Dunno but maybe someone wants it:
Guide how to play Lotro on Linux
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Needs wine and winetricks installed ( from repos )
Firstly, if you have downloaded the installer from the lotro website, please discard it.
Although it is possible to use this, it tends to be tedious and very long.
1)Download the Lotro installer, this can be downloaded from the following location, but this is a big download and will take some time. However, it is significantly faster than using the official downloader on the lotro website:
You must be registered to see links
2)After it has been downloaded, don’t install it yet. We first need to have everything needed to install it. Open up a terminal and type in the following:
‘sudo apt-get install wine1.3′ without quotes and hit enter
After you have done this, keep the terminal open and type the following(press Enter after each line):
wget
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chmod +x winetricks
./winetricks d3dx9_36
This will install the VC++ libraries which can be installed in the terminal with this command:
./winetricks vcrun2008
3) First unzip the earlier downloaded EXE file (I am here assuming it’s installed in a folder called lotro in the Downloads folder). I recommend the terminal for this. To do that, open a terminal and type the following, pressing Enter after each line:
cd Downloads/lotro/
wine LOTROSetup.exe
Go through the steps and it will install the game.
4) Now to install the launcher. The official Lotro launcher does not work well at all, so we use a Linux launcher to run Lotro well.
Head over to
You must be registered to see links
This will download a .deb file which will install pyLotro for you.
5) Either using the Dash or menu find Lord of The Rings Online (pylotro) and open this, you will most likely find it does nothing at the moment.
6)On the top click on Tools, then Options.
A new window will appear, you should see ‘Game Directory’ which is probably empty, with a button and three dots in there. Click on that button.
First hit Ctrl+H to also display hidden files (those with a dot in front of their names) and go to the following directory:
.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Turbine/The Lord of the Rings Online
Then hit open until you are there, and save.
The program should refresh and you should have a server list, language etc.
What you could now do, is right-click on the icon in the Unity Launch Bar and click ‘Lock to Launcher’
7) It is all set up now, but you will need to update it the first time it’s installed. To do this, have the launcher window open, click Tools at the top, then Patch.
Then when the new window has opened click on Start.
***NOTE*** There is possibility that you see a list of errors, ignore this, it does not affect the updates. You should also see a list of dots begin to appear, this shows it’s updating.
After you see ‘***FINISHED***’, then you are ready. You can make a new account at
You must be registered to see links
or if you already have one, log in.
Extra notes:
I encountered two minor problems, both of which are easily fixed.
a) If you notice that when loading, your game displays a gray background and little squares, then you do not have the loading backgrounds.
I have taken my backgrounds and put them in a tar file which can be downloaded here:
You must be registered to see links
Simply extract the contents of that tar file to ‘.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Turbine/The Lord of the Rings Online/raw/en/logo
After that, you should have proper loading screens.
b) My character was just black.
If you have this, it means your graphics card isn’t totally dealing with the graphics, inside the game set the game to low graphics and it should be good again.
c) Adding ABC files – If you have downloaded ABC files, add a folder inside ‘.wine/drive_c/users/<YOURNAME>/My Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online’ called ‘Music’ and drop the ABC files in there. Then you can play them in game
have fun
