Many manuals of installing and using World of Warcraft (or simply WoW) in Linux using Wine (Windows emulation) are outdated and provide lots of complex instructions for old Wine version. The truth is very simple:

1. Take a recent Wine version. Any version from this year (2007) will do. Debian and Ubuntu users can either use the wine from the latest releases of the distros or use the winehq.org repositories.


2. Install WoW via the usual installer


3. Edit $WOW/WTF/Config.wtf and add following lines:
   
SET gxApi "OpenGL"
SET SoundOutputSystem "1"
SET SoundBufferSize "100"



4. Run 'wine regedit' and set HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Wine->OpenGL->DisabledExtensions to "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object" (you will need to create this string value)

That is it! You can now simple run 'wine WoW.exe' and play the game. Updates also work perfectly. The speed is a bit faster then in the other operating systems and (just like in MacOs X) you can have all your software opened on one virtual desktop, WoW on another and switch between them instantly.