Amazon Lists Linux Support For World Of Warcraft

[jasonditz]

As usual it's a mistake.
Amazon also still claims CivilizationV to be compatible:
http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Civ.../dp/B003O6EFW6

I'm still holding out hope on that one, since Valve showed Civ V in their SteamBox demo.

[YoungManKlaus]

Can you elaborate? WoW has somewhere around 9 million subscribers. That's a very big MMORPG, by any standard. In fact, as of October 2013, it is number 1 in terms of active subscriber count.

While yes, WoW still has the biggest user base, the main problem is that around 3.0 it really started to gear towards "casual" gamers (well, as casual as you can get with an MMO). In the old days the high-end content was extremely challenging (eg. friend of mine played 2-3 raid evenings a week and they were happy to get one boss done each - and I am talking 40people raids here without randoms, not 10 or 25 half of which you pick on-the-fly like today) whereas when I stopped playing (when [s]mists of pandora[/s] cataclysm came out) I got regularly halfway through the highest dungeon on one evening, and in the 10-man-version even with random groups.
Not to mention that because of this, added content gets cleared faster and faster and does not give you that much satisfaction because everybody can do it anyhow and not just the most elite.

Anecdote: Iirc some boss they added in a 1.x was _designed_ unbeatable and only a subsequent patch changed that.

EDIT: or stuff like the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj event ... didn't see anything that scale since then (to the extent of servers crashing and lags of multiple seconds because of so many players storming into one area *hrhrhr*)

[TheLexMachine]

I think this is a day late and a dollar short. I hate to say it but WoW isn't what it used to be...

Also you can run it in Wine with no issues.

Though their subscriber numbers have been dropping steadily, I remember reading that Blizzard was banning many WINE users not too long ago under the pretense of cheating due to their anti-cheat system registering them as using illegal methods to gain advantages in the game. That certainly sounds like an issue.

[Andrecorreia]

Firstly, there will never be a native Linux build of MS Office, so don't hold your breath waiting.

Secondly, even if there was, it wouldn't affect WINE. The thing I use WINE the most for, is running Windows software that won't even run on Windows! I've got plenty of special purpose software that was written for Win9x and WinNT that simply won't run on Windows 8. Microsoft has broken backwards compatibility. But this old Windows software runs perfectly under WINE.

Michael Larabel talks about ms office on linux... without ms office in linux a lot of countries like germany and china will not buy more msoffice licence, like they had do for mac when apple rise. we are talking about a lot of money here

[markg85]

While it would be nice to have - even though it's WAY too late - i doubt the information is correct. Just look at it, it doesn't list Windows 7 and 8 so this makes me think that the list is from when wow was about to be released. Back then it was having a beta linux client so it would make sense to mention that. Back then windows 7 and 8 also didn't exist which would explain it all i guess.

[jmcharron]

Can you elaborate? WoW has somewhere around 9 million subscribers. That's a very big MMORPG, by any standard. In fact, as of October 2013, it is number 1 in terms of active subscriber count.

I think it's safe to assume that a significant percentage of WoW subscribers are nerds and geeks. Perfect candidate for a native Linux client.

Another way to look at it: There are more paying WoW subscribers than there are ObamaCare subscribers. A lot more. Lol.

I want to say WoW's subscription base had steadily grew to 12 million subscribers back during the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. Now its numbers have been steadily declining since Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria.

[jmcharron]

Though their subscriber numbers have been dropping steadily, I remember reading that Blizzard was banning many WINE users not too long ago under the pretense of cheating due to their anti-cheat system registering them as using illegal methods to gain advantages in the game. That certainly sounds like an issue.

I wouldn't doubt it but I played end-game World of Warcraft (Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm), Diablo 3, and Starcraft 2 all under Wine and had zero issues from Blizzard.

[UraniumDeer]

WoW still has a significant user base, and if the internal linux-client is working well, then it's a cheap way for Blizzard to test the waters.
I have some old WoW-friends that just started playing again. A WoW Linux client, is the one thing that could make me consider playing WoW again.
I mostly hope, though it's unlikely, to see a D3 Linux-client to be released with D3 expansion.

Let's see if there's any news at Blizzcon next weekend.

[DMJC]

The thing I use WINE the most for, is running Windows software that won't even run on Windows! I've got plenty of special purpose software that was written for Win9x and WinNT that simply won't run on Windows 8. Microsoft has broken backwards compatibility. But this old Windows software runs perfectly under WINE.

- This is what I use wine for as well, but honestly I'm losing faith in the wine project. They're so focused on making Directx 10/11 work, they still haven't finished support for directx 5. I've been waiting 13 years to play Warhammer: Dark Omen in wine and it still doesn't work. Despite submitting many bug reports and having a free demo of the engine for wine devs to test with. Wine needs a team of about 3 people dedicated to finishing support for old windows apps. It'll never match current windows for code/features, but they could easily sweep the deck with old windows installations being used for legacy apps.

[torsionbar28]

Though their subscriber numbers have been dropping steadily, I remember reading that Blizzard was banning many WINE users not too long ago under the pretense of cheating due to their anti-cheat system registering them as using illegal methods to gain advantages in the game. That certainly sounds like an issue.

I think you may have bad info, or perhaps an unsubstantiated rumor. I've been running WoW under WINE since 2009, never had any issue with Blizzard or banning.

Subscriber trends aside, they are still the number 1 biggest, at ~9 Million people. Lord knows Linux on the desktop needs every bit of help it can get.