Running Warcraft III on Linux under Wayland is possible! Step by step guide inside.

[yodeller]

My apologies if this is being posted in the wrong section, but I've checked them and the general Warcraft Discussion tab seemed the most appropriate. If this is not the case please let me know where this is more appropriate to be posted.

Hey everyone! Much like the title says: if you're a Linux player, or you found your way here from a google search, and were wondering whether or not you could play Warcraft III on Linux this is the right place.

This guide presumes that the user has some basic understandings of Linux.

First of all, if you're running a DE with X11 as display manager you're good to go with Lutris out of the box! No need to tinker with anything, it just works. I tested it with a previous installation of Manjaro XFCE, and everything works out of the box, even custom maps and custom campaigns.

If, like me, you made the switch to Wayland you also can play Warcraft III! With a bit more work, but you absolutely can!
(I have yet to try to install custom maps and custom campaigns so forgive me but I can't say it for sure, I will try to set them up later down the week as I get some free time)

1. Install Battle.net via Lutris by clicking install in this page. A small pop up window will ask you to complete this action with the Lutris installed in your system, click yes.
2. If Lutris is already running a pop up window with the install process for Battle.net will ask you to proceed, otherwise Lutris will start running with said pop up. Advance in the installation process.
3. I installed mine in a Games folder that's inside my ~/home, that way I have full access to it without going around .config or .local, I suggest to do the same for easy access later.
4. At some point the install process will proceed as normal, prompting the install language, whether to start battle.net on boot and so on.
5. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LOG IN WHEN THE LOGIN WINDOW APPEARS DURING INSTALL. The Install window will also remind you this, do not attempt to log in. You will log in once the installation is done. Close down the Log In window.
6. Wait until the installation process is finished and only then do log in.
7. That's it! Battle.net is installed. Go ahead and install Warcraft III. You're free to try to run it in Lutris, but I've tried for a day and a half and had no luck running it in Lutris with Wine or Proton.
8. Now, open up Steam and under Games click Add a non steam product.
9. Go ahead and look for your Warcraft III launcher.exe and select it. This is usually in /home/$USER/Games/battlenet/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Warcraft III/ if you installed everything in the Games folder I mentioned earlier.
10. Once Warcraft III launcher.exe appears in your steam library right click and open up Properties.
11. On the left click Compatibility, check Force the use of a specific Compatibility tool.
12. Now, here you're pretty much free to test with whatever layer you'd like, as of right now I've only attempted to run with Proton Experimental and had luck on my very first attempt.
13. GG! You'll get a window saying that the agent is being updated. After that you'll get a log in prompt for Battle.net, probably, and then you should be right in the Warcraft III tab of Battle.net. Start the game and you're good to go!

Why all of this just to run a game that's supposed to run "natively"? Because the battle.net agent under wayland has numerous issues running. If you try to run Warcraft III with Lutris, with wine staging as a runner the game will start, but you'll be hit by a black screen after the initial loading. Trying to run it through Proton-GE fails completely, as the battle.net agent refuses to start. I tried to manually stop the process through Mission Control, but there was no way whatsoever to make the Agent start.
I decided to test my luck by running it directly inside Steam, since its proton implementation is out of the box, and it works!

As of right now my free time is limited, I kind of used it all up just to try and run wc3 lol. I intend to do more tests with custom maps and custom campaigns, as well as other Proton layers to see if there are more ways to run the game.

Feel free to add your tips in the comments! I made this guide cause in these past two days I found little to no help online, and had to rely to chatgpt to troubleshoot errors and get some guidance. Hopefully this will help more people who are struggling to make this game run on Linux under wayland.

I'll to do my best to keep up with this post if people need help with setting it up, but please be patient! I'm approaching the final leg of my university journey and I'll probably be buried in books.

Happy gaming!