I’ve looked around a little, and found some mentions of using Lutris, or running it through Steam (tbh I don’t know how that would work), but I’m not really able to find any guide that explains the process well enough. I’m so used to the game being handled by Blizzard’s Battle.net launcher, so I can’t really wrap my head around how that would work.
Use Steam.
Download Battle.net Launcher.
Add it as non steam game.
Run it and install like normal.
Do not sign in. Close it.
In a terminal, type this: find ~ -name Battle.net
Look for a line like: /home/you/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compdata/#############/pfx/drive_c/…
Those ###s are Battle.net’s steam ID on your system.
Back on Steam, right-click Battle.net and click Properties.
Change the Target line to: “/home/you/.steam/steam/steamapps/compdata/~your numbers~/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Battle.net/Battle.net Launcher.exe”
Set Compatibility to Proton 10 beta.
Now launch Battle.net and install WoW.
A little off-topic, but it’s kinda tragic how easy it is to install and play WoW private servers on Linux, compared to the official game. Some private servers even have launchers made for Linux. But a multi-billion company can’t manage…
Hell, If your distro ships docker is easier to spin up your own TrinityCore server than run the official client lol
yep I was going to say this too. actual retail takes a lot to get working, but I play on a small private server and Proton just runs it all flawlessly.
set it up in minutes.
It’s not even the game itself that’s a problem. It’s the shitty battle.net launcher that people always struggle to get working properly.
It’s not that they can’t manage, it’s that they don’t care.
It’s the same thing with every multiplayer game that uses easy anticheat. Getting the anticheat to work on Linux literally as simple as enabling it in config, adding an extra library and creating a new build with that library. Companies can’t even bother to take 5 minutes, how can you expect them to bother with something that takes more than 5 minutes.
That’s not the case with kernel-level AC, those don’t run on Linux at all. They shouldn’t run on anything really but that’s a different story.
Easy anticheat runs kernel level on windows. The linux version runs in user space.
You’re talking about a specific AC. Your OP was a general statement about all ACs. And it’s not true because many simply do not offer this option to run in userspace mode only, as seen by battlefield and COD and other games like League of Legends.
Could they? Maybe? We don’t know it’s a bunch of proprietary black box code anyways.
But presenting it like it’s a choice by Dev studios to just tick a box during AC setup is not a valid thing to say about all cases.
The only mention of AC was done by me and I specifically used EAC as an example of devs not caring about Linux. I was not making any generalized statements about ACs on Linux and whether some other ACs would take more effort to get them working on Linux is irrelevant because my point was that if most devs can’t even take 5 minutes to get something working they’re not going to do something take would take even more time.
That’s fair.
I imagine executes fearing the worse with Linux. A customer base restricted by the OS, kept less computer literature, is easier to hold on to?
I’ve always wanted to try private servers, mainly for a state of permanent WotLK, but I never could figure out how to do it.
low-key advertisement, because this game is pretty fun so far:
I used to play on a private server so I could level up alts fast in order to do the endgame group content. I gave up because even with fast xp you still have to do all of the annoying shit like farming flasks, reputation grinds, etcetc.
Fellowship (on steam) just released into EA and it is basically WoW’s M+ dungeon system without the MMO. It uses a hero system instead of class + talent spec. So, for example, Helena is a hero that plays like a hybrid Prot Warrior/Prot Paladin, Sylvie is a Reso Druid, Tariq is an Arms warrior.
There’s still gear progression and build customization (tinkets, weapon abilities, talents) but you don’t have to do 30 hours of questing to make an alt.
Works just fine on Linux (check protondb, there’s a required command line option).
I’ve heard Fellowship has a bit of a toxicity problem with the players.
It may, but I haven’t seen much communication outside of ‘gg’ after the boss, even on runs where we wiped 3-4 times.
You can disable chat, it isn’t really useful in the fights. I’ll do this is toxicity becomes a problem.
If you know your role and the fight mechanics the UI provides a way to communicate all of the important information. For example, you can mark a target for your interrupt target, and it’ll show your character icon next to the mob’s hp bar along with the cooldown of your interrupt and targets can be marked with overhead icons for designating CC or priority targets.
It’s still EA, so it needs more content and heroes for gameplay variety, but there’s already about 1 WoW expansion pack worth of dungeons. 12 dungeons total. There are 3 capstone dungeons have 3 bosses, the rest are shorter 1 boss dungeons. The bosses are all well designed with interesting strategies and the difficulty ramps up pretty smoothly, with mobs getting more damage and health while adding new abilities to add complexity to the encounters.
It definitely scratches that WoW itch (I haven’t played since Pandaria).
As someone who keeps the battle.net launcher around for StarCraft 1 & 2, I’ve seen my fair share of issues with Lutris. For the longest time I was able to run the StarCraft games and Overwatch without problems. Over the last few years though, I’ve encountered random issues where I can’t get it running again.
Rather than keep messing with Lutris, on my current install (Bazzite), I installed the Heroic launcher and did a manual install for battle.net. You can choose multiple wine versions or even Proton if you prefer. I have not had any issues with either the launcher or StarCraft games since. Good chance it may allow you to run WoW too.
Good luck!
Heroic worked, I tried both Lutris and Bottles but neither worked, only Heroic did.
Lutris would also work if you set GE-Proton on it too. From its hamburger menu, go to Preferences, go to Runners tab, find Wine way below the list, open its settings (left button), and select GE-Proton as your Wine version. It will detect if you put it one on Steam’s
/compatibilitytools.d/directory, or you can manually select your preferred directory by enabling advanced options too.If it works on Heroic, you don’t need to do this of course. I just wanted to let you know that it’s possible on Lutris too. I think Lutris needs a built-in GE-Proton downloader just like Heroic.
Thank you for the advice. I did try to change the runtime a couple of times before, but I don’t know for sure if GE-Proton was one. I tried using Lutris again like I did before so I could select GE-proton, but this the installer would not even finish. Since I use GOG also, I decided to try the Heroic Launcher flatpak, and that installed Battle.net just fine. I’m now downloading WoW and I’ll keep you posted how that goes.
Edit: that worked! No noticeable issues so far.
Glad that worked! For some reason, Battle-net does not work well with regular Wine for some time now. It works but when there is a new agent update for Battle-net, it gets borked and either can be fixed with a complete reinstall or as a temporary fix, symlink the new agent to the old one. Anyway, these problems are not present with GE-Proton. Heroic made this easy by adding built-in downloader for GE-Proton. I guess it would be nice if Lutris does a similar thing.
That’s awesome to hear! I’m glad that got it running.
If you haven’t used heroic before it will also let you pull your libraries from Amazon, GOG and Epic if you use any of them.
When I tried to install wow I had a few Issue with Battlenet connecting to their servers so I installed battle net via Steam.
- Download BattleNet.exe
- Add unknown Game to steam library
- set compatibility
- Install Battlnet (Set the correct installation path. Don’t use C:/)
- when Battle net is installed you can login and install wow. (Don’t set the path to C:/)
- Finish
I was just trying to get this working yesterday on Fedora 42. I have had it working before, with Lutris. All I did was use the configuration downloaded from the Lutris website. Basically it downloads and installs the Battle.net installer with Wine, so you will be running a custom Wine configuration for Battle.net. From there I was able to install and run World of Warcraft. That was about a year ago.
However, when I last tried it this week, I can install the Battle.net launcher fine, and I can log in, but it will keep giving me errors when I try to actually run it and I can never get to where I can actually install any games. The error is something about it going to sleep, but that’s about as far as I got.
Hopefully someone else can help.
Which Wine runner are you using?
Every so often, a Battle.net update breaks it in Wine, and a workaround must be found. It takes time for these workarounds to make their way into upstream Wine, but game-focused variants like GE-Proton often pick them up early. I suggest trying the latest GE-Proton Wine runner.
Lutrius with proton-ge_latest works for me to get battle.net installed and run wow. I use proton-up to install the different proton versions. Then you need to setup lutrius to use them.
I’m so used to the game being handled by Blizzard’s Battle.net launcher, so I can’t really wrap my head around how that would work.
They’re probably talking about launching said launcher from Lutris or Steam.
kagis
Keep in mind that sometimes a Battle.net update will be released that will essentially break playing WoW and other games via the launcher on Linux. usually it’s resolved within a couple days. your best bet is to install it via a Lutris script and if something goes wrong DO post about it either on the Lutris Forums and/or Discord because one of the main Lutris devs is a WoW player so if there are issues with installing WoW on your system he will be right on top of it. It’s your best bet in resolving an issue, he knows all the work arounds and fixes to get battle.net and WoW running on any distro.
I used Nobara and it works flawlessly using WINE. Although, I am not positive this is the “correct” way of doing it.
I have got it working with Bottles. It even has it as a download option.
I could actually install and run it using Bottles, with less effort that Lutris. Though the client can’t load any web resources, and I can’t install anything from it.
In short: install battle net launcher, the use that to install any blizzard game.
I’ve had luck with Lutris in the past: Install Lutris, search for the battle net installer, once that is installed in it’s own wine prefix you install the games as usually and it will end up in the same prefix.
Last time I was having problems though, so I setup a wine prefix via winetricks instead and installed the same fonts that the Lutris install script adds. Then I got it running.
Well I try to do that, but I keep getting this error:
could not load kernel32.dll, status c0000135
On my Debian Trixie system, kernel32.dll is in the
libwinepackage:$ apt-file search kernel32.dll libwine: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wine/x86_64-windows/kernel32.dll $ apt-file search -a i386 kernel32.dll libwine: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/wine/i386-windows/kernel32.dll $I have no idea what Linux distribution you’re using, but if it’s Debian-family, maybe:
$ sudo apt install libwine:amd64 libwine:i386That’ll get both the 32-bit and 64-bit WINE libraries.
It sounds like Battle.net is a 32-bit Windows binary, whereas World of Warcraft itself is a 64-bit binary. I assume that the Battle.net binary might also be a 32-bit binary, and it looks like you’re running a 64-bit WINE binary (see the x86_64 thing in the above path that Lutris is running). Maybe you only have the 64-bit WINE libraries installed, and it can’t run the 32-bit Battle.net installer? I’m guessing, mind.
I don’t use Lutris, so can’t provide any advice there.
This is unlikely to work, since kernel32.dll is expected to come from and match the Wine build used to run the game/launcher, and Debian’s Wine is pretty much vanilla while Blizzard games often require patched Wine variants.
Debian gamers will want to enable the i386 architecture alongside the native amd64, then install Debian’s wine package to pull in Wine dependencies (but not actually use Debian’s Wine), and then use a game manager like Lutris or Bottles with a Wine variant like GE-Proton to run the game.
Looks related to a C++ issue. Is Winetricks enabled in the Lutris wine Runner settings?
Winetricks is enabled. I actually managed to get past this issue by selecting another installation folder, now I’m able to technically complete but not complete the installation, as after the login-screen of Battle.net it hangs on this instead
wine-ge-8.26 is quite old now. Get the latest one, 10.something, and see if it solves your issues. Can’t remember how you update Wine/Proton in Lutris. Protonup-QT is a great helper to get newer Wine versions for everything.
It’s been a while since I have been messing around with Lutris. But the general way of installing WoW or any other thing is basically the same in Lutris, Heroic, Bottles, Steam or Wine without any helper. Though I would advice against using Steam because it creates a new prefix for every new exe you throw at it, unless you tell it otherwise.
- You download the Battle.net installer from Blizzard.
- (In most cases) create a new game/bottle/prefix (the prefix is like a fake-Windows drive)
- Run the installer.
- If everything went well, run Battle.net and let it install WoW.
Common problems (don’t remember if they apply to Battle.net) are that you need to install the Visual C++ Runtime (vcredist), .Net Runtime and some fonts. You can do that with Winetricks or downloading the respective installers from Microsoft. You usually don’t have to install all fonts, that’d take a long time. Arial or maybe Helvetica are usually enough.
That is exactly where I had to give up as well. It’s the bad file descriptor error.
