Wine/Misc

In this article you may read all sorts of useful information and relevant extra tips and tricks to the Wine guide.

Voice Chat
A number of raiding guilds require the use of voice chat systems such as Ventrilo ("Vent"), which can be a barrier to raiding under Linux. There are four solutions:

Ventrilo on Wine
It is possible to run Ventrilo on Wine alongside WoW. For installation and configuration instructions on Ventrilo see the Ventrilo page on WineHQ.

Mangler
If you don't want to fuss around with getting Ventrilo working in Wine, you can use Mangler, which is compatible with current Ventrilo servers.

Mumble
If the group is open to switching to a different voice chat system, Mumble is a cross-platform, open-source solution which supports Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and has Android and iOS clients available. It's been favorably compared to Ventrilo, and does not have complex licensing requirements.

In-Game Voice Chat
The in-game voice chat system isn't used very much, but it's reported to work fine under Wine.

You can configure the voice chat settings from within WoW (just like on Windows). You'll see the full name of the headset in the devices list. Mine reads "Logitech_G35_Headset Analog Mono" (for the microphone) and "Logitech_G35_Headset Analog Stereo" for the speakers.

It is also possible to use pavucontrol to (re-)direct sound input and output. For the best usage, set all devices to "System Default" within WoW. In the Playback (and Recording) tab of pavucontrol you should see WINE [WoW.exe]. Simply click on the button to the right and select the device you want to attach to the audio stream. The advantage of using this method is that WoW will not re-initialize the sound system.

OpenGL vs. Direct3D
Linux does not support Direct3D natively; the 3D graphics API is OpenGL. However, Wine includes a translation layer that translates Direct3D API calls to OpenGL. It supports Direct3D 9, and work to support newer versions is underway. Generally, World of Warcraft runs in Direct3D mode.

Under certain circumstances, however, it's useful to switch WoW to run in OpenGL mode, which translates to Linux OpenGL much more easily. Blizzard officially discourages running in OpenGL mode under Windows, however, and it often doesn't work as well or support some features.

Enabling OpenGL in WoW
There are two ways to tell WoW to run in OpenGL mode.

In Config.wtf, the gxApi setting can turn on OpenGL: SET gxApi "OpenGL"

Switching back to the default can be done with: SET gxApi "D3D9"

The other way is to run the game directly with the  switch, like so: wine "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\World of Warcraft\\WoW.exe -opengl"

Problems with OpenGL mode
As of September 2014, running WoW via the Config.WTF setting is not possible using the Battle.net Launcher, as the game refuses to connect in this mode to Blizzard's servers. Use the command-line method instead.

Graphics settings besides "Low" will generally have artifacts, including rendering errors for far-off objects, flashing, and tearing. When in OpenGL mode, set your graphics settings to "Low".

Scalable WoW Icon
Simply save this SVG to a location in your home path, and assign you launcher to use it. With Gnome it's as simple as right clicking the launcher, going to properties, and then finally clicking the button with the current icon, and finding the replacement. This icon should be far more appealing and allow you to make it larger, with no text as is a current desktop fad, without horrible pixelation.

All Available Options
Config.wtf_defaults

Typical Config.wtf
SET gxResolution "1024x768" SET gxRefresh "60" SET hwDetect "0" SET movie "0" SET readTOS "1" SET realmList "us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com" SET gxMultisampleQuality "0.000000" SET readEULA "1" SET readScanning "-1" SET realmName "" SET gameTip "54" SET gxCursor "0" SET SmallCull "0.040000" SET frillDensity "32" SET farclip "357" SET Gamma "0.600000" SET MusicVolume "0.60000002384186" SET SoundVolume "1" SET SoundOutputSystem "1" SET SoundBufferSize "150" SET MasterVolume "1" SET ffx "0" SET AmbienceVolume "0.60000002384186" SET uiScale "1" SET mouseSpeed "1" SET cameraPitchMoveSpeed "90" SET cameraYawMoveSpeed "180" SET cameraPitchSmoothSpeed "45" SET cameraYawSmoothSpeed "180" SET cameraSmoothStyle "0" SET cameraSmoothTrackingStyle "0" SET cameraDistanceMaxFactor "1" SET SoundZoneMusicNoDelay "1" SET gxColorBits "24" SET gxApi "opengl" SET statusBarText "1" SET ffxDeath "0" SET minimapZoom "0" SET guildMemberNotify "1" SET profanityFilter "0" SET readContest "-1" SET minimapInsideZoom "5" SET gxDepthBits "24" SET accountName ""

Performance Boost
Note: If your Kernel runs the CFS Scheduler this performance boost doesn't work since this command will make it really a low priority process (Eg. If you're watching a website and it refreshes major CPU power will be destined to the browser, slowing down WoW). Newer distributions as Ubuntu 7.10 use CFS Scheduler.

You may improve the overall game performance and FPS if you change the default priority WoW runs with by starting it with the nice command. Using a terminal window type the following command:

nice -15 wine wow

But if you want to change the priority of a WoW process that is already running, the command to use is renice. For both nice and renice commands the priority values range from -20 to +19 and negative numbers raise the priority of a task while positive numbers lower it. Only the superuser can specify negative numbers (thus raising the priority of a process).

Lets imagine you are running WoW and want to change the priority without leaving the game. First you need to discover what the Process ID (PID) of WoW is (which is running under Wine). In a terminal window type:

ps -ef | grep wineserver

The PID is that number in the first line, second column of the output text. Remember that the PID will always be a different number every time you execute WoW. Lets suppose that this time the PID is 12345. Change its priority with the following command:

renice -15 -p 12345

You will immediately notice the difference. If you want to make sure this really made some difference then change it back to the default priority:

renice 0 -p 12345

Check your distro documentation for ps, nice and renice commands for more information; ps may produce slightly different outputs according to the shell you are executing.