WoW without Battle.Net?

I have, years back, purchased all the Game CD’s and DVD’s for the core game and all expansions. After a while started playing via Battle.net but have ended that subscription about 2 years ago. And do not intend to take a new subscription nor play with timecards. But … having the original game disks, I thought I should be able to play the game (I know, it’s promoted as a MMORPG) as a single (stand alone) user. Am I right or wrong?

If I’m right, how do I install it via Lutris? Standard method of adding the game presumes playing WITH Battle.net.

Or is this not the right forum for such a question?

Thanks for your feedback!

So unfortunately WOW does not have any sort of single-player mode or allow you to create your own server. Your only real option is either to use battle.net or find some sort of private server and install that software through Lutris

Pity! But thanks for sharing.

As mentioned already there is no official way to be able to play WoW single player. There are however other ways of playing on private servers or hosting your own. Take a look at GitHub for TrinityCore for example. Your mileage may vary depending on which expansion you want to play but Wrath of the Lich King is relatively feature complete. You will need some knowledge if you decide to look at your own hosting but it is certainly possible, and presumably not illegal as Blizzard have made no attempt to stop GitHub projects such as TC.

Thanks Melawen, certainly worth a try, I’m in discovery mode anyway with regard to playing Windows games on this Linux PC. Not to open that private server up to the world, but just for, for instance, 2 pc’s of my own, to get familiarized with the principle.
Still, would be nice to get at least 1 windows game to play via Lutris on Linux, I tried on purpose the older ones, like Diablo2, the first Wow and yesterday Sacred Gold, but none are launchable from Lutris. Obviously there is the option to go via the official Steam of GOG, but then I have to buy the game there first. Not trying to be cheap, but I already own the game DVD’s from when I bought them years ago :wink:
If there is a windows game that I can install with a certainty of success, let me know :slight_smile:

Well, you can oficially play without subscription with some restrictions up to level 20. See Free Trial.

Hi Mixi, I know, have played all versions of the game a lot, on WinOS, but obviously you do not want to end the game once you reach level 20 :wink: Nevertheless thanks for your reply !

Well I use it whenever I feel like I want to start playing it again… if I actually do level up new char to 20 or I feel like I’m really enjoyng it, then I’ll buy sub, otherwise it’s not worth it. :wink:

Only other option is to use private server, never did it myself, but some friends of mine played that way. From what they told me, it’s not really worth it, it tends to be buggy, laggy and older versions than live. If you run your own server, you also spend some time managing it and keeping it up to date, so in the end if you value your time, buying sub can be even cheaper option. On the other hand it allows modding of the game without being banned.

Pretty much every Blizzard game is playable via Lutris. With the exception of Overwatch 2 I own and have played all of them on Lutris at one time or another - most recently WoW and Diablo 4.

While a lot of my games are on Steam, I also have the (very old) Warcraft 1 & 2 playable on Lutris as well as the aforementioned WotLK private server (for me only with TrinityBots - another GitHub project for use with TC for dungeon content). The ones that don’t tend to work are those with anti-cheat protection (EAC for example), though there are others that just don’t work. While it’s mostly aimed at Steam, take a look at protondb.com for an overview of what is likely to work on Linux, as well as searching the Lutris database obviously :slight_smile: .

So dig in, there are a lot more games than you might think that do work on Linux via Lutris & Steam Proton. I have actually been keeping a record while going through my Steam library and have about a 95% success rate so far of the 150 games I have played. Obviously a lot of these are indie games and not AAA but there are some of those in there too.