, Neverwinter Nights.

I commend Id Software and Epic Games for porting their games to Linux. I wish more game development companies would do this even if it's a lower-tier support. You could let the communities handle the downstream support and you fix the bugs that have been verified.

Proud Linux user since 2001.

Sangfroid Jun 28th 2008 6:22PM

WoW running under wine is great! I even got the logitech G15 keyboard to work fairly easily.

Soulbento Jun 28th 2008 6:48PM

Yep, Blizz doesn't need to release a Linux client....cause the Linux community and it's users are way ahead of them. We've been happily WoWing on our various "nix" distros for quite some time now. There's a "can-do" attitude in the Linux community, because historically theres been so little proprietary support...that we've been content coding it ourselves.

thethirdmoose Jun 28th 2008 8:07PM

How does WoW performance under WINE compare to WoW performance under Windows?

beatphreek Jun 28th 2008 9:05PM

YMMV on that one... I'd say that would have a lot to do with your exact hardware setup and your proficiency with troubleshooting display and sound issues. It is really horrible on my laptop, but then again, my proficiency with Linux is horrible... I can basically read forum posts and follow instructions. Obviously some people find it works fantastically. It's pretty easy to try Ubuntu now with the Install in windows options they give you to try it out. Although I'm sure that will add a slight to moderate impact on disk access.

mdhowle Jun 28th 2008 10:24PM

I think the performance on both are close on my box. I hit the "defaults" button in Video Settings and disabled vertical sync.

Averages (Ubuntu 8.04 / Windows XP)
Orgimmar at bank: ~20fps / ~23fps
Azeroth: ~55 fps / ~55 fps
Shattrath: ~25fps / ~25fps
Outlands: ~40ps / ~45fps

Neither seem to handle large populated areas. I do need to upgrade my motherboard and CPU since they're pretty dated.

My specs:
AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ (Dual Core) - 2.21GHz
3GB of RAM
Nvidia 8800GT 512MB

mdhowle Jun 28th 2008 10:26PM

Both are rendering under OpenGL too. Better comparison than a "DirectX vs OpenGL" debate.

Afu Jun 30th 2008 1:58PM

For me, performance has been pretty horrible:
Intel Core2 Quad
8GB RAM
Nvidia 8800GT
Distros tested:
OpenSuse 10.3, Ubuntu 7.10, PCLinuxOS, Mandrivia, Debian, RedHat 8, Sabayon

-Framerates are consistently 10-50 fps lower than their windows counterparts.

-When you exit the game, you have to sit there for ~90 seconds waiting for access to your desktop again.

-Rotating the camera around your character causes the framerate to plummet to near single digit levels.

-Sound delays are atrocious (hit a mob, and hear the sound of the impact almost a full second later)

-Mouse cursor is inaccurate (doesn't always click exactly where the tip of the arrow is.

And that doesn't even cover trying to get other various issues with wine cleared up or the 32bit vs 64 bit cpu problems or some of the texturing bugs in the Nvidia video drivers.

That might be good for some people, but why should I settle for that when I can just boot into XP and get flawless performance and a consistent HIGH framerate (60+ fps)?

Maybe it's a tweaking issue, but I haven't been able to find any acceptable solutions to these problems so I've pretty much given up on WoW under Wine for right now.

daedhir Jun 30th 2008 7:20PM

It really does depend on your hardware..

I can run WoW on my desktop computer at home either in Vista with DirectX, or in Linux under Wine with OpenGL. OpenGL has many more screen-tearing problems, and I can't have my terrain draw distance maxed out like I can under DirectX.

My laptop, an HP dv6110us, is a very different story. It came with XP Media Center edition, but I used the express upgrade program to get Vista (came for free, since I bought the laptop about a month before Vista came out.) I installed Vista, and tried to get WoW working. Problem is, even today, the latest nVidia drivers are the ones released in January of 2007 -- that's right, the "current" drivers for the onboard nVidia Go 6150 are the original drivers released for Vista. Needless to say, performance for games in general is terrible. And of course, you can't simply install nVidia's drivers for Vista, and hacking them to get them to work improves matters, but I still have to run horrible framerates at a lower resolution than my LCD screen would prefer.

However, running WoW on Ubuntu Linux under Wine on my laptop results in performance similar to what I was getting under XP when I first got the laptop. I can run with high texture resolution, and at the maximum resolution that my LCD will take. It's very playable, and MUCH better than the performance I get under Vista.

So yes, your mileage may vary, but WoW is playable on any reasonable hardware setup with Wine under Linux. I'd *highly* recommend it for laptop users who may be suffering from the same terrible driver support from their hardware manufacturers.