Blizzard titles seem to just freeze

General system Gaming, sound and video
1

I have collected this information over quite a while, and the last missing bits I have only acquired recently.

As I said in the title, I play Blizzard titles, specifically Hearthstone and World of Warcraft Classic. Both are started through the Battle.net launcher, a proprietary launcher for all Blizzard games.

From time to time, I found Hearthstone to just stop. No reaction anymore, no possibility to interact with the window. I can kill it (Ctrl+Alt+Esc and click on the window), and I can stop the wine prefix using Lutris (if started through Lutris).

After Hearthstone, I started playing World of Warcraft Classic, and this as well showed these stops very infrequently (sometimes once a day). Today I have checked if there are any log messages exactly when the stop occurs, and I can say with certainty that there are none. I have enabled logging from the Lutris entry that starts Hearthstone and World of Warcraft, and there are no messages when the stop happens. Today I’ve seen it clearly, the last messages being almost half an hour old.

Today as well I had one of those stops directly inside the Battle.net launcher. There was a video message linked in the launcher, something like “How to survive Northrend” which embedded a Youtube video. I clicked on it and watched it from the launcher, and lo and behold, the stop occured during the video.

Last week I have also tried Bottles for the first time. Lutris was so far my go-to tool for wine prefix management, and I’m supporting the project, but after seeing a video about bottles and what it does differently, I wanted to give it a try, maybe it would fix the issues I had. I can report that the Bottles wine prefix had the exact same problem, I have seen the stop in there as well.

What I tried so far:

  • Re-Installation in a new wine prefix
  • Switch to Bottles
  • Re-Check that all requirements documented here are present
  • Waiting more than 10 minutes when the stop occurs to make sure it’s not a question of time (that the game resumes)

Now, what I am seeking is a way forward. I can barely describe my problem, and I can see that I could not deliver a log that shows the problem. Does anyone have an idea on how to proceed?

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2

What version of the wine runner are you using within Lutris? I can’t seem to get anything 7.X to work and ended up falling back to lutris-fshack-6.21-6.

3

wine-staging is usually my go-to choice of wine. As per your suggestion, I tested the exact version you suggested and could within less than a minute reproduce the problem. It seems it is not a problem of the wine 7 strand.

4

Sadly that issue started happening 2 days ago in the evening.
Numerous threads on Blizzard forums were made regarding this issue.
This affects bots Windows and Linux users.
Windows users however only have difficulties installing games, while Linux users have issues installing and playing them.

Two days ago Blizzard released an update to their launcher, and that is the problem.

It doen’t matter which Wine version you run, the Battle.net launcher will always freeze completely, and become unresponsive. Even if you manage to start the game, it will freeze after ca. 30 seconds.

A workaround that works 100% is to start any Blizzard games directly.
If you play via Lutris or Bottles, you usually start the Battle.net Launcher first, and then start your games through the Launcher.

You just need to change the executable path so that it points to the .exe of the game.
Here is ax example of my Overwatch executable path:
/home/smokus/Games/overwatch/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Overwatch/_retail_/Overwatch.exe
You just need to apply that same logic for your WoW or HS .exe files.

The downside to this method is that you will have to log into your Bnet account every time you start the game, but at least it works 100% of the time until Blizzard fixes their Launcher.

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5

So, I have tried to get some more information about the issues I am facing. I am testing with Hearthstone currently, and the issue I see in the log is this (just the last few lines):

0a38:err:ole:com_get_class_object apartment not initialised
0a38:fixme:kernelbase:AppPolicyGetProcessTerminationMethod FFFFFFFA, 0069FEAC
0a40:fixme:wbemprox:wbem_locator_ConnectServer unsupported flags
0a40:fixme:wbemprox:client_security_SetBlanket 62EA37F0, 00CB2FD0, 10, 0, (null), 3, 3, 00000000, 0x00000000
0a40:fixme:wbemprox:client_security_Release 62EA37F0
0a40:fixme:ntdll:NtQuerySystemInformation info_class SYSTEM_PERFORMANCE_INFORMATION
0a40:fixme:wbemprox:enum_class_object_Next timeout not supported
0a50:fixme:kernelbase:AppPolicyGetThreadInitializationType FFFFFFFA, 0352FEF8
0a40:err:kerberos:kerberos_LsaApInitializePackage no Kerberos support, expect problems
0a40:fixme:ole:CoInitializeSecurity 00000000, -1, 00000000, 00000000, 0, 3, 00000000, 0, 00000000 stub
0a40:fixme:wbemprox:client_security_SetBlanket 62EA37F0, 0C0DBBB0, 10, 0, (null), 3, 3, 00000000, 0x00000000
0a40:fixme:wbemprox:client_security_Release 62EA37F0
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)
0740:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 04925ACC "?" wait timed out in thread 0740, blocked by 07f8, retrying (60 sec)
06fc:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 04925ACC "?" wait timed out in thread 06fc, blocked by 07f8, retrying (60 sec)
0818:err:sync:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 049257C0 "?" wait timed out in thread 0818, blocked by 080c, retrying (60 sec)

I have googled the issue and I am finding a lot of information that is unrelated, very old (forum posts from 2008), or generic in nature. I do not think that relates to the battle.net issue described by @Smokus. I’ve googled for the issue and it seems people under Windows have problems with the battle.net launcher as well, but only recently, while I can reproduce this issue basically since I first installed the machine (February 2021).

I’ll try to see if WoW (crashes/hangs much much less than Hearthstone) shows similar messages.

6

As I’ve said, just launch wow directly via its executable. It will work.

The issues lies in the newest Agent.exe that got updated 2 days ago.
If you get a hold of the previous version of the file, you can repalce it, and it will work again.
However I’d just wait it out until Blizz fixes it, and play during that time directly via WoW or HS executable.

7

I’ve switched WoW over to the starting way you suggested, and so far, I have not seen a crash. However, for Hearthstone this does not work. You can start 2 .exes, however, both realize that the battle.net launcher doesn’t run, terminate themselves, then start the battle.net launcher.

8

I’ve try to install battle.net today for playing at overwatch but sadly the lutris script don’t work anymore :frowning: Even with your workaround you can’t update the game if i don’t make mistake ?

9

the battle.net problem is known:
https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53697
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/xgb5fx/problems_with_battlenet_today/

I could manage to get it running, but the sudo chattr +i Agent.exe after replacing it with the older version was necessary to get it working again.

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