If you're using a Linux operating system and an ATi card when playing Blizzard's World of Warcraft, then you might find this article quite interesting.

Aigarius from the Blackhand realm, a Linux and ATi card user, posted in the forums that the new PTR build crashes when entering the world. Blue poster Hortus was able to address this with his post. Details after the jump!

 

Some players have complained about a problem with regards to the handshaking process in World of Warcraft. Those who have been affected by it shouldn't despair though as Bloodshot from the Death and Taxes guild and Triselly posted a fix on this for users who use XP, Macs, and Windows Vista. Sorry Linux people, if you're being plagued by the handshaking problem, just flush your DNS cache and hope for the best. Anyway here's the fix:

For Windows XP:

1. Close the game.
2. In Windows click Start, run..., in the window type cmd and press enter.
3. In the new window type: ipconfig /flushdns

Alternate Fix: Go to "My Computer" -> "Control Panel" -> "Network Connections" -> right click your LAN or Wireless Connection -> Select Disable, then re-enable it.

If you are still unsuccessful, reset your modem/router, then perform the instructions again. As explained below in the thread, some ISP's hold the cached DNS data for longer periods of time; therefore, this will not work for you, YET. There isn't much you can do apart from trying again later.

Mac version (Triselley)

1. Close WoW.
2. Open Terminal.app in /Applications/Utilities
3. Type: lookupd -flushcache

For Windows Vista:

1. Click the Microsoft Vista Start logo in the bottom left corner of the screen
2. Click All Programs
3. Click Accessories
4. RIGHT-click on Command Prompt
5. Select Run As Administrator
6. In the command window type the following and then hit enter: ipconfig /flushdns

That said go forth and play your problems should be solved. If not, then you'll have to contact Blizzard on this one. Keep checking back here for more news on World of Warcraft.

Keep this up and the PC Gaming section here at QJ might have to drop the Windows tag. Well, might. CodeWeavers' CrossOver Linux application allows Linux users to enjoy Windows-exclusive programs on their OS. Sort of like PlayStation gamers being able to enjoy Xbox-exclusive titles (and from here we say no more, lest we brew up someone's wrath by the mere suggestion).

Their latest version of CrossOver Linux, v6.0, is also the first to offer official support for Steam-powered Windows-based games. Yes, this includes Blizzard's World of Warcraft and Valve's Half-Life, among others. Steam-downloaded demos of these two, along with Heroes of Annihilated Empires and Medieval II: Total War have been tested and found working.

Quite the interesting find. CrossOver Linux 6.0 comes in Standard for US$ 60.00, and Professional for US$ 70.00. Version 6.0 has "moderate hardware requirements, and most Linux distributions should satisfy its software requirements". Aside: wonder if this will work in PS3 Linux? If the thought of WoW working on Wii would cause Blizzard's Jonathan LeCraft to toss his cookies, the potential thought of having it run on a PS3 via CrossOver Linux might just give him a heart attack.

Great news for Linux-using World of Warcraft players! If you heard about WoW's banning of Cedega users, then you can imagine how annoying the whole experience must have been for the Innocent gamers who were only meant to play the game through Linux. The good news is that they've unbanned the Cedega users and apologized for the error.

According to a WorldofWar.net post, Blizzard and TransGaming, Cedega's development team were able to figure out what was going on. Apparently, their anti-cheating software mistakenly read Cedega users as cheaters, causing their accounts to be flagged as third-party software users.

Blizzard has since apologized for the error and the trouble the ban has caused Cedega users, and have reinstated the banned accounts related to the fiasco. As a peace offering of sorts, Blizzard has also credited each unbanned Cedega account with 20 days' free play.

We've posted Blizzard's email for you so you can read the apology and the resolution. In the meantime, Cedega users who are still suffering a ban from WoW ought to check the TransGaming website (sourced below) in order to let your name and account be known by TransGaming and subsequently unbanned.

Interested in the apology letter? Click on "Full Article".

This does not bode well for Linux gamers, and it's a weird coincidence that we hear about this a few days after announcing Wine on the site. It seems that Linux-using World of Warcraft players are getting banned left and right.

Current speculation among the members of the WoW community, Linux and non-Linux alike, is an attempt to ban users of third party software who use said software to cheat the game. Unfortunately, users of Cedega, a Windows programs portability app for Linux, has been picked up as a cheating application by Blizzard, leading to the closing of many accounts of Linux users.

Discussion has been ongoing in the forum of TransGaming, Cedega's developer. Currently, Transgaming is working with Blizzard's engineers to resolve the problem and hopefully get the unjustly banned accounts back into a state of gaming readiness. Till then, however, all we can do is wait for TransGaming and Blizzard to do something about it.

Any Linux user today knows that he really might end up having problems doing things. The problem lies in actually using the applications we're used to having, especially if you switched from something like Windows to the cute little penguin. We're pretty sure the number of downloads will give a fair idea of Linux users in the QJ community, so we might as well get on with telling you what's up.

Normally, World of Warcraft and other MMOs and PC games are meant to run on the two main OS types: Windows and Macs. A little bit of tweaking from the Linux community, however, allows for Windows versions of the games to run on Linux by adding a translation layer (and possibly some additional open source stuff) to launch said programs. Of these different additions to the world of Linux, the most notable is the translation layer (or program loader for PSP people out there) known as Wine.

The open source community of Linux officially came out with v0.9.2.5 recently with a pretty nifty update for gaming. WoW players who've gotten used to playing by using an OpenGL patch won't need to anymore. As they mentioned, you can run it straight out of the box!

Here's the list of other changes in version 0.9.2.5. Enjoy the download, and isn't it an interesting time to be a Linux gamer?

• Many more fixes for installer support.
• Many MSHTML improvements.
• Support for NTLMv2.
• RPC over TCP improvements.
• Lots of bug fixes.

Download: [Wine v0.9.2.5]