World of Warcraft

From Unofficial TransGaming Wiki

Game Info

Issues

Installation & Patching

• The "burning crusade" downloader has problems (memory leak resulting in transfer stopped) with Cedega 6, use Cedega 5.2.x which works fine.

Installer error

• After the game installation is complete, the program will display the error dialog to the right. Clicking "OK" will then crash the installer. You can safely ignore this, because the game is now fully installed. This has been tested and is true for both P2P and the command line interface. The icon is still created with recent P2P releases.
• This error also also occurs if the installer runs out of free disk space.
• You may also get this error if you have not removed the unhide option from your /etc/fstab file for your cd/dvd-rom device. The error happens right after you hit the continue to install button. It will not ask for any of the cd's and it will not install any of the software.

Good example: /dev/hdc     /mnt/cd   iso9660   ro,user,noauto   0      0
Bad example:  /dev/hdc     /mnt/cd   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0

• Some users may have problems switching cd's during the install. Simply copy the contents of all cd's to a single location on the hard drive and install from there.
• With regard to the above, some newer distros come with Selinux, which can cause errors with the dbus / haldaemon / automount at boot. A selinux filesystem relabel may be required. The problem is most often encountered when mounting and copying from insecure file systems (such as mounted windows partitions).
• If you are having problems with the latest patch, run the game and its patches with the default windows version setting which is Win98 and not WinXP or Win2k.
• Linux kernel 2.6.9 and 2.6.10 are known to cause problems. Please see the release notes for more information.
• As of April 19, 2005, the patcher for World of WarCraft requires that the Mozilla ActiveX Control be installed.
• The Bittorrent-style patcher will sit and appear to do nothing for several minutes while it looks for servers. Be patient.
• As of Cedega-5.0.2, the WoW patcher works when it is downloaded. No more need to download from outside servers.
• Note: Patch 1.10 requires a small workaround, posted at http://transgaming.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5696
• Note: As of Cedega-5.1.3, the work around is no longer required.

• Cedega6 fixes all visible problems
• Now you can use anisotropic filtering and all other graphic settings with amd64(and it should work with x86 too).

Mouse Issues

• Mouse cursor stays on screen when the cinematics play.
• Some users may experience issues selecting in-game objects with the mouse. (Example: Right clicking NPCs) This is know to happen more often for users running in full screen mode. The following workaround should correct the problem for users on any distro:

Please note, that the change will be persistent as long as you continue to use this configuration file for World of WarCraft. This change may also need to be removed for future versions of Cedega.

The mouse fix should no longer be necessary as of Cedega 5.1, Feb 15 2006.

Edit the World of WarCraft configuration file located in ~/.point2play/configuration_profiles or ~/.transgaming/config (if you are not using Point2Play). Add the following section to the config file after the line ";; App default settings":

 ;; App default settings
 ;; World of Warcraft settings
 [AppDefaults\\WoW.exe\\memory]
 "MemoryLayoutOverride" = "0x10000000"

Tip: You can try to run cedega with WINEPRELOADER_SETVALEGACY="no", instead of doing the MemoryLayoutOverride switch, which may help performance. Does not work on all systems.

Direct3D Rendering Issues

Direct 3D rendering is enabled by default and recommended by Transgaming.

• Lower FPS when pixelshaders are enabled and you move near large bodies of water or areas with lots of players such as the auction house. Note: This problem is fixed by using the 'FixedProgram=No' solution detailed below.
• Trying to run in windowed mode by using the in-game menu option (without pixel shaders) crashes the game. I suggest using the alternative for ALT+TAB.

DirectSound Rendering Issues

• Audio skipping / hissing: WoW sound skips or hisses and crashes after a while on AC97 and other "chipset audio" type cards. Many of these audio solutions are built-in to the motherboard. If you suffer from this issue, try OSS driver and set the following options in WoW's WTF/Config.wtf file:

SET SoundOutputSystem "1"
SET SoundBufferSize "100"

The SET SetOutputSystem value of "1" is for OSS (winex windows audio) while a value of "2" is for ALSA's DirectSound emulation through wineserver. A value of "-1" is the default auto-select and should work in most cases.

• ALSA looping / white noise: This is usually a result of having the box, labeled "Decrease Wineserver Priority" checked in Point2Play. The reason? Until portaudio v19 goes stable and ALSA goes native, ALSA (and thus wineserver's DirectSound) will use an OSS emulation layer. Translation: ALSA makes wineserver do most of the grunt work in converting 44.1Khz game audio to the soundcard's native 48Khz format and a low priority wineserver chokes on the data, making audio skip. WoW seems to perform better, in many cases with the higher priority wineserver.
• If you chose the OSS driver instead of ALSA, the sound is unaffected by wineserver priority because wineserver passes the DSP work to OSS (and usually OSS just dumps the raw audio into /dev/dsp.)

OpenGL Rendering Issues

• ATI users will notice graphical corruption in OpenGL mode. To minimize this, use the GLExtensionBuffer setting in the config file to disable GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object. To impliment this, open ~/.point2play/World of Warcraft/World of Warcraft.config or ~/.transgaming/config (depending on which you use) in a text editor and add the following to the "opengl" section:

[opengl]
"FixedGLExtensionBuffer" = "Y"
"GLExtensionBuffer" = "-GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object" 

User Interface Modifications

The UI mods work fine with World of Warcraft under Cedega. In order to update the mod to work with the latest version of World of Warcraft, you need to edit each .toc file and change the version number to the number that is displayed in between parenthesis on the login screen.

For example, if you were changing the number for version 4211:

## Interface: 4051

needs to be changed to

## Interface: 4211

You can even do this without having to shut down the game. Just change the version numbers, switch back to World of Warcraft and type /console reloadui

There's a thread on the TransGaming.org forums that describes a way to automate the version number changing if you can't figure it out or want to automate the task (as there are quite a few of these .toc files). One such application is WoWToc.exe. This tool can batchprocess all of your .toc files and insert the correct version number based on the WoW.exe file.

Tips and Tricks

How to use OpenGL Rendering

World of Warcraft's OpenGL rendering works out of the box on wine 80050830 but is not supported by Cedega.

Some users report being able to use it under cedega by doing the following:

1. Backup (or delete) ~/.point2play/World of Warcraft/c_drive/World of Warcraft/WTF/Config.wtf

2. Create a new Config.wtf

touch Config.wtf

3. Open it with an editor and insert the following lines:

SET gxApi "opengl"
SET gxColorBits "24"
SET gxDepthBits "24"

3a. It may be good to add the resolution you want to play with also, as anything less then your native resolution seems to block opengl rendering.

SET gxResolution "1024x768"

4. Save the file.

5. In Point2Play, open the configuration menu for the World of Warcraft icon. (Select it then click "Configure".)

6. In the commandline input field, type "-opengl"

7. Set the appropriate video and AGP settings and enable pixelshaders (make sure you card supports it) and anisotropic filtering.

8. Click "Apply".

9. Start World of Warcraft.

10. Set the appropriate video settings to your preference and enjoy the game.

Turning Off FixedProgram

This setting may be necessary for users who have all pixel shaders turned on in-game. Symptoms include low fps near water, when transparent water effects are present.

Edit the World of WarCraft configuration file located in ~/.point2play/configuration_profiles or ~/.transgaming/config (if you are not using Point2Play). Add the following section to the config file after the line ";; App default settings"

;; App default settings
;; World of Warcraft settings
[AppDefaults\\WoW.exe\\d3dgl]
"FixedProgram" = "No"

Turning On Anisotropic Filtering

Switching on Anisotropic filtering may also increase FPS.

• To do this in Point2Play, just check on the option in the World of Warcraft configuration menu.
• If you are using Cedega from the command line, add the following section to ~/.transgaming/config after the line ";; App default settings"

;; App default settings
;; World of Warcraft settings
[AppDefaults\\WoW.exe\\d3dgl]
"AnisotropicTextureFiltering" = "Y"

Then switch on the option in World of Warcraft's video configuration options.

Checking Your AGPVertexRam and VideoRam Settings

For good 3D acceleration under Cedega, you must maximize your available hardware. The simpliest way to obtain a quick FPS boost is to increase your AGPVertexRam. This can be done through a setting in your computer's BIOS. For World of Warcraft you should have at least 64M of AGPVertexRam. Using around 128M should give you optimal performance. Once this is set correctly in the BIOS, proceed to place the entries in your Point2Play or Cedega profile.

Setting AGP FastWrites

The BIOS on some AGP enabled motherboards gives you the ability to turn AGP FastWrites on or off. Some users have reported performance increases by switching this feature off, while some users report no difference at all.

If you are using an NVIDIA card, you may want to try taking the following steps:

1. Determine what features are supported by your motherboard:

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge

2. Check the features that are supported by your card

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card

3. See which settings are currently enabled:

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status

4. If there are features you would like to turn on (or off!) add the following lines to your /etc/modules.conf.

Anything set to "1" must be supported by both the host-bridge and the card.

options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1
options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPFW=0

Screenshots

Glittering water

Warlock & Void Walker

Installer error