Hi all! If you hadn’t heard, Valve decided to release a handheld PC that runs a custom distro of Linux last year. It started shipping in February of this year and I just managed to get my Q3 order a few days ago. One of the first things I wanted to do with it, was naturally, get WoW up and running on it. I’ve had it running for a couple weeks and just wanted to share my experience, be a nerd, and explain how delightfully exciting it has been, and ask what people think, especially those who use AddOns like console port!
Note: These first few paragraphs are somewhat technical and nerdy in nature, some discussion about Linux and Proton, if you’re just interested in the end results I’d scroll down to paragraph 4 or 5.
So to start, WoW has been running on Linux for quite some time through tools that were a little more unfriendly to the general public (WINE and Lutris especially). However, in the past it has always been a mixed bag in my opinion. While I could always get WoiW to load and play on my Ubuntu install, there were usually some headaches either with the Battle.net launcher or textures in game missing or bad performance. Something Valve has been working on for a long time is Proton, which basically is a windows compatibility tool. It allows you to run Windows native games without any Linux support, on Linux. They are still actively developing it, but it has been working really well on my steam deck.
With the steam deck, proton, and Valve’s new OS SteamOS 3.0, it was actually super simple to install. You basically just swap into desktop mode and add the Battle.net setup executable to your steam library and enable Proton for that, install battle.net and add the executable to your game library! Surprisingly, everything works pretty smoothly after that. Battle.net just as on windows, when launched likes to take a while to load the social media plugins which sometimes takes a few seconds, but if you launch the WoW executable through steam it just… works. I was floored. While I was once convinced I was going to dual-boot my deck to have Windows and SteamOS for the sake of playing WoW games, I now don’t even consider the Windows install size to be worth it.
When running, the game has been drawing about 8-15 watts of power depending on my graphical configuration. I’ve found the sweet spot is a “4” preset with view distance set to “7”. Framerate locked at 30 fps and a screen refresh rate of 60 Hz. This nets me about 3-3.5 hours of battery life of WoW on one charge! The deck is manufactured with 2 different fans, and while I can only talk about my fan, I can say the fan noise and heat are barely noticeable. Unless I’m sitting in an absolutely silent room, I usually forget it’s even exhausting heat.
Now onto the actual gameplay experience! It did take me about 30 minutes to decide on a keybind configuration. The deck has lots of different inputs so how you set it up will be based on you, but I decided to take some inspiration from how Final Fantasy XIV did their keybinds (well at least the initial release of realm reborn that I played on PS3) with 4 spells dedicated to your main buttons, 4 on the D-Pad, and I added an extra 4 on the right Analog stick. From there I decided to have one trigger be a modifier key so I get double the amount of keybinds. This works surprisingly well, and while I don’t think after a few days I’m nearly as good as I am on mouse/keyboard, it was actually much easier to get a general feel than what I was expecting.
From there, let’s talk about performance! I had the game set to a 30 FPS cap at 60 Hz at 1280x800 resolution (the deck’s native resolution) and barely saw it dip below 30 fps. I will note here that launching the game while Battle.net on Linux is running does sometimes result in mistimed frames, however, launching Wow.exe directly resulted in smooth gameplay from there on out. While I prefer 60+ fps (I recently spoiled myself and went 165 but that’s a whole other topic) on my desktop, on a handheld you’re constantly battling between performance and battery life. The beauty of the deck in my opinion is you can pick what you like best, if you want smoother gameplay just set it to 60 fps and play less in one sitting. I did 2 random heroic dungeons as a tank and sometimes forgot I was playing on something in my hands.
Now I did all my mapping through steam’s controller overlay and honestly, I know there are addons like console port around, but I just didn’t feel the need to use them at all. I was also concerned about modifying my default bindings with an addon like console port, and the way I have it set up through steam there is no change whatsoever to the location of my desktop keybinds, so it integrates seamlessly. But I did want to ask the community that does use addons like consoleport: how are your bindings set up, and do you ever run into issues setting up specific keybinds for with a controller vs keyboard/mouse?
While I still believe I wouldn’t want to play even for a whole day on controller, it is nice to know that if I am out and want to hop on for dailies, or the occasional M+, I can with a handheld. I’ve always pulled out my laptop in the past, but I feel as if I’d give up keyboard support for not having something as bulky all the time.
Finally, this last paragraph is somewhat of a plea to Blizzard. I understand we won’t get native Linux support at this point, and honestly I think we may not even need it anymore. With Proton being this developed and DXVK being already so good, I’m fine with the realization that we’ll just have to life with WINE and other compatibility layers. What I would like to see is an official update on the Linux support page for WoW, simply saying while WoW isn’t supported on Linux, you can still play on it without fear of breaking the ToS (or, if Blizzard’s stance is playing on Linux is a bannable offense, just come out and say it). As of right now, the only thing from an actual Blizzard source regarding the legality of playing on Linux is a years old post on the OW forums.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/can-we-get-banned-for-playing-on-linux/70929/4
Anywho, that’s my experience and thoughts on the matter! I’m curious to see how other people have enjoyed playing with controllers and on deck!