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World Of Warcraft Legacy Clients Plus Proton

Using Legacy WoW clients in Proton is easy, and quite performant, in many cases besting natively running it on Windows.

SETUP

To use a legacy client:

  1. Download and extract the client somewhere.
  2. Copy the client for each server you wish to use. So if you are using 3x Vanilla private servers, have 3 copies, each named for the correct server. This makes things very simple going forward.
  3. Edit the Realmlist.wtf file accordingly for each server.
  4. For simplicity I found symlinking the addons folder (Interfaces/Addons) to another folder with the particular addons you wish to use. This allows for one installation of the addons, and available always to all installs.
  5. In Steam, add a Non-Steam game
  6. In the "Shortcut" side tab, set the name for the server, select an icon to use. For "Target" use the appropriate Wow.exe, and for "Start In" select the folder that hold said Wow.exe.
  7. For the "Launch Options" use "PROTONUSEWOW64=1 PROTON_NO_D3D11=1 PROTON_NO_D3D10=1 PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%"
  8. In the "Compatibility" side tab, select "Proton Experimental" (what I use) or the latest Proton.

Thats it. For each server do that. I found it rather fast and simple to just copy paste the launch options above. Any client that uses a custom launcher will need special attention.

For custom launchers, the general rule of thumb is to do the same as above, but rather than pointing initially at a Wow.exe, use the installer. After installation, change the target and start in accordingly to the correct executable. For these, since the launchers tend to use oddball code to get things working, vanilla proton is sometimes avoided. I recommend sticking with Valve's Proton whenever possible as other versions can get wonky fast. Personally I have found only temporarily several titles needed non-Valve Protons while waiting for proper support. And in many cases, Experimental had necessary updates needed prior to the popular non-Valve Protons, such as GE and CachyOS variants. If the latest stable does not work, or causes any issues, use Experimental.

NOTES

  • Ascension WoW : This custom launcher hates forcing of WineD3D. My "Launch Options" are "PROTONUSEWOW64=1 %command%" + Proton Experimental
  • SoloCraft : Above "Launch Options" work perfectly
  • Twinstar : Above "Launch Options" work perfectly
  • Warmane : Above "Launch Options" work perfectly