World of Warcraft no longer compatible with Windows 2000 in Mists of Pandaria
by Anne Stickney 
Jan 9th 2012 at 8:00PM
One of the big benefits to playing World of Warcraft has always been that it can be played on a variety of systems, from the exceptionally small and outdated to the current, top-of-the-line models. I always found that a fascinating phenomenon, and it made good sense -- after all, if you want the max number of players able to play your game, you want to make it available with the widest software and technology possible. Yet there's a drawback to this; if you want to continually make that content available for older systems, there's only so far you can go updating content.
As a game that just celebrated its seven-year anniversary, WoW absolutely needs to keep updating in order to remain competitive. With new MMOs coming out all the time, a game that is seven years old starts to lose its shine. Continuous updates make sure that it stays just as fresh as it did in 2004. You can't keep those updates rolling if you're trying to support an operating system that is now 12 years old. I think, however, we're safely in the territory where most people have moved beyond Windows 2000, so this shouldn't affect a huge majority of players, particularly when Microsoft itself has already phased out support for the operating system. What this does do, however, is make me look forward to Mists of Pandaria and what it has in store.
Bashiok
In preparation for the upcoming release of Mists of Pandaria, updates to World of Warcraft will no longer support Microsoft Windows 2000. Microsoft ceased support for this version of their operating system in 2010. Players still using Windows 2000 are encouraged to upgrade prior to the release of Mists of Pandaria.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is the next expansion, raising the level cap to 90, introducing a brand new talent system, and bringing forth the long-lost pandaren race to both Horde and Alliance. Check out the trailer and follow us for all the latest MoP news!
Filed under: News items, Hardware, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
wow Jan 10th 2012 9:33AM
Speaking as someone from the old DOS days. :) Yes, I am old enough to remember the ole text based OS. hehe. Win 7 has come a long way from it's earlier versions (remember Windows 1.1?). Windows XP SP2 still has a special place with me as being the most stable I've ever used. Windows 7 has also been very stable. Unfortunately, I haven't upgraded my Virus Called Vista machine to Win 7 yet. I really need to do that before Mists is released so I can take real advantage of the 64-bit being implemented.
I definitely recommended running away screaming from Vista and go straight to Win 7 from XP if you want to upgrade. VISTA is the biggest PoS outside of Win ME. /shudders at ME :(
Live Long and Prosper
Shinanji
lazymangaka Jan 9th 2012 8:33PM
I'm by no means a huge Windows fan, but it's true what has been said: Windows 7 is a decade OS, much the same way as XP was (and still is). People will still be using Windows 7 in 2020, no doubt about it. If you're hesitant about taking the plunge, don't be. Windows 7 is worth the upgrade in ways that Vista absolutely never was.
Honestly though, I'd totally use Ubuntu full-time if I could get a native WoW client for it. That would be amazing.
djsuursoo Jan 10th 2012 12:17PM
you and me both brother.
though it'd prolly be better if it were debian-compliant so it'd be accessible by the largest possible slice of the community...
though the distribution compatibility thing is prolly the main reason they're not doing it.
that and the relative minority of the linux users playing WoW IN linux as opposed to off dual boot or virtualbox.
Prelimar Jan 9th 2012 8:37PM
yes yes yes, but what about the BIG IMPORTANT NEWS of the day?? what's this i hear about them nerfing fire in the next patch!?! D:
djsuursoo Jan 9th 2012 8:40PM
i forsee this being an actual problem for those players who are using crossover games to play WoW on linux.
all five of them*ducks*.
well, either codeweavers will update their bottle system or they'll just shrug and say 'eh, they're not supporting what worked' and drop all WoW support.
money's on the latter.
now, WoW under WINE runs like a dream. i even got the launcher to work right.
/linux nerd.
//i took it up as a challenge to not have to have a dual install.
lazymangaka Jan 9th 2012 8:46PM
I always ran WINE as Windows XP. Dunno if it actually changes anything versus running it as Windows 2000 though.
djsuursoo Jan 9th 2012 8:49PM
clarification for those not linux savvy(i don't blame you, it can be intimidating): games written for windows OS are to a great degree playable on many linux OS variants through use of what's known as a compatibiliity layer(emulators work as well but are REALLY not ideal due to the workload on the CPU), which comes in a variety of flavors, most of them based on WINE in one way or another, or one of its various editions.
crossover games is one that's released by codeweavers(a for-profit company selling to open source users). their system specifically runs WoW within what's called a 'bottle'(basically a compartment containing the windows software and files that redirect the DLL calls to the corresponding linux shell files). these bottles are based on OS architectures and filesystems, and WoW will only run through crossover via a win2000 bottle.
there's various downsides to the bottle system, mostly in OS-program latency and certain incompatibilities.
crossover is attractive to those who are not expert coders or savvy with the linux system(new converts really) because it offers a year of support for 15 bucks.
odds are good that crossover could drop WoW support altogether and leave the small linux-WoW community portion they cater to in the breeze.
for what it's worth, running WoW purely through WINE rather than through a shell like winetricks or crossover is a far less buggy-laggy existence. a curious effect, really.
/the more you know
//though getting it installed via command line only is sometimes... trying. i'm on comcast internet and they like to throw interrupt packets at my downloads from time to time.
djsuursoo Jan 9th 2012 8:53PM
lazy: i actually don't even run WoW within a bottle through WINE now. it calls the appropriate files smoothly and on the fly with nary a dropped frame. running it without calling an OS version even lets the launcher work like it's supposed to(a lot of users from what i gather have to go straight to the executable and run that way which is a pain on patch days).
WINE has gotten REALLY impressive in the last couple years.
crossover for one reason or another will actively refuse to install WoW to anything other than a win2k bottle. it's actually kind of vexing.
Amaxe Jan 9th 2012 9:02PM
Wasn't WINE the program that got some legit players banned from WoW a few years back because Blizz thought it was some sort of cheat program? IIRC, Blizz eventually had to apologize and restore the accounts.
I guess if that's the baseline, anything else looks like an improvement...
/flees the mob, and especially my friend Glain who is very pro-Linux.
Jehosaphat Jan 9th 2012 9:11PM
Would you be willing to post your Wine and WoW config files somewhere? I have WoW running under Wine, but not the launcher, and I'm not sure I understand what you mean by calling it without an OS version.
Thanks!
Stephanie Jan 9th 2012 9:49PM
Since 4.0.3a WoW has barely been runable on my low end pc. I cannot imagine how awful it is on Windows 2000 computer.
brain314 Jan 9th 2012 9:57PM
I still play WoW on Windows 2000. Well, actually, not for a few months since my updated WIndows 7 computer. But I can still game on that Win2K computer. It's just adventurous to try getting a game to work on an "unsupported" system, especially when there's no reason it SHOULDN'T work.
Currently, there is no reason WoW can't work under Windows 2000, other than Windows 2000 is no longer supported my Microsoft. In fact, the game works fine and only "breaks" on patch day because while the game doesn't do anything fancy, the patcher does. So the trick was to mod the patcher to run under Windows 2000, and when it's job was done, you're back in business. That's been getting a lot trickier recently, so the easiest way to do it for me now is to just copy an updated WoW install from one computer to the Windows 2000 machine.
So it'll be interesting when MoP comes out. "No longer supported" is different than "will not run". WoW hasn't been supported under Windows 2000 for a long time. But Blizzard is taking the time to mention it now, so maybe they really mean it this time...
terph Jan 10th 2012 9:34AM
I came to this comment thread specifically to find the one guy who ran WoW on Windows 2000. I'm not counting the people using WINE. Yay, you win!
You get a cookie, although it is an honorable mention cookie since you are using something else now. I assure you, the cookie is still delicious.
djsuursoo Jan 10th 2012 12:01PM
Jehosephat: when i ran it, back when, i rolled from the downloaded install executable from the command line. i was not expecting anything crazy to happen, and to have to keep using it as i had, by going directly to the executable. wine 1.2.2 according to a version check. OS is linux mint 11(x86_64 architecture). no fancy configurations, ran it basically out of the box(figured i'd tweak what wasn't working when i found it wasn't working instead of venturing into the minefield right away).
wow config is no fancy workarounds save enabling openGL for better video performance.
amaxe: i hope not, since blizzard internally speaking runs on a customized ubuntu OS, and their in-house client is a linux-native client last i heard. odds are, there was some funky manipulation going on at the client end that tweaked it out. interesting thing to bring up, tho.
really tho, once the install is done and you're under openGL(wow normally uses directX, which linux can run, though a large part of your graphics work is done by your CPU instead of your video card. it however supports openGL at the client level), the overall experience is indistinguishable from playing on windows, or 99%. my computer doesn't minimize to desktop with the windows key(it turns on unicode), so you have to use ctrl-F1(F2, F3, F4 - i actually have several desktops) instead. taking screenshots is different, but outside of those two things, it's more or less the same as far as i can think of.
rdstones Jan 10th 2012 12:43AM
Yes, but the REAL question on everyone's mind is this:
If I update to Windows 7 (or whatever the latest is), how will I still be able to play Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans?
Lucasarts was the first to shaft us all when it wouldn't let us play our SW: TIE Fighter on any of the new operating systems--or didn't tell us how to do a work-around. Don't be that guy, Blizz.
What are we? Some European Social Democracy where when our good old games get too old, they are just left to die by some video game death panel that decides there's no way to let the new OS run the old game. Our good old games of the greatest generation deserve better!
Who's with me?
Pyromelter Jan 10th 2012 1:15AM
Dosbox. Last version I downloaded was .74 and it runs warcraft 1 perfectly.
Ilem Jan 10th 2012 1:47AM
@rd, you might want to try DOSBox to run your old DOS games on Windows or Linux (I'm pretty certain there's probably a Mac version out there as well--it's open-source software). The DOSBox Wiki has some good solutions, and it's worth it even for really picky-about-hardware games like "Star Trek: A Final Unity" (which, while relatively boring, I still love playing). "Orcs & Humans" is shown as playable and supported (meaning they have working configuration settings in their wiki), the CD edition of "TIE Fighter" (was there a floppy version?) is shown to run, once a LucasArts patch is installed to take care of some joystick bugs.
Supporting games for future operating systems may be as much of a nightmare for publishers as supporting them on legacy systems. DOS software is 16-bit and can't rely on a hardware abstraction layer, meaning that DOS games had to ship support for a wide range of hardware so they could work relatively directly with graphics and sound adapters. Windows doesn't like that, so it was even hard to get more-than-just-basic DOS games to work even in Windows 3.1.
Now imagine the magic Microsoft does to support 16-bit Windows software on 32-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista and 7--if that software does anything funky, it might just not work on those newer releases. There's no support for 16-bit Windows software on 64-bit versions of Windows.
So a game publisher would have to--in addition to paying designers and developers to create the game and then to support it on current operating systems--invest in supporting and recompiling code to run directly on future OS' (or encapsulate the software to be emulated on newer systems). For how many years? For what price tag on the game package? Or a subscription model?
The old DOS Monkey Island games have been remade, packaged to run on currently supported Windows versions now, for example. Nintendo repackages Super NES games to run on the Wii. But that usually involves paying for those repackaged versions--yes, because there's work going into those. If you're not interested in doing that, it's up to emulation or virtualization (i.e. running an older operating system on virtual hardware using VirtualBox or Windows Virtual PC), and chances are, there are web sites out there that tell you how to get a certain game running. When I buy software for PC (as opposed to the pretty consistent hardware that consoles have), I expect support and viability for two, three years, or until I make the switch to a newer operating system or try to make use of newer hardware architecture; after that, I'm on my own in figuring out how to run it. It's unfortunate, but money buys only so much.
@pyromelter, your answer is quite concise. I'm a little envious now, because I spent so much time and so many words on mine. ;)
StClair Jan 10th 2012 1:29PM
My work computer runs XP (SP2), my home computer runs 7 (64 bit), and I also have an old Pentium 100 running Win98 and DOS that I keep around (not currently set up) just for sentimental reasons (it was built for me by a friend who is no longer with us), retrogaming (though DOSbox has made this almost entirely moot), and just in case I need to read something off an old 3.5" floppy. Then there's the Apple ][+ in the closet...
Fletcher Jan 10th 2012 4:21AM
Yeah, there are players younger than that OS. Time to put it out to pasture.
blizzXdev Jan 10th 2012 12:07PM
The real story here, Blizzard has downsized the WOW development team as it starts phasing out WOW. The article is misleading when the writer states:
"if you want to continually make that content available for older systems, there's only so far you can go updating content."
This assumption couldn't be farther from the truth, although it does accomplish putting a positive twist on the announcement.
WOW has always been scalable on the client end. Adding content doesn't have any impact on this, what it does impact is the amount of testing and coding that is necessary to make sure the game performs on multiple platforms. Blizzard is moving more programmers away from WOW and onto their next project, they are phasing out WOW in an attempt to lower the work load on the deminishing amount of programmers still working on WOW, plain and simple.