MMOs and linux

[kupo]

for the past couple months ive had linux as my OS on my laptop. with linux, comes the lack of more mainstream MMOs. does anyone know of decent ones that can be run this OS?

thanks

[Furore]

Very few if any natively tbh.
From a wikipedia article on Linux gaming:

This is a selected list of MMORPGs that are native on Linux.
A Tale in the Desert III (2003, eGenesis) – A trading and crafting game, set in ancient Egypt, pay-to-play.
Crossfire (1992) – A medieval fantasy 2D game.
Diaspora (1999, Altitude Productions) - 2D Space trading MMORPG. (Project Diaspora version has a Linux client.)
Dofus (2005, Ankama Games) – A 2D fantasy MMORPG.
Eternal Lands (2003, Radu Privantu) – A 3D fantasy game.
Regnum Online – A 3D fantasy game, free-to-play with premium content.
RuneScape – Java fantasy 3rd person game.
Tibia – A 2D Medieval fantasy game. Free-to-play with premium content.
Vendetta Online – A 3D spacecraft MMOFPS with growing RPG elements, pay to play. Maintains both Linux/32 and Linux/64 clients.
WorldForge – A game engine. There are Linux clients available.
Wurm Online – A Java-based MMORPG.
Wyvern – A 2D fantasy MMORPG that runs on Java.
Ultima Online has an unofficial Linux client.
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates – A puzzle game which runs on Java.
Many Virtual Worlds – Many virtual worlds (such as Second Life) also have Linux clients.
- Linux gaming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your best bet is to look up guides to get games running through emulators, virtual machines or compatibility layers. Games I've played successfully through the means above include WoW (WINE) and EVE Online (forgot which method I used, but by now WINE will probably have you covered), but I haven't really played either in at least a couple of years. Oh and if you tweak the settings (specifically videocard memory), you can get Guild Wars running quite well via WINE (60+ fps), I'd been giving it a go fairly recently.

And if you like online FPSes, give Nexuiz or OpenArena a go too.

[Sean]

I know it's been a few weeks since this was last posted in, but...

Your best bet, aside from getting an actual Windows operating system (Which I'd recommend if you want to actually game) then you'd have to run WINE.

WINE is an emulator, as with any emulator, it's a virtual machine running within the physical machine. This means your OS and the emulator fight for resources, and Linux driver support for high end video cards isn't nearly as good as Windows support. I run Linux (Ubuntu) from time to time on an older machine that can run WoW at 30fps on lowest settings, but when running it through WINE I get VERY noticeable lag and greatly increased load times.