Guild Wars 2

32-bit Guild Wars 2 client used when 64-bit system requirements are not met or the client is forced to with the -32 command-line argument. It is recommended to use the 64-bit client when possible.

Application Details:

Version: 32-bit Client
License: Retail
Votes: 79
Latest Rating: Gold
Latest Wine Version Tested: 5.2-staging

Maintainers: About Maintainership

Link Official Homepage Link Play For Free Free Download Guild Wars 2 32-bit Setup Executable

Test Results

Old test results
Selected Test Results

What works

* Dungeons, fracals

* World Bosses and Events (temples, ...)

* WvW

* Crafting, including at the mystic forge

* Other "ordinary life" aspects (explorable zones, ...)

What does not

* Change of  clothes is corrupted, unless wine is compiled from CSMT tree at, but the tree is still at wine 1.7.18 at the time of writing this report (which is also fine with GW2)

* WvW and World Events almost unplayable because of too poor performances + occasional crashes. Same experience while killing some champions (in particular during guild bounty). Also worse / more frequent than in previous releases (back 4-5 releases). But I really think it is actually due to the Megaserver update, that emphasizes the already known limits of Wine towards running GW2.


What was not tested

* PvP, but I think it works fine (as fine as the rest anyway)

* I still revert an old commit that broke the mouse view to 180Â°: git revert --no-edit 76bbf106a28c4caa82873e8450bde7d4adc765bf, but I did not test this release without the revert

* game installation, but since updates are fine, I assume install should work too

Hardware tested


  • GPU:
  • Driver:

Additional Comments

* I used to have a lot of loading issues in dungeons, especially in Ascalonian Catacombs, but this has been a lot better for a few Wine releases. * Starting the game with or without -dx9single makes little difference to me, even with CSMT patches. * CSMT patches themselves make a visible, although much less impressive than what is advertised, difference to me. * I have the feeling performances are best just after starting the game + when there are fewest sprites moving around (players or NPC). Having low or high options makes no difference when few characters are around, performances are not too bad. * However, I decreased the options regarding the rendering of characters, but to no avail in World Events (now overly large since Megaserver update). * I have taken the habit of restarting the game now and then, to avoid crashes at a bad timing and to get back to better performances. * CPU to performance now give smaller advantage compared to previous releases, which is good because it means more gets done by the GPU; on the other hand, it is now mostly beneficial, but not enough, when in large events though.

selected in Test Results table below
Operating systemTest dateWine versionInstalls?Runs?Used
ShowUbuntu 18.04 "Bionic" amd64 (+variants like Kubuntu)Feb 20 20205.2-stagingYes Yes YesGoldStefanescu A 
ShowSolusDec 04 20172.21Yes Yes YesGoldVictor Roux 
ShowElementary OS LokiJul 30 20172.12-stagingYes Yes GoldBrendon 
ShowLinux Mint 18.1 "Serena" x86_64Jul 11 20172.12Yes Yes GoldMarosh 
ShowopenSUSE Tumbleweed (rolling release)Apr 05 20172.4Yes Yes GoldJon 

Known Bugs

Bug # Description Status Resolution Other apps affected
31952 Guild Wars 2: Graphical bug causing horizontal lines on world NEW View
32010 Guild Wars 2 updater uses always 100% of a CPU core UNCONFIRMED View
32058 Guild Wars 2 launcher freezes/hangs (unable to launch game) RESOLVED NOTOURBUG View
32152 Guild Wars 2: Missing sound and game crashes on time adjusting UNCONFIRMED View
33053 Support for dvorak programmer layout. UNCONFIRMED View
33759 Some applications reset the X color profile UNCONFIRMED View
34342 Chronic crash of Guild Wars 2(out of memory) NEW View
40299 Guild Wars 2: Graphic shows through the ground UNCONFIRMED View
40300 Guild Wars 2: Mouse gets temporary invisible on the Launcher UNCONFIRMED View
40843 Guild Wars 2: Game crashes on uninstalling UNCONFIRMED View
44315 Buffer maps cause CPU-GPU synchronization (Guild Wars 2, The Witcher 3) NEW View

Show all bugs

HowTo / Notes

Known Issues
  • To avoid graphical problems:
    • Install the latest GPU drivers
    • If you have an integrated graphic chipset + a dedicated GPU, make sure that you launch GuildWars 2 with the GPU. To do this you can install programs like bumblebee (and then launch gw2 with the optirun command)
  • Performance when there are a lot of entities/players: The overall peformance of the game is acceptable, but when there are a lot of entities/players it's still more laggy than on windows. You could try wine-staging with CSMT if you have performance problems.
  • The game crashes after 1-4 hours when it tries to allocate more RAM than it is allowed to. There is currently no work-around for this besides restarting the game.
    • This issue is particularly troublesome in World Bosses and WvW with lots of players.
    • Using a 64-bit Wine profile appears to have no impact on this issue, it still crashes when it tries to allocate more than 3GB of RAM.
    Setting Up GW2

    PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac users can ignore this entire note - PlayOn* already does all of this for you!

    At this point, you have installed Wine and you're ready to install the game.

    First, let's figure out how to manage wine prefixes.

    Wine Prefix Setup

    You really should get used to wine prefixes.  If you're installing everything to the default prefix (~/.wine) you're missing out on the ability to use optimal settings (and wine versions) for each game you own. PlayOnLinux/PlayOnMac asks you if you want to create a new prefix when you install something, it's so simple that I'll not explain how to do it.

    If you're on linux Q4Wine is a great application which offers a GUI for wine. You can of course manage prefixes but also do a lot of other cool things.

    Here is how to create a new prefix with q4wine:

    First, install q4wine from the repositories of your linux. Once you have it installed, start it up and look through the UI a bit.

    Once you're more familiar with the interface, follow these steps to set up a prefix for GW2:

    1. Open the "Prefixes" tab.
    2. Click on the wand icon to create a new prefix.
    3. In the general tab, set:
      1. Name: Guild Wars 2
      2. Prefix Path: where you want the prefix to be. You should let the default path (if there is one).
      3. Architecture: choose what you want: default, win32 or win64. GuildWars2 support both 32 and 64 bits wine prefixes. Note than 64 bits prefix is only available if you have a 64 bits system (obviously).
    4. In the Wine settings tab, don't change anything.
    5. In the Advanced tab, if you use bumblebee, set:
      1. Predefined: select optirun

      Of course if you know other ways to manage wine prefixes you can do so.

      Install the Game

      Your options are:

      1. Install using the game's launcher, downloadable on the official GW2 website. This is the easiest way to do it.
      2. Install from disc and then update the game.
      3. Install using an existing game installation that you copy to your wine prefix, and then update the game.

      Installing using the launcher:

      1. Download the game's launcher on the official website: (you need to be connected to an account).
      2. Create a wine prefix (see above). If you already have one and want to use it, it's fine too.
      3. Run the exe file you've downloaded (something like "Gw2.exe").
      4. Wait while the launcher download the latest version of the game. It can takes several hours, but it's normal. If the game's updater crash repeatedly see the note below to know how to automatically relaunch it.

      Installing using the CD:

      This is pretty darn simple, but you're going to install the entire game by patching, so it will take longer. 

      1. Insert the CD.
      2. In q4wine, "programs" tab, click on the prefix you want. Then right click and select "Run..." > "Browse". Select the setup executable which is on the CD.
      3. The disc installer should starts up. Click on the install button. If you get a blank window, moves your cursor until it changes to a hand, an click.
      4. Follow instructions
      5. A window showing installation process pops up. If it is blank, just wait: the game is installing anyway. If it's blank and it hasn't finished for a long time, check if it is using cpu/disk. If not you should be able to close the window without any problem.
      6. Once the installation is finished, close the install window.
      7. Launch the file "Gw2.exe" in the wine prefix you chose.
      8. The launcher opens and starts to update the game. It can takes several hours, but it's normal. If the game's updater crash repeatedly see the note below to know how to automatically relaunch it.

      Installing using existing installation's files:

      1. Copy an existing Guild Wars 2 installation to the "Programs Files" directory of the wine prefix you chose. You need to have a "big" external storage (maybe 16GB).
      3. Run the "Gw2.exe" file in this wine prefix.

        Make Gw2 run better

        Here's several things you can do to get better performance/correct problems:

        • Install the latest proprietary GPU drivers
        • If you use SLI, disable it.
        • Specify how much memory your GPU has:
          • Open the regedit program. In q4wine it is in the "Pograms" tab in the "system" folder (blue icon below your prefix).
          • Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Wine
          • Create the "Direct3D" key if needed
          • Open the Direct3D key you've just created
          • Create a new String value (right click>"new string value") with the name "VideoMemorySize".
          • Set its value to the amount of memory that your GPU has, in MB.
        • Install wine-staging and use it instead of regular wine, and enable CSMT.
        Out-of-memory Errors

        Out-of-memory errors are more common on the 32-bit version of the Guild Wars 2 client. It is highly recommended to use the 64-bit client if possible.

        Game Data Updating and Integrity Checking/Repair

        You can fully download all of the game data and any future updates required for Guild Wars 2 by appending -image as a command-line argument to the Guild Wars 2 executable (Gw2-64.exe or Gw2.exe). An example can be found below:

        WINEPREFIX=~/'Wine Prefixes/Guild Wars 2' wine 'Gw2.exe' -image

        You can also check the integrity of the game data archive by appending -repair as a command-line argument (this can take longer than 5-10 minutes to complete):

        WINEPREFIX=~/'Wine Prefixes/Guild Wars 2' wine 'Gw2-64.exe' -repair

        For quick guidelines:

        • For initial installations, -image is recommended so you don't have to worry about streaming data during gameplay
        • If you've had your Gw2.dat for a while, it's a good idea to run -repair on it every now and then after updates
        • If you've had to hard-shutdown your computer while GW2 was running, running -repair is highly recommended



        64 bit draws more cpu then 32 bit
        by Suryi Priyat Linge on Thursday October 17th 2019, 20:54
        Keep in mind it's no longer officially supported and playing for extended periods will cause the game to hit the 32-bit limitation and crash, especially in HoT+. For best results, set the model quality/limit to lowest, restart the game before and after playing with larger groups of people, after roughly every hour and after entering a map you plan to stay in. (the more objects that are loaded, the more likely you are to crash).tree removal newcastle
        DiskIO Causes Stuttering
        by Chris on Saturday October 7th 2017, 17:00
        I managed to get this playable with ~20 FPS. My rig only got 35-50 FPS on Windows.

        I had the wine drive setup on an HDD with Ext4. I noticed that the game would stutter to 2 FPS every 20-30sec. Upon inspecting my disk io, I notice it would stutter when performing a disk write. Guild Wars 2 has a huge gw2.dat file, 20 Gb in size, so I'm guessing writing to it isn't very optimized in linux. My HDD didn't like writing 60 Mb every few seconds.

        So I made a ~40Gb NTFS partition on my SSD, and it played smoothly at 20FPS. Lions Arch 10-20 FPS, but no "stuttering".
        Wine 64-bit requirement approaching
        by David Hollinger on Tuesday August 8th 2017, 23:14
        The system requirements of Guild Wars 2 have been updated in preparation for the release of XPAC 2.

        Starting Sept 22, 2017, GW2 will require Windows 7 or newer, 64-bit only.
        Missing Audio
        by Ricardo Rodrigues on Wednesday June 28th 2017, 8:42
        The Game runs smooth, but some of the audio in the cinematics don't play.

        I know this is a known problem, but as anyone been able to solve it?
        Black Lion Trading Post problem
        by RaphaÃ«l on Monday June 5th 2017, 7:14
        I have a problem with Black Lion Trading Post.

        Generally selling items works but not the list to search items and buy new query takes a long times and finally show error 42:0:9001:4402:101 in Guildwars's interface (small window centred in screen). After getting this errors any other queries to Trading Post fails for some minutes.

        The exact error is not listed in but in the 42:0:9001:3858:101 error seems to by near than I have. I don't have special firewall limitations and I think my ISP (Orange France) should be neutral with different ports. I tried "-clientport 80" and "-clientport 443", it seems reduces problems with selling items but no change to items lists.

        I have doubt the trouble have started with Wine 2.7, in changelog there is "TCP and UDP connection support in WebServices.". Is this can cause problem ? I had some trouble before but rarely.
        RE: Black Lion Trading Post problem
        by RaphaÃ«l on Monday October 2nd 2017, 13:16
        Seems to be a problem with Wine-staging, regular Wine 2.17 seems work.
        Game crashes
        by Novcaine19 on Monday June 5th 2017, 5:45
        Hello guys, I have the following setup:
        - Linux Mint 18.1, 64bit
        - Intel i7-4710hq
        - 16gb ram
        - only inbuild graphics

        1. Downloaded the 64-bit client from arenanet
        2. Installed wine 2.9.0 stagging
        3. Installed the entire 30GB for GuildWars 2
        4. Set the windows version to Windows XP
        5. Enabled CSMT
        6. The following is stated in the libraries tab: *d3dx9_43(native), crypt32(buildin)
        7. I tried running the game from the command line with the following command:
        wine Gw2-64.exe -email xxx -password xxx -autologin -dx9single^

        And for some reason, as soon as three seconds are over and auto-play should start the game, I get the following output in the terminal:
        fixme:ntdll:NtLockFile I/O completion on lock not implemented yet
        fixme:winsock:WSALookupServiceBeginW (0x3bce060 0x00000ff0 0x3bce0a8) Stub!
        fixme:win:UnregisterDeviceNotification (handle=0xcafeaffe), STUB!
        fixme:win:UnregisterDeviceNotification (handle=0xcafeaffe), STUB!
        fixme:iphlpapi:CancelIPChangeNotify (overlapped 0x2af3d08): stub
        fixme:ntdll:EtwUnregisterTraceGuids deadbeef: stub
        fixme:nvapi:unimplemented_stub function 0x2dc95125 is unimplemented!
        fixme:wbemprox:wbem_services_CreateInstanceEnum unsupported flags 0x00000030
        fixme:wbemprox:enum_class_object_Next timeout not supported
        fixme:imm:ImmDisableTextFrameService Stub
        fixme:wtsapi:WTSRegisterSessionNotification Stub 0x60064 0x00000000
        fixme:nvapi:unimplemented_stub function 0xdc6dc8d3 is unimplemented!
        fixme:nvapi:unimplemented_stub function 0xbe7692ec is unimplemented!
        fixme:nvapi:unimplemented_stub function 0xdc6dc8d3 is unimplemented!

        Am I missing something? Kind regards
        How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Bao Nguyen on Monday April 10th 2017, 9:28
        This is how I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth on my NVIDIA card:

        1. Install wine-staging 2.4.
        2. Open winecfg, enable CSMT. Also check if the built-in crypt32.dll (not native) is used under "Libraries", or else the launcher may crash.
        3. In regedit, set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver\UseXvidMode to "N" to disable gamma change.
        4. Launch the 64-bit executable of Guild Wars 2 with this shell script:

        export WINEDEBUG=-all
        export __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=0
        export __GL_YIELD=USLEEP
        wine Gw2-64.exe -autologin -dx9single

        Ensure that the entire game is 100% downloaded before playing.

        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Spite on Wednesday April 19th 2017, 23:40
        How would you define "smooth"? On my GTX970 i5-4590 with setting at medium i get ~19FPS in Lions Arch and ~45 in empty areas with a lot of stuttering when I turn my camera(this could be due to loading new textures maybe?)
        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Bao Nguyen on Thursday April 20th 2017, 2:19
        I get around 30fps - 90fps with no stuttering on my gtx 980 on max settings. Maybe your client is still downloading the game? I get lots of stuttering if I play the game while the launcher client has not 100% finished downloading the game.
        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Spite on Thursday April 20th 2017, 8:58
        Game is 100% downloaded.

        Stuttering was due to loading textures after loading the game. But I can't even reach 60 FPS. I get 45 In empty ganderran fields. Dunno if I can get more or should I just accept it
        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Spite on Thursday April 20th 2017, 8:59
        I'm using wine staging 2.5.1. Maybe it's because of that
        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Bao Nguyen on Thursday April 20th 2017, 9:30
        I don't know why then :(

        My CPU is an Intel i5 4690K clocked to 4.4ghz. Distribution is Arch Linux using kernel 4.10(.9 I think I tested with) and the latest NVIDIA driver binary blobs (its the fastest). Game runs through wine-staging with CSMT enabled (to gain speed).

        Maybe that can be of any help.
        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Spite on Thursday April 20th 2017, 9:52
        > My CPU is an Intel i5 4690K clocked to 4.4ghz

        That may be it. This is a very CPU heavy game which also have to go through wine. Combine that with yours 980 compared to mine 970 and all of it can lead to half the performance I'm getting compared to yours
        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Marry on Thursday April 27th 2017, 11:34
        hello, I tried your shell script, but it says " wine: cannot find L"C:\\windows\\system32\\Gw2-64.exe" then I copied the gw2-64.exe into .wine/drive_c/windows/system32 . but it still cant find it (I know that copying into a different location will break the exe, but I just wanted to see if it can find it there. Do I maybe need to install the game new? because I just copied it from my windows to no patch it all over again
        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by Bao Nguyen on Friday April 28th 2017, 11:37
        You have to write that script to a text file (I named it and place it in the same directory as Gw2-64.exe.

        My "Guild Wars" directory looks like this after making this file:

        ArenaNet.log Crash.dmp Gw2.dat Gw2Setup.exe
        bin Gw2-64.exe Gw2.exe
        bin64 Gw2-64.tmp Gw2Setup-64.exe THIRDPARTYSOFTWAREREADME.txt

        then execute it by writing ./ and hit Enter.

        I use the same files as what my Windows-partition also use by mounting the NTFS-disk into the filesystem. It works well for me :)
        RE: How I made Guild Wars 2 run smooth.
        by sxe on Wednesday August 9th 2017, 6:00
        Some observations i made:


        You used a wrong spelling here. Notice the Z not S. In your example the export has no effect at all which is good cause it should not be used in combination with CSMT in the first place. You will notice why when you try it spelled correctly. The performance is horrible.

        I also noticed removing -dx9single results in better performance. -dx9single starts the game in single threaded dx9 mode. This is good when you don't use CSMT. With CSMT enabled you want the game to use multiple threads cause that is on thing CSMT improves compared to standard wine.

        I start the game like this:

        export WINEDEBUG=-all
        export __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=0
        export __GL_YIELD=USLEEP
        export STAGING_SHARED_MEMORY=1
        wine Gw2-64.exe -autologin

        which gives me the best performance with the proprietary nvidia drivers.