Sharing this in case it is helpful to any other WoW players with the opengl
issues or to anyone working on d3d in Wine.
I've been trying World of Warcraft without the -opengl tag since Blizzard
introduced their latest round of opengl breaking updates. I was very
pleasantly surprised to find the game both playable and stable in d3d. I still
have a couple graphical issues but they are not game crashing ones as in
opengl. The two d3d issues I have noticed are:
1) temporary ground effects flicker between looking as they are supposed to and
being crosshatched or patterned, not just in the new instances but during game
play in general. Sometimes the flickering is very fast back and forth and is
hard on the eyes, but it never leaves the area of the ground effect or turns
into the big flashing polygons that crash the game like it does in opengl (Pit
of Saron specifically). The effects this happens during are things like the
circles on the ground from Death and Decay, Blizzard, poison puddles, ice
crash circles (Hodir, the cave/tunnel run in PoS), the little circle shadows
under players, ice/fog patches (during waves in Halls of Reflection or last
boss in PoS)and any similar temporary ground effect. It does not seem to happen
with Consecrate, Flame Strike, or other 'less solid looking' ground
effects.
2) sometimes turning the camera angle will cause everything except the walls,
floor/ground, and ceiling/sky around you to disappear. Any decorative
items/carts/critters as well as other players and npcs can not be seen until
the camera angle changes again. So far this has only happened in Culling of
Strath, but I have not tested any similarly constructed areas yet to see if it
is consistent.
Other than that the game doesn't have any problems in d3d that I have ran
into. The game is running for me the same as it did with opengl other than the
graphics glitches - they happen more often in d3d, but do not go to the
extremes or crash the game as in opengl. I am getting the same frame rates and
camera/mouse response time and feel as in opengl.
WIne version - 1.1.32 installed via yum, only change from install was update
MS C per the wiki right after last WoW patch.
Fedora 12KDE 32 bit
Nvidia 6150 SE, Nvidia driver 190.42 installed/updated via yum.
