The Lord of the Rings Online Guide

Explore the Middle Earth fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien through renowned locations including the Shire, the Mines of Moria, and Lothlórien. Customize your own character in this online MMORPG and fight alongside Dwarfs, Elves and Humans against the minions of Dark Lord Sauron. Leveling up, looting, cooperative skirmishes, exploration... its all there.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Lord Of The Rings Online in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the Steam version of Lord Of The Rings Online. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

Try SteamPlay before using this guide as Valve now uses a fork of Wine called Proton and should run most Windows games.

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.6
Wine: 1.7.40

Wine Installation

Note: Versions of Wine older than 2.0.2 and Wine 2.12-staging no longer work with Steam

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.7.40

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.7.40 is installed and you can close this window

Downloading Steam

Go To: http://www.steampowered.com
Click Install Steam

Do not click "Install Steam Now"
It will automatically install Linux Steam
Select Windows Steam instead
click "Windows" under the green button

Navigate to your desktop
Click Save

Setup PlayOnLinux

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name your virtual drive: lotro
No spaces
Click Next

Select all three options:

• Use another version of Wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 1.7.40
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Configure Wine

Applications Tab
Windows Version: Windows 7
Click Apply

Graphics Tab
Check: Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows
Check: Emulate a virtual desktop
Desktop size: 1024x768
Click Ok

Install Libraries

Check the following libraries:

• POL_install_corefont
• POL_install_d3dx9
• POL_install_d3dx10
• POL_install_tahoma
• POL_install_vcrun2008
• POL_install_vcrun2010
• POL_install_xact

Click Next

Note: All packages will automatically download and install

Installing Steam

Click Browse

Navigate to your desktop
Select: SteamSetup.exe
Click Open

Click Next

Click Next

Check: I accept the license...
Click Next

Click Next

Click Next

Click Install

Click Finish

Updating Steam

More updating, extracting and installing

When Steam is done installing the login screen will pop up. You probably won't see any text because there is a font bug.
Click the "X" to close Steam login

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select Steam.exe
Click Next

Name your shortcut: Lord Of The Rings Online
Click Next

Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Back to PlayOnLinux
Click Configure

General Tab
Arguments: -no-dwrite -no-cef-sandbox
This fixes the missing font and store problem

Note: Click the + to download other versions of Wine. Click the down-arrow to select other versions of wine

Display Tab
Video Memory Size: Select the size of Memory your video card/chip uses

Close Configure

Launching Steam

Select Lord Of The Rings Online
Click Run

Note: Click debug to see errors and bugs.

Click "Login to existing account"

Search Steam for "The Lord Of The Rings Online"

Click Play Game

Click Next

Uncheck both shortcut options
Click Next

Click Finish

Wait for Lord Of The Rings Online to download 20GB

Click Play

Click "Yes" for high resolution data files

Click "I Agree"

Check "I Agree"
Click Next

Click Close

Launcher Patching

Wait for the launcher to patch another 2GB

When its finally done
Click Play

Another license agreement
Click I Agree

Optimization

Press Esc
Click Options

Adjust Display:

• Resolution
• Windowed
• Fullscreen
• Aspect Ratio
• Antialiasing

ADV Graphics

Adjust Objects:

• Draw distance
• Model Detail
• Material Detail

Ajust Scenery:

• Landscape Draw Distance
• Frill Distance
• Atmospheric Detail

Texturing:

• Texture Detail
• Texture Filtering
• Anisotrophic filter quality

Conclusion:
Lord Of The Rings Online ran perfectly on my GeForce 550 Ti. I was able to crank all the settings to the max with a resolution of 1680x1050. The graphical quality isn't quite as high as other MMO's like Neverwinter or Age of Wushu, so it should be able to run on most laptops. To my surprise the Steam In-Game Community overlay didn't have to be disabled with Wine 1.7.40

Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

 

thanks for you guide . nice job

 

No problem, let me know if it works for you

 

Every time i will start the launcher it freez:/ but thanks for the guide!

 

Welcome to the forum!
What version of Linux are you using?

Try the launcher one more time...
Try clicking "no" for the high resolution textures

 

I just want to try out lotro on my notebook but the problem is that I don't have access to the lotro page on steam to start downloading the game because steamwebhelper.exe constantly crashes and the shop page can't get drawn correctly...

 

I'm going to try this with the 1.7.53-steam_crossoverhack and just switch wine bottles after installing the game to see if it works.

 

Changing steam to Windows XP under Wine, Configure Wine will allow access to the store.

 

Once I got to the high resolution data screen it froze on download. After a few tests I finally changed to wine bottle 1.8-rc2-staging changed back to windows 7 and it downloaded the High Resolution files. I got the steamwebhelper.exe error but did not close it (don't know if that's important or not, also not sure if 1.8-rc2 is necessary either but it worked.) I added the client and launcher to winecfg as windows 7 so it checks for updates as windows 7. Runs great for me on the highest settings.

 

Awesome! Glad its working for you

 

Thank you very much, vashin!
It's finally running, even on my old intel i3 with HD 3000 laptop

 

Np, I was hoping someone would find it useful

 

Thank you, I just used this to install the game without Steam. I grabbed the install file from Turbine's site, followed your instructions until it got to the Steam section, skipped that, continued through the install/patching/log in. The install when great.

The only issue with play so far is that the game stays in a small window in the center of my screen with all the UI elements overlapping each other. Settings changes haven't fixed that but I'll keep trying and update when I find a fix. I just wanted to say thank you for the clear and well done guide and let you know that your process works to install without Steam as well.

 

Oh, I didn't realize there was an installer from Turbine's site... what is the link?

Did you enable virtual desktop?
Make sure to set the screen size to match your Linux desktop

 

The link I used is this: https://www.lotro.com/en/game/download

I do have the virtual desktop enabled. I just saw that I had wine config set to XP instead of win7. Changing that to win7 makes it accept most of the resolution sizes, but not 1920x1080 which is my monitor's native and my linux desktop setting.

On that setting it doesn't show me the game screen. I have sound, can hear my character is moving and taking actions when I hit keys, and the mouse cursor changes as I move it over where things should be on the screen but all I can see is my linux desktop. When I kill the game and restart it defaults back to the lowest resolution, so at least that change didn't stick long term.

 

That is very strange, I rarely experience resolution problems with virtual desktop. If you don't use it, I have experienced the Linux desktop resolution defaulting when closing the game. So this is pretty common, but not if you set the game to the same resolution as your Linux desktop.
You may have to keep tinkering with it.
Did you remember to click "no" for high resolution textures?
Also experiement with newer versions of Wine: 1.7.55-staging or 1.8-rc4

 

If I already have the Linux version of steam downloaded on my computer, can I still use this method? I'm running on Ubuntu 16.04.

 

Unfortunately, no...
You will need the windows Steam to download and play Lord of the Rings Online. Just follow all of the steps above and make sure to use a newer version of Wine like 1.8.5

 

Unfortunately, no...
You will need the windows Steam to download and play Lord of the Rings Online. Just follow all of the steps above and make sure to use a newer version of Wine like 1.8.5

Oh I know I need the Windows version of steam, I was just wondering if the files would conflict each other. Since I already have Linux steam version installed with games installed too.

 

Oh, I see now
Since PlayOnLinux creates a "wineprefix" or also known as a "Virtual Drive"
It is like a sandbox for your game. Basically it uses the bare-minimum of Windows dependencies to use your program. So they won't conflict with the Linux Steam.

Thanks for asking.