WineGW2

About

The WineGW2 project is a dedicated distribution of Wine with a few custom utilities that enable you to play Guild Wars 2™ with either the standard 32-bit or the new 64-bit game client.

Based off of Wine Staging, it includes PulseAudio sound support and full Direct3D acceleration over OpenGL using the experimental CSMT engine, rivalling the native Windows experience.

Guild Wars 2™ is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by ArenaNet™ and published by NCSOFT™. Set in the fantasy world of Tyria, the game follows the re-emergence of Destiny's Edge, a disbanded guild dedicated to fighting the Elder Dragons, a Lovecraftian species that has seized control of Tyria.

The core game is Free To Play (F2P) with limitations. Purchasing the expansion lifts these limitations and adds new content.

Legal

Requirements

1. Your system needs 32-bit libraries installed

2. You'll need around 30 GB of disk space available, regardless of whether you buy the expansion or not

3. You'll need the bandwidth to download that much data

4. Your processor should be at least 3 GHz at maximum clock, and needs at least three cores to take full advantage of CSMT and NVIDIA Threaded Optimizations:
   

5. You need 4 GB of system memory (not graphics memory) for high textures, 3 GB for medium, and 2 GB for low

6. You'll need an extra 1 GB of memory for the 64-bit game client

7. OpenGL 2.0+ acceleration must be available and working:
   

9. The game uses massive amounts of memory so it is best to have swap available to avoid crashes from low memory

Download

Each release includes Wine, the 32- and 64-bit game clients, our custom launcher and updater utilties and some icons.

Because newer releases are incompatible with past releases, you should always back up your existing installation, unpack the new version to a fresh folder and copy your game data across.

For details of the changes in each version, please see the forums, where the release announcements are posted.

Installation

2. If you have an existing Gw2.dat from another installation then move, copy or link it to the Client folder

3. Run the updater by double-clicking Updater.sh, which will download and install the latest utility patch and then fully update the game client to the live server version

4. Run the launcher by double-clicking Launcher.sh

5. Enter your account details (or create a new account) and then start the game itself by clicking "Play"

6. Set the game to download new content automatically:
   

7. Chose a server to play on - Note that your server choice only affects World Vs World (WvW), not the Player Vs Environment (PvE) or Player Vs Player (PvP) game modes

8. Create your character

9. Play through the tutorial to make sure that everything is working before entering any other game modes

10. You may need to run the updater utility again in the future if you experience any problems with updating the game such as excessive crashing in the patcher

FAQ

• Will this work on ATI or Intel graphics?

  Yes, we have tested that it will work but currently there is no equivalent to NVIDIA Threaded Optimizations implemented so you will be limited to using two processor cores.

• Can I play the game on a low memory (2 GB) system?

  Yes, but you'll need to force the 32-bit game client by editing Launcher.conf and modifying the following line:

  wine_disable_win64="0" # Change to "1"

  You will also need to configure the game itself to use low textures and the lowest character model limit. The amount of time you can spend in game without a restart will be limited.

• Why does the patcher keep crashing?

  Due to a bug in Wine, its normal for the patcher to crash frequently especially on slow or lossy connections and you can use our updater utility to get around it for the most part.

  However if the patcher is immediately crashing over and over it could be due to a broken file in one of the data archives, particularly a corrupted root manifest:

  > head "User/Application Data/Guild Wars 2/ArenaNet.log"
  *--> Crash <--*
  Assertion: Failed to load root manifest.

  To fix these crashes you need to redownload the system-specific prepatch stored in your user profile (its usually ~30 MB) by first deleting it and then running the patcher again:

  > rm "User/Application Data/Guild Wars 2/Local.dat"

  This is most likely caused by the patcher crashing while updating crifical files in this archive, thereby corrupting them.

• Why can't I change my fullscreen resolution?

  By default this is disabled to keep Wine from changing your desktop resolution and moving windows and icons around, or modifying gamma and color correction settings. To enable it, edit Launcher.conf and modify the following lines:

  wine_xrandr="0"
  wine_xvidmode="0"

  Changing both of these settings to "1" will allow the game access to the mode setting and gamma control capabilities of your graphics hardware, for better or worse ;)

• How do I change accounts?

  By default the patcher is set up for automatic login. If you want to change login details then you first have to disable this by editing Launcher.conf and modifying the following line:

  program_param="-dx9single -bmp -autologin"

  Simply remove the -autologin parameter and the next time you start the launcher the patcher will come up asking for login details. Unfortunately this also disables autoplay.

• Where are my screenshots?

  Your screenshots are located in:
  User/My Documents/Guild Wars 2/Screens

  They are stored in BMP format by default bcause it is the only lossless format that the game supports.

Performance

Sorry, this section is still under construction.

The game runs fairly well for Player Vs Environment and Player Vs Player. There are some exceptions:

• At large world events, such as bosses, the frame rate may plummet.
• In World Vs World on large servers, the frame rate will plummet and the game may become almost unplayable when large numbers of players are on-screen.

These are mostly due to threading issues in Wine that prevent it from fully utilizing the system's resources when multiple CPUs are available. WineGW2 includes patches which improve this, but bad frame lag may still occur. It is recommended to reduce all settings to the lowest when engaging in such activities.

If you want to play in World Vs World, you may want to join a lower-tier server with a lower population. Don't worry about PvE content, you can still guest to other worlds (servers) to access large-scale events such as world bosses and the temples in Orr, and PvP content is server-independant.

See the Known Bugs{IMG_LINK} page for information about possible causes of frame lag.

• Use our launcher{IMG_LINK} to work around various issues.
• If you have a good graphics card, the game will likely end up CPU-bound. In these cases, most graphics options will have no effect on your performance, and you need to reduce options specific to processor usage, like shadows and character models.
• The game may run badly if you have CPU speed throttling (e.g Cool'N'Quiet) enabled, which is usually the case. In Linux, this is usually controlled by the 'ondemand' CPU governor. Disable it and put your processor into performance mode to avoid issues.
• If you have a bad graphics card, disable any desktop effects or compositing.
• Don't use anti-aliasing. Use the in-game "Supersample" or "FXAA" features instead.
• For best results, the "Image Settings" slider in NVIDIA X Server Settings should always be set to "High Performance" for reasons detailed in this forum thread.
• Advanced users can make additional tweaks by modifying the "Launcher.conf" file if using our launcher, and by editing the Wine Direct3D settings with RegEdit. See UsefulRegistryKeys.

Known Issues

Sorry, this section is still under construction.

Support

Sorry, this section is still under construction.