Having looked over my previous post on how to get Lord of the Rings Online running nicely on Ubuntu. I noticed that a fair few things were left out or perhaps not explained well enough.
Therefore, this new updated post.
There are two ways you can install LotRO on Ubuntu, both require Wine.
1) Having the DVD box set and installing it from that.
2) Only having the free trial/free client from the website.
This guide is divided and the different parts of the guide also tell you whether it applies to DVD only, to the downloaded client only, or to both.
For a sidenote. I ask that if you are a person living in the EU, please don’t be worried that you can’t play for free. Just simply head over to the European site and download the 14 day free trial. I have been told that the trial is not 14 days but until the free to play implementation is in place (Although I cannot confirm this officially).
Installing Wine & Wine-addons (Both DVD and DL Client)
In order to play LotRO you will need Wine. Personally I recommend Wine 1.2. Although the wine version that is standard is also good. There is better support for more software with Wine 1.2, and is also the version this has been tested in.
If you do not already have Wine, you can install this using either synaptic or Ubuntu Software Center, or the Terminal if you wish to use that instead. No repositories need to be added. If you are using Synaptic or Ubuntu One Software Center, be sure to look for wine1.2.
If you are using the Terminal, simply enter the following command:
sudo apt-get install wine1.2
If you already have Wine installed, but wish to upgrade to Wine 1.2, just remove your current wine version, and install wine 1.2 using the above directions.
The next step is to install necessary addons which are not only needed for LotRO, but if you are a gamer, you will find these useful.
In order to do this, you will need the Terminal, you can start this up from Applications > Accessories > Terminal.
In the terminal type in the following command:
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
This will download ‘winetricks’ to your home folder.
After this is done, type the following command:
sh winetricks vcrun6 directx9 dotnet20 vc2005express win2k
This will download and install VC runtime 6, DirectX9, .Net 2.0, VC 2005, and set Wine to Windows 2000.
You will be faced with some familiar installation questions. Just follow them through and if you get error’s do not worry about them too much at this point.
After this, we are ready to begin installing
Installing LotRO from DVD (DVD only and requires Mines of Moria Expansion)
Insert your first DVD and wait for the icon to appear on the desktop.
Once it has, open the Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
Now type in:
cd /media/
After you hit enter type in
ls
You should see something along the lines of the name of what is in the folder. In my case I got ‘CDROM’… if you have read it type in:
cd <name of CD>
In my case I had to type in ‘cd CDROM’ and hit enter.
now type in:
wine lot
And then hit tab…this will finish the rest of the exe file name.
After you hit enter, you will be faced with the installer.
Follow that right through and after it is finished, scroll down here to ‘Finishing installation’ in this guide.
Installing the DL Client (DL Client Only)
If you have downloaded the client from the website and it goes to your Download folder, you can follow this guide exactly as it is. If it downloaded in another location, you can still follow this guide as it is, just replace the references to the download folder, to the folder where you have downloaded the client to.
Open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type the following:
wine ~/Downloads/lotro-setup.exe (please note that the installer file may have a different name, if this is the case, replace ‘lotro-setup.exe’ with the name of the downloaded file)
You should now be faced with an installer. Go right ahead and follow it through.
Finishing the Installation (DVD and DL Client)
Click on System > Administration > Software Sources.
(Please note, if you are using Ubuntu 10.10, this is found in Ubuntu Software Center, by clicking on Edit, then Software Sources).
Click on Third Party Sources and add the following line.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ajackson-bcs/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
If you are using an Ubuntu version before Karmic (9.10) then replace karmic with your version name.
Click on close and it will update the software list.
After this you are able to use either Synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center, or the Terminal to install pylotro.
In the terminal just type:
sudo apt-get install pylotro
This will install a Linux LotRO login client.
After this, you click on Applications > Games > LotRO
If all is well, you should see the realm list being loaded, and you will be able to login.
Make sure that the first time you use this, that you click in the menu at the top, to apply patches. Once all pathes are applied, you are ready to play
great documentation! great work!
but i have a error after installation of dotnet20….mscorsvw.exe crashed every wine session and install client is not possible!
hello:
thanks for this tutorial. I have a problem after doing everything you say any program I get error when installing, and when I launch the game tells me the following error:
mscorsv.exe program has encountered a serious problem and needs to close. This can be caused by a problem or effects of wine …. I hope you allude me and I’m a big fan of Lord of the Rings and I would love to play this great game. thank you very much
You are downloading stuff you don’t need. Why for example to you download VC++ Express?
For you people having problems with .NET (also mscorsv.exe)… Just Try Mono 2.6! I had the same problems with .NET, Mono works better with Wine.
sh winetricks vcrun6 directx9 mono26
Try this.
I have not encountered this error but try reinstalling wine
Awesome! TY guys, it works great! Using Ubuntu 10.10 64bit.
I’ve tried multiple installs of lotro on my linux box. Running wine1.3 (the beta available at winehq). I have an ati radeon hd 5770 card with the latest catalyst drivers installed.
I followed the lotro on linux walkthrough in the lorebook to a t, as well as following Shakez youtube walkthroughs.
I can get the game running in medium quality for anywhere from 2-10 minutes. then it closes and shows the pylotro patch screen that says *FINISHED*
Could anyone give me any suggestions? Anyone else experiencing a similar crash? I don’t want to have to dual boot linux and windows, i’d prefer to become a straight linux user 😦
I can’t say I have had that problem before.
One thing I have noticed (especially with the latest update to LotRO) that the install isn’t as smooth as it used to be.
If you want to save yourself some hassle and perhaps see if this problem persists, you can always install pyLotro, then using either another Windows box, or using windows in VirtualBox install LOTRO and copying the entire folder into wine/drive_c/Program Files
I know it’s not really a fix and I don’t even know if this works to fix your problem, but I suppose that it’s worth a shot.
I have encountered similar problems.
It seems that the patching system is encountering problems using pyLotro.
The patch needs to be done in order to get the latest version of Lotro, but this doesn’t seem to work.
The only way to fix this at the moment that I am aware of, is by means of updating the game on a Windows box and copying the game over into ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/
I wish I was able to give you a better approach.
after this step: wine ~/Downloads/lotro-setup.exe where i actually started downloading from the codemasters side everything went well with downloading. after a while though the download window in Default-Wine desktop only shows a desktop picture of the page it appears on top of :S so now i cannot see how far the download is? Or is it automatically shutdown after downloading?