Guild Wars 2 Guide

Guild Wars 2 will satisfy any gamer who wants multi-player, roleplaying, looting, responsive storyline, crafting, pets, character development and of course... Combat!

Guild Wars 2 includes a dynamic event system replaces traditional questing, utilising the ripple effect to allow players to approach quests in different ways as part of a persistent world. Also of note is the combat system, which aims to be more dynamic than its predecessor by promoting synergy between professions and using the environment as a weapon, as well as reducing the complexity of the Magic-style skill system of the original game.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Guild Wars 2 in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the Free-To-Play version of Guild Wars 2 downloaded from their website. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

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

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.8
Wine: 1.7.49-staging

Wine Installation

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 1.7.49-staging
Note: Try using stable Wine 1.8 and 1.8-staging

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.7.49-staging is installed and you can close this window

Go to: https://www.guildwars2.com/
Click "Play For Free"

Signup and login

Click "Windows Client Download"

or
Download the client from here:
https://account.arena.net/content/download/gw2/win

Save Gw2Setup.exe on your desktop

PlayOnLinux Setup

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: guildwars2
Click Next

Check all three options:

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

Click Next

Select Wine: 1.7.49-staging
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Wine Configuration

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

Installing PlayOnLinux Packages (Libraries, DLL's, Components)

Check the following:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_tahoma

Click Next

Note: All packages will automatically download and install

Click Browse

Navigate to your Desktop
Select "Gw2Setup.exe"
Click Open

Click Next

Loading screen

Click "Install Guilde Wars 2"

Click OK

Sign in
Wait for preloading...
Click Ready

License Agreement
Click "I Accept"

Select a server in your area

Create a character or play as an existing character
Close Guild Wars 2 and continue with PlayOnLinux

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select Gw2.exe
Click Next

Name the shortcut: Guild Wars 2
Click Next

Select "I don't want to make another shortcut"
Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Select "Guild Wars 2"
Click Configure

General Tab
Wine version: 1.7.49-staging

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

Display Tab
Video memory size: Enter the amount of memory your video card/chip uses

Close Configure

Select "Guild Wars 2"
Click Play

Note: Click Debug to see errors and bugs

Optimization

Click the gear or press ESC
Select Options

Graphics Options

Adjust:

• Resolution
• Refresh Rate
• Frame Limiter
• Interface Size
• Gamma

Advanced Settings

Adjust:

• Animation
• Environment
• LOD distance
• Reflections
• Textures
• Render Sampling
• Shadows
• Shaders
• Postprocessing
• Character Model Limit
• Character Model Quality
• Ambient Occlusion
• Best Texture Filtering
• Depth Blur
• Effect LOD
• High-Res Character Textures
• Light Adaptation

All changes happen real-time

Disable Preloading

Click the Wrench Icon
Scroll down to Streaming
Select "On Demand" from the drop-down menu

Note: This requires downloading the entire game on next launch, but can improve performance.

Conclusion:
Guild Wars 2 installation was simple and straight forward. Launching the game is slow on the first try, but tweaking the graphics requires a bit of patience. Make sure to use an Nvidia Geforce video card and the proprietary Nvidia drivers for best performance. My GeForce 550 Ti was able to run Guild Wars at a playable frame rate, but I was not able to crank all the display settings to high.

I found that disabling Streaming and turning down Shaders & Antialiasing improved performance without loosing too much eye-candy.

Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

 

By the way try this as well:

1. Launch PlayOnLinux
2. Select Guild Wars 2
3. Click Configure
4. General Tab
5. Type in Arguments: -dx9single
6. Close Configure
7. Launch game

This will force the game to run in Direct X 9

Also, here is a post about AMD 78xx cards and performance in Linux: Reddit AMD 78xx

 

Thank you for posting the debug.
Unfortunately this might be a results of AMD drivers... really hard to tell.
You may have to update to the newest driver, but its not an easy thing to troubleshoot if the install goes wrong.

There are a lot of errors like this one:

The /usr/lib/i386 means 32-bit library is missing.

We can try checking for ia32-libs in Synaptics Package manager, but the Software Manager doesn't lie.

I'm going to research your video card and see if others have similar problems and how they solved it. You may want to do some searching online as well.

If you have a desktop, I suggest purchasing a new GeForce card and you will have a lot of success with game in Linux. Sad I know, but until AMD catches up with drivers, Nvidia is winning

First off Booman let me thank-you again for the thorough and in-depth help, advice and research you've been an absolute champ, big, big thank-you.

On to the problem, sadly I've heard this time and time again about AMD and their cards, sadly I bought this PC a couple of years ago and never thought I would be on Linux so it wasn't really built with Linux in mind - going off on a quick tangent I'm also having an graphic issue running "World at War" where the characters and gun model flicker in and out of visibility - making both Multiplayer and Zombies both very difficult to play (other than that they work fine, frustrating!).

Anyway, back again to the problem - I've just seen you've posted a new message so I'll give that a quick read and give it a pop tomorrow (It's 1am at the moment so I'm off to bed in a bit!) and I will let you know what the end result is.

Once again booman I'd like to say how very grateful I am for your time and help, if you use Steam send me a message with your account and if you like I'll buy you a game as a thank-you.

-Be well & thanks

Tuna

 

Quick reply! I read your post and as it seemed quite simple I gave it a go - anyway long story short the "-dx9single" suggestion worked (at least, I was able to see the server list!) so.. tomorrow I'll give it a play and if I have any other issues I'll let you know, otherwise HUGE thank-you Booman!

 

Awesome! Great to hear you can actually play now. Were you able to join a server and select a character?
How does it run with your AMD card?

 

Awesome! Great to hear you can actually play now. Were you able to join a server and select a character?
How does it run with your AMD card?

Hey Booman, yes I was able to connect to a server and after fiddling and tweaking the settings I managed to get it running at a decent 30/40 fps which is lovely (although as mentioned, the gfx are toned down quite a bit).

Happily running around and have a level 11 at the moment, so again a huge thank-you.

I got your message and will reply further with this conversation there! A million thank-yous!

 

Awesome! I"m happy Guild Wars 2 is working for you. Nice to see it free-to-play, otherwise I wouldn't have ever tested it.
If you ever get a chance to upgrade your video card, you will probably get better frame rates.

 

Guys, if for some reason you cant log in on the launcher. Go to "configure" on PoL. Then "Wine" and then select "Command Prompt" When it launches the CMD. Type "Netsh firewall set opmode disable" I had to do this so that I could log in and play the game..

Ty for the original guide OP!

 

That is strange, whaich distro are you using?

 

That is strange, whaich distro are you using?

I'm using Ubuntu 15.04 64-bit. It wouldn't allow to log in due to firewall so I had to disable it

 

That should be fine, but I wonder why you had to do that. I never touched my firewall.
The only time I have touched my firewall is when I'm trying to share files.
Maybe there is a port you can add for Guild Wars 2 so you can leave your firewall on?

 

Here is some information I found Common Error Codes:

Guild Wars 2 requires TCP ports 80, 443, and 6112 to be fully unrestricted and accessible, both inbound and outbound. For further information about opening ports or port forwarding, you can visit the following website: http://www.portforward.com. Please note, this site is not affiliated with or supported by NCSOFT or ArenaNet.

 

Following your guide I was able to set this up on Arch Linux LXDE. I am running the GW2-64 Beta client. After setup I changed the wine version to 1.7.54-staging and changed the Arguments under the PlayOnLinux configuration general tab to -dx9single. Never had to change anything under firewall. I did get a message about the firewall at first but that was only because I used the wrong password. Added GW2-64 to run as Windows 10 under the applications tab in winecfg, ticked enable CMST under staging tab. Changed the virtual desktop size to 1366 x 768 to match the size of my display. The game runs good on my laptop. I checked all graphics modes running in ultra is a little slow but it is possible. Great guide and thank you.

 

No problem!
Thank you for confirming your settings and performance.
I didn't even notice Wine Configuration added Windows 10 support.
I'm glad you are able to play in 64-bit Wine, I have yet to give it a full test because it has been buggy in the past.

 

Hey guys,

Congratulation for this guide, I can play GW2 almost perfect in my Linux (Manjaro), I've just one problem, when I'm playing after 5 or 15 minutes, my GW2 lost the connection, and I need restart the game to play again, it happens again and again, I don't know what I need to do, I think it's some firewall, but I don't know how to configure it.

Can someone help me?

Thanks!!!

 

Hey guys,

Congratulation for this guide, I can play GW2 almost perfect in my Linux (Manjaro), I've just one problem, when I'm playing after 5 or 15 minutes, my GW2 lost the connection, and I need restart the game to play again, it happens again and again, I don't know what I need to do, I think it's some firewall, but I don't know how to configure it.

Can someone help me?

Thanks!!!

Interesting, I didn't have that issue when I was testing Guild Wars 2. Are you using Wireless for your internet?
Did you follow this guide exactly?
You can always try a newer versions of Wine as well. Like 1.9.12-staging

 

Interesting, I didn't have that issue when I was testing Guild Wars 2. Are you using Wireless for your internet?
Did you follow this guide exactly?
You can always try a newer versions of Wine as well. Like 1.9.12-staging

Yeah, I follow exactly like this guide, and I used the same version of wine, I'll try another version tonight, thanks for support me.

Almost forgot, I have wireless, but I use wired. When I used with Windows, my only problem was because the port 6112, and I forced to use the port 80, and worked well, now I force again, but not worked.

If I change the version of wine and solve, or not, I'll report here, thanks!!!

Just a question, any chance of some firewall on linux, block this?

 

Yes, there is a chance Linux firewall will blox Guild Wars 2. Do you know how to allow the game or disable the firewall?

 

Yes, there is a chance Linux firewall will blox Guild Wars 2. Do you know how to allow the game or disable the firewall?

No, I didn't know kow to configure this firewall for GW2.

 

What distro are you using?
I use Mint 17.3 and usually disable the firewall completely.

 

I've installed the GW2 64bit version recently using wine 2.18-staging 64bit.
Runs really nice on my old X230 with an Intel HD 4000 (not perfectly because of the crappy iGPU).
Thanks for the guide!