Throughout this tutorial I’ll assume you know how to open a terminal and run commands (lines beginning with $, but don’t include the $). You should also check to see how much video memory you have. This will come in handy later. If unsure, don’t worry about it.

Before we get started

Make sure you have Wine installed. For best results you should grab the latest version.
See:  http://www.winehq.org/download/

Note: you must use Windows XP as your Windows version for this to work. Using 2000 will result in a ‘Unsupported Operating System’ error.
To switch: Open ‘winecfg’ and switch the version (The Wine default is Windows XP).

Note to 64bit users:

You should add the openal32 DLL Override in winecfg->Libraries.

Note to 64 bit Gnome users:

A new error may occur with the newer releases of 64 bit Gnome desktops (including Unity). The message is:
“64bit Error “p11-kit: couldn't load module: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkcs11/gnome-keyring-pkcs11.so: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkcs11/gnome-keyring-pkcs11.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”

It occurs after logging in. The only known solution found so far is here:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/127848/wine-cant-find-gnome-keyring-pkcs11-so

I still had problems after applying this solution.
The solution I found was to try a non-Gnome desktop. Switching from unity to kde-standard worked for me.  You could also switch to the 32 bit version of Ubuntu or whichever distro you use.

Getting Started

The newer versions of wine provided by most modern GNU/Linux distributions should provide winetricks. If not you can grab it with ‘wget’ in your terminal:

$ wget http://winetricks.org/winetricks

Once you have winetricks you are ready to begin.

Install the necessary dependencies into wine

In your terminal type:

$ bash ./winetricks vcrun200{3,5,8} d3dx9 corefonts
(Nvidia users should also install physx)

Note: ‘vcrun200{3,5,8} is a bash expansion expression which returns vcrun2003, vcrun2005, and vcrun2008.

Grab the DDO installer

Note: If you already have DDO installed somewhere you can copy the ‘Turbine/DDO Unlimited’ directory into your ‘.wine/drive_c’ folder (Default location is ‘Program Files’). Then skip ahead to ‘Install missing splash screens’

If you use wine 1.3 or earlier the standard DDO installer may not work. In this case you will need to find the full installer floating around online. As of this writing the only place I can find is atomicgamer.com.
http://www.atomicgamer.com/files/95865/dungeons-dragons-online-eberron-unlimited-client-high-res

http://www.atomicgamer.com/files/95917/dungeons-dragons-online-eberron-unlimited-client-v01-17-01-8018-standard

If you use wine 1.4 or later you should be able to run the standard DDO installers.
You can grab either Low or High resolution installer.

Low resolution:
$ wget http://content.turbine.com/sites/clientdl/ddo/ddostandard.exe

High resolution:
$ wget http://content.turbine.com/sites/clientdl/ddo/ddohigh.exe

DDO installation (skip if you are ‘already installed’)

If you have the full installer you can start it directly using wine.
$ wine dndsetup.exe

If you are using the standard DDO installer you can start it by prefixing the wine command with ‘GC_DONT_GC=1’.

For low resolution:
$ GC_DONT_GC=1 wine ddostandard.exe

For high resolution:
$ GC_DONT_GC=1 wine ddohigh.exe

Note: If the downloader freezes at some point just kill the process (ctrl+cin the terminal) and start the downloader again. If you don’t remove any files it should resume the download and continue.

During the installation be sure to uncheck ‘create desktop icon’,  ‘README’, the subscription, and the ‘Load Dungeons & Dragons Online’ options. ( Currently TurbineLauncher fails when trying to load it. We’ll be using the 3rd party client ‘Pylotro’ to load the game instead.)

Install missing splash screens

Without these you would normally see grey splash screen with white crosshatches during game load or when teleporting. Normally the TurbineLauncher would grab these. But since it doesn't work we have to download them ourselves.

These images need to be installed into “Turbine/DDO Unlimited/raw/en/logo”.

First cd into DDO_Unlimited/raw/en

32bit:
$ cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Turbine/DDO\ Unlimited/raw/en

64bit:
$ cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Turbine/DDO\ Unlimited/raw/en

Then create the logo dir & cd to it
$ mkdir logo;cd logo

Now download the splash screens (I have a script to simplify this)
Note: This script defaults to english if you omit the language. ‘fr’ and ‘de’ also available.

$ wget https://sites.google.com/site/leeslinuxblog/ddosplashme.sh
$ bash ddosplashme.sh en

Install pylotro

There’s three ways we can do this. One is installing using the source. The second  is the windows exe in wine. The third is installing via Ubuntu PPA (if you use Ubuntu).

Install from source

Make sure you have python and pyqt4 installed (python-qt4?)

Download the source: (pylotro website is no more)
$ wget https://sites.google.com/site/leeslinuxblog/PyLotRO-0.1.15.zip

Unzip source & cd to the directory:
$ unzip PyLotRO-0.1.15.zip;cd PyLotRO

Run setup.py.

Via sudo (Ubuntu,debian,Mint)
$ sudo python setup.py install

Via su:
$ su -c “python setup.py install”

Install windows exe in Wine

Download the windows exe file:
$ wget http://www.mcgillsociety.org/PyLotRO/pylotro-setup.exe

Install using wine:
$ wine pylotro-setup.exe

Install using Ubuntu PPA

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ajackson-bcs/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update;sudo apt-get install -y pylotro

Configure PyLotRO to run DDO

Switch the game mode to DDO

1. Open ‘Pylotro’.
2. Click ‘Tools’ on the menu bar.
3. Click ‘Switch Game’ and choose ‘Dungeons & Dragons Online’.

Set the game directory
(Can be done via wizard or manually)

Wizard: (may not work with 64bit. Use ‘manually’)
1. Click ‘Tools’
2. Click ‘Settings Wizard’.
3. Select ‘Dungeons & Dragons Online’ and click ‘Find Games’.
4. Select “C:\Program Files\Turbine\DDO Unlimited”
5. Click Apply.

Manually:
1. Click ‘Tools’ on the menu bar.
2. Click ‘Options’.
3. Choose Game directory.
(32bit: /home/USERNAME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Turbine/DDO Unlimited
64bit: /home/USERNAME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Turbine/DDO Unlimited)

4. (optional) Enable ‘High-Res Graphics’.
5. Save the settings.

Pylotro should now fill right up with the Realm list, news, languages, etc.

Patch the game data

1. Click ‘Tools’ on menu bar.
2. Click ‘Patch’.
3. Click ‘Start’ (This can take a while).
4. When finished, click ‘Exit’.

Run DDO!

Select realm and login!

In the future simply load Pylotro to play the game :)
See ‘Fixes/Tweaks’ below to improve game performance.

Notes

If the game ever gives you an error saying you don’t have the latest version of the client installed, simply run ‘Patch’ from the Tools menu in Pylotro

You may also get errors regarding your audio. This is normal. If you don't have sound, Go to ‘Options->Audio’ and select your 'Sound Playback' device. You can ignore the error's in the PyLotRO output window, or you can try configuring your sound in winecfg.

Fixes/Tweaks

At this point you should be able to sign in and play the game. But its normal for some performance issues to manifest here. Here are some tweaks/fixes you can try.

Set the correct video memory size in the Registry.

1. Open regedit:
$ wine regedit

2. Browse to  HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Direct3D/
(if this key does not exist, see ‘Missing Direct3D registry branch’ below)

3. Edit or create a key called ‘VideoMemorySize’.
Set ‘VideoMemorySize’ to the amount of video memory you have (1gb == 1024).

Missing Direct3D registry branch:

1. Right click Wine key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\
2. Click New->key
3. Enter ‘Direct3D’
4. Right click the ‘Direct3D’ key
5. Click New->String Value
6. Type ‘VideoMemorySize’
7. Right click ‘VideoMemorySize’, then modify
8. Enter amount of video memory (1024 == 1gb)

See the 'Game Tweaks' section

The Game Tweaks are located at the bottom of this page. It includes suggestions for in game options to configure DDO for better performance.