4Game

Play WoT PC version on Linux (Ubuntu) without Steam

This is my post originally written in Chinese. I am posting here because:

Steam Deck is coming
I am a Linux user
There is no clear and recent step-by-step guide on r/WorldofTanks

Now why would you want to play without Steam at all? Because the PC version account is not compatible with the Steam version's. A truly brilliant idea.

Quoted From NA knowledgebase [1]

Can I use my old Wargaming.net account on Steam?

Unfortunately, you will not be able to use your existing account to log into World of Tanks via Steam……

I assume not everyone looking to play on Linux are fresh tomatoes. For whatever reason you have, you have a PC account, hopped onto the Linux train, and you want to tank as usual. There are solutions.

What's the catch?

The catch is this solution is sometimes wonky, and performance vary on a case-by-base, machine-by-machine basis. I may have close to zero performance drop, while you following my guide closely may experience unknown bugs. No guarantees, but it hopefully will work.

Sometimes WGC refuse to launch, WoT freezes xorg when launching. Kill WorldofTanks.exe when former happens. Logout or Reboot when latter happens.

Also, in my experience, WINE or Lutris refused to work with Asian Languages, no luck in making WoT displaying Chinese texts correctly (Some texts render without problems, other become squares.)

Assumptions

By reading this I assume you:

Are using Linux
Can use terminal
Have a machine capable of playing WoT PC

This guide is written as a Ubuntu flavour user. I have no experience with other distributions. However, besides installing dependency, everything else should be the same.

My System

I am on a platform with:

AMD R5 5600X

MSI GAMING X TRIO 3060Ti

Asus TUF GAMING B550M-Plus Wifi

32GB RAM

Kubuntu 21.04 with backports-ppa

This guide is tested as working for the above setup. No guarantees for your system, but as I said, hopefully it will work for you too.

Install the game

Assuming you are using Ubuntu flavours, and have upgraded your system. Type the commands shown below, one by one, to install required dependencies.[2]

wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
sudo apt-key add winehq.key
sudo apt-add-repository 'https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/'
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging
sudo apt install winetricks
rm winehq.key

Then install Lutris with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lutris-team/lutris
sudo apt update
sudo apt install lutris

When you are done installing Lutris, launch it and search for "World of Tanks" in Community Installers.

https://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/202108/652281bdb43fdc676fffef20f9cc4418.PNG

Install the game, choose your version. For Asia please choose Asia DXVK/Win7. The instllation process takes time, and may seem to have lots of errors, don't panic, let it do the job.

When WGC finishes installation, download WoT files and close WGC when it is finished, as well as the WGC toolbar icon. Installation will continue finishing up.

Then right click on WoT banner, choose configure

https://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/202108/480bdd41282ec2b367cc2bf8c1699ccf.JPG

Choose WGC's executable for the game, the path should be something like /home/XXXXX/Games/world-of-tanks/drive_c/ProgramData/Wargaming.net/GameCenter/wgc.exe

https://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/202108/bb342dcd1668877f111ae3bd4c7ae089.PNG

Turn on Esync as well (crucial to performance!) You can also see Fsync here, you need a patched kernel for Fsync at the time of writing.

https://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/202108/43ffd4cd9e626fb9143589b4da9b01f3.PNG

Install GloriousEggroll's Wine GE Custom [3]

This is a custom version of Proton compatibility layer adopted for Lutris. Proton GE Custom is proven to work with games Steam's official Proton can't run. Can't hurt installing an extra runner just in case Lutris's fshack runner doesn't work.

Download the latest version from https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom/releases/latest

Extract the archive's content to /home/USERNAME/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/

https://i.imgur.com/DpFWmyG.png

Restart Lutris, now you can choose lutris-ge-VERSION from Runner options.

https://i.imgur.com/zMrOsjM.png

Watch Replays

You cannot just choose a *.wotreplay file with the Application Launcher shortcut. Because your game is defaulted to launch via WGC. A separate launcher has to be created for watching replays.

Click the Add Game button on the top left corner.

https://i.imgur.com/frxu7U1.png

Give the new "game" a name. Then in Game options, choose WorldOfTanks.exe from the game folder. Arguments replays/replay_last_battle.wotreplay. Wine prefix ~/Games/world-of-tanks. The executable path should be something like /home/xxxxx/Games/world-of-tanks/drive_c/Games/World_of_Tanks_ASIA/WorldOfTanks.exe

https://i.imgur.com/3JmDrJr.png

Then enable Esync for the game. For System options, if you do not see something like this in Environmental variables, copy them from the actual game's.

https://i.imgur.com/sUryYFI.png

Congratulations

If nothing goes wrong, and you have enough luck, congratulations, you installed WoT and can play the game as usual! I can't find a better way to watch replays but at least I can see how stupid I was when falling off cliffs.