Blizzard Still Has a World of Warcraft Linux Client

Posted by Michael Larabel on January 26, 2011

For years its been said that Blizzard has developed a Linux client for its very popular World of Warcraft MMORPG game but that it's never been publicly released. It turns out that this appears to still be the case that internally they have a Linux build of World of Warcraft but as of yet they have decided against releasing it to the public.

Mentioned this week by one of the Mac Tech Support MVPs in this Battle.net thread was this comment: "Last time I checked the developers have their own internal build of a linux client they use for testing."

This comment came after another World of Warcraft MVP had mentioned:
One of the big problems with Linux, and this is from other game developers too, is the problem of targeting a specific version of the platform. Since everyone is free to create their own distros, they can become somewhat unstandardized. That makes "targeting linux" difficult.

Add on that there are far fewer linux users than windows/mac users, and that you can play wow on linux using Wine... and there isn't a lot of reason to target even a specific distro.

Unfortunately for the Linux gamers out there, it doesn't look like the tide is turning yet inside Blizzard.

Discuss this article in our forums, IRC channel, or email the author. You can also follow our content via RSS and on social networks like Facebook, Identi.ca, and Twitter (@Phoronix and @MichaelLarabel). Subscribe to Phoronix Premium to view our content without advertisements, view entire articles on a single page, and experience other benefits.
Latest Hardware Reviews
  1. Intel Haswell HD Graphics 4600 vs. AMD Radeon Graphics On Linux
  2. Intel Haswell HD Graphics 4600 Performance On Ubuntu Linux
  3. Intel Core i7 4770K "Haswell" Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux
  4. The First Experience Of Intel Haswell On Linux
Latest Software Articles
  1. Optimized Binaries Provide Great Benefits For Intel Haswell
  2. 11-Way Linux, BSD Platform Comparison
  3. SNA Acceleration Works Great For Intel Core i7 Haswell
  4. The Linux Evolution For Intel Haswell's Performance
Latest Linux News
  1. NVIDIA Driver Soon Likely To Support EGL, Mir
  2. OpenMandriva Goes Into Alpha Form, Russian-Based
  3. NVIDIA Brings Their Linux Driver To ARM
  4. D Language Still Showing Promise, Advancements
  5. Planetary Annihilation Released For Linux Gamers
  6. Gentoo Starts Work On KDE-Wayland Support
  7. NVIDIA To License Its Kepler GPU Technology
  8. KDE's KWin Made Lots Of Progress In 4.11
  9. Ubuntu Announces Carrier Advisory Group
  10. Qt 5.1 Release Candidate 1 Has Arrived
  11. In-Fighting Continues Over Mir On Non-Unity Ubuntu
Latest Forum Talk
  1. NVIDIA Driver Soon Likely To Support EGL, Mir
  2. NVIDIA Brings Their Linux Driver To ARM
  3. OpenMandriva Goes Into Alpha Form, Russian-Based
  4. Ubuntu Announces Carrier Advisory Group
  5. Gentoo Starts Work On KDE-Wayland Support
  6. D Language Still Showing Promise, Advancements
  1. Computers
  2. Display Drivers
  3. Graphics Cards
  4. Motherboards
  5. Peripherals
  6. Processors
  7. Software
  8. Operating Systems
  9. All Articles
  1. Linux Benchmarking
  2. OpenBenchmarking.org
  3. Phoronix Test Suite