How do I� Play World of Warcraft on a Linux box?

by James M. Garvin | 09-11-07

Tags: Linux, screenshots, world of warcraft, geekend, off topic, Game, Video Card, Administrator, Password, Disk, CD, EULA, Operating System, NVidia Corp., Blog, CD-ROM, Patch Management, GNOME, Microsoft Windows, ATI Technologies Inc., Kernel, Graphics, News, Games, Corporate Communications, Operating Systems, Unix, Open Source, Software, Personal Technology, Marketing, TechRepublic Inc., Linux Server, Environment, James M. Garvin

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Now, you install WoW as you would on a Windows box. There are some caveats though.

Don't press the eject button on your CDROM more than once. This can sometimes cause the next CD not to read properly. It sometimes takes a few seconds for the CD to eject, this is normal. Just wait it out and you will be fine.
You might get an installer error at the very end of the install. Don't worry. The game installed, it is just one of those things.
Installing the patches is easiest via the command line. So get the patch, put it in the WoW install directory, probably .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft, and type:

# cedega wow---patch.exe

For the 1.10 patch you need to move the Repair.exe out of the install directory, the path is probably .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft. You need to be quick about it, so the up arrow will be your friend.

My suggestion is to do it like this:

# cd .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft

# mv Repair.exe .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files

# mv .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/Repair.exe .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft

# mv Repair.exe .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files # cedega wow-1.9.4-to-1.10.0--patch.exe

Now open up a new term and quickly up arrow until you see the command:

# mv .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/Repair.exe .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft

Now we can move the Repair.exe back in the World of Warcraft directory. You need to do this pretty fast as around 10 percent or so of the time you'll need the Repair.exe. If you mess up the first time, don't worry, just try again. You can just copy and paste in Gnome. So if you don't see the command, when you up arrow a couple times, in the new term, just highlight the command in the old term and press c. That will copy the command. Switch to the new term and press p to paste the command.

For most patches you will either need to download them or run the BNUpdate.exe manually, like this:

# cd .cedega/World of Warcraft/c_drive/Program Files/World of Warcraft # cedega BNUpdate.exe

That should patch you up from the auto patcher. If you download them just go to Gamespot, 3dgamer or Fileplanet and grab the patch.

That should do it. WoW is now installed and patched. You can play! Just to prove it, here's a screen shot of my box.