Some Wine Diablo III users have reported that their accounts have been permanently suspended

This issue was originally reported on the forums and various others have reported similar problems (see http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022 for more details).  However, many users have not had these problems and Blizzard has officially replied that using Wine should not get you banned:

"Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you banned – cheating will." -- Bashiok

 Use the following code snippet to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.

winetricks -q vcrun2008

Now you can run Diablo 3 from the directory it is installed by using the following, this will set the Locale to US English, if you need to use a different locale you will want to change the command line argument.

wine "Diablo III.exe" -launch --locale=enUS

• Please, test an application under fresh clean wineprefix;
• Include exact specs of the computer you had tested an app on (CPU, GPU, amount of RAM and VRAM) in the "Extra Comments" section of the report;
• Specify versions of essential software components, most notably: is your system 32bit or 64bit, what is the version of the GPU display driver you use and what is the version of the OS kernel;
• Include detailed information on the native dll overrides you had to use in order to get the game working. If you had installed dlls yourself - include complete information on the sources of dlls and the exact steps you took to install them.

General info

As of Wine 1.5.6 Wine is able to both install and run Diablo III.  However, if you are running an older version of Wine (such as the 'stable' 1.4.x branch), then you will need to either upgrade to a newer version of Wine or go through some extra steps each time a patch comes out (see the Historical Information section below).

FAQ

Q: I have a recent version of Wine (>= 1.5.6) and when I try to install the game the installer seems to be stuck at "0%".
A: Make sure you set your Wine prefix to emulate at least "Win XP". There were reports that best results are achived with version set to "Windows 7" or "Vista".

Q: I'm using a recent version of Wine (>= 1.5.6) and trying to install the game from DVD. Installer seems to be having problems with some files missing.
A: Mount your DVD with "-o unhide" mount option, it should help.

Q: When I start up the game and try to log in into battle.net I always get "error 3007".
A: You're on recent release of Ubuntu (or on any other distro affected by the ptrace bug, Bug #30410) or running a 64-bit OS. If you think you're affected by the ptrace bug then you can try executing the following in a terminal before starting Diablo III:
echo 0 | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope
If you are running a 64-bit OS then you need to set the game to only use 3 GB of memory, to do this you'll need to modify the launcher to include "setarch i386 -3 " before calling Wine or launch the game from the game's folder in the terminal, like so:
setarch i386 -3 wine Diablo\ III.exe

Q: When I play the game I've got bright red graphical glitches at the places that are expected to be rendered full-black.
A: You had enabled forcing anisotropic filtering and/or texture sharpening in the GPU drivers settings utility. Make sure to turn it off into "let an app control it" state and your problem should be fixed.

Q: I'm using Intel GPU from recent series (HD 2000/3000/4000+). When I try to start the game it fails telling that my GPU lacks required features.
A: Make sure that you're on recent-enough distro (2012+) which contain fresh-enough Mesa (8,1+) and kernel (3.1+). Then make sure to install S3TC texture compression support lib (it might be illegal to do in some countries; how to install it is out of the scope of this FAQ - google for it) and start the game up from terminal like this: "force_s3tc_enable=true wine "

Q: I'm experiencing game crashes/hangs at certain places of the game world (like "Cathedral", e.t.c.).
A: Make sure to update your GPU driver. This problem is known to affect older versions of open source driver for ATI/AMD cards, and older versions of closed-source nVIDIA GPU linux driver. There might be other drivers out there suffering from the same problem we're unaware of, so updating driver won't hurt in any case.

Q: I've got "The application encountered an unexpected error." dialog box right after I start up the game.
A: This is most likely due to using builtin Wine's vcrun2008 DLLs instead of native. Try to install VC++ 2008 Runtime into your prefix, it should help. One of the ways to do it is to use "winetricks" script like that: "winetricks vcrun2008".

Q: I'm on Ubuntu and use Unity desktop environment. When I start the game it loads into a shrunk fullscreen where the Unity bar and universal task bar are still visible.
A: This is the incompatibility between compiz and many other applications which are considered by compiz to use "legacy fullscreen approach". You can workaround it by switching into using Unity 2D or by installing "Compiz Config Settings Manager" application and use "Legacy Fullscreen" support option found in "Workarounds" section.

Q: I'm using video card equipped with ATI/AMD GPU/APU and when I start up the game all I've got is a "black screen" or a "black window".
A: Most likely you had hit a bug in the video card driver. Your best bet would be try to update it to the most recent version. In case you are already using latest driver release (or in case it's hard for you to update video card driver for some reason) you might have some luck workarounding this problem by applying a small registry change to your prefix. What you would want to do is to set "AlwaysOffscreen" key to "enabled" under "HKCU/Software/Wine/Direct3D". You could easily do it with recent enough winetricks by executing "winetricks ao=enabled" for your Diablo III Wine prefix.

Q: I'm using video card equipped with ATI/AMD GPU/APU and the game runs fine but I've got some rendering glitches like "large semi-transparent polygons" or "strange triangle-shaped glitches near light sources".
A: It had been reported that due to some unknown reasons (bugs in driver? Wine doing something wrong?) for people using ATI/AMD GPUs it is required to switch Wine's DirectDraw renderer from using OpenGL into using GDI backend. This could be dobe by applying a small registry trick to your prefix. What you would want to do is to set "DirectDrawRenderer" key to "gdi" under "HKCU/Software/Wine/Direct3D". You could easily do it with winetricks by executing "winetricks ddr=gdi" for your Diablo III Wine prefix. Also switching the game to run in "Windowed Fullscreen" mode instead of simple "Fullscreen" might help.

Q: When I play Diablo III I've got extremely low or unstable FPS. My system is equipped with multi-core CPU (dual core or more).
A: This problem also happen on native OS but there it manifests itself as a micro-stutter (rapid FPS jitter). Under Wine for some people it gets much worse and could easily render the game into nearly unplayable state. If you happen to suffer from this problem you could try changing so called "CPU affinity" for main Diablo III process to only use one or two cores of your multicore CPU. How to do it depends on the linux distro you use. In any case first step would be to start up the game and then Alt+TAB from it and run your favorite terminal emulator. Possible commands to use are: (a) "taskset -cp 0 `pidof Diablo\ III.exe`" or (b) "schedtool -a 0 `pidof Diablo\ III.exe`". Using "0-1" or "0,2" in place of "0" might give better results, depending on the phase of the moon and the amount of luck you have.
Another way to achieve the same effect it is use Wine's "Task Manager". To do it execute "taskmgr" inside the Diablo III Wine prefix prior starting up the game and then Alt+TAB into it from game and use its built-in functionality to change CPU affinity of the "Diablo III.exe" process. You could do it by right-clicking on "Diablo III.exe" list entry at the "Processes" tab, selecting "Set affinity..." and de-checking all assigned CPUs except for "CPU 0". Don't forget to press "OK" button before Alt+TABing back into the game. For some cases it might be better to assign two cores for Diablo III main process, like "CPU 0" and "CPU 1" for "real multicore" CPUs (all multi-core CPUs by AMD up to but excluding AMD FX and later series; Intel multicore CPUs without HyperThreading support) or "CPU 0" and "CPU 2" for "SMT-faked multicore" CPUs (AMD FX and later; all HT-enabled Intel CPUs which are really multicore - i.e. Pentium 4 CPU which seems to be "dual core" isn't really "dual core" thus it doesn't fit into this category). Try experimenting with CPU affinity a little so you could find the value that suits your system best. To check FPS inside the game you could press Ctrl+R on keyboard. FPS counter would be displayed at the top left corner of the game window.

Historical Information

Using an old version of Wine to play Diablo III

To play on older versions of Wine (<1.5.6) you either need to upgrade Wine, patch Wine to support AcceptEx, or copy a working Diablo III install from another PC and run the game with the "-launch" command-line parameter. The process looks like this:

• Copy a working Diablo III install (either from a recent Wine version or a Windows PC).
  
• Open up a terminal and navigate into the folder with the installed game files (it is one where "Diablo III.exe" is located), for example:
  cd ~/".wine/drive_c/Program Files/Diablo III/"
  
• Execute the command to run Diablo III without using the launcher:
  wine Diablo\ III.exe -launch
• Repeat this process whenever a new patch comes out.

Patching an old version of Wine to play Diablo III

As of Wine 1.5.6 the patches submitted by Erich were committed and the launcher no longer requires them.  If you are using a previous version of Wine, 1.5.5 or earlier, please read below. 

To get the D3 installer and launcher to work flawlessly under Wine 1.5.5 and earlier, recompiling Wine with patches listed below is needed. You could do it yourself, or you could use pre-built binaries from third parties (in case you're risky enough to not mind security threat it imposes).  For the moment of the writing of this howto there's known PPA for Ubuntu-like distros which had been reported to provide a version of Wine binaries that had been patched to behave well with D3 installed/launcher. It could be found here: https://launchpad.net/~cheako/+archive/packages4diabloiii. Keep in mind that AppDB maintainers have no idea about what is "inside" that PPA and carry no responsibility about its contents.

Gentoo users might want for follow the FAQ provided by another AppDB user, Thomas Meister. He had shared his approach on how to patch and recompile Wine to be compatible with D3 for gentoo linux here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-923504.html?sid=b35688bfdb6635072be8ef64a9025a99.

For brave souls who feel experienced enough to patch and compile Wine themselves (it's not that hard, really!), here are the links on the patchsets that are recommended to use:

"AcceptEx fix" patchset by Erich Hoover, "third" version (compatible and tested with Wine 1.5.5):

1. [1/4] http://source.winehq.org/patches/data/86603
2. [2/4] http://source.winehq.org/patches/data/86604
3. [3/4] http://source.winehq.org/patches/data/86605
4. [4/4] http://source.winehq.org/patches/data/86606

"AcceptEx fix" patchset by Erich Hoover, "second" version (compatible and tested with Wine 1.5.4):

1. Part 1/3
2. Part 2/3
3. Part 3/3

"AcceptEx fix" patchset by Erich Hoover, "older" version (compatible with Wine 1.5.2 and a number or earlier versions, have known problems with 64bit arch; use this one only in case "new" version don't work work you):

1. http://source.winehq.org/patches/data/86102 - [PATCH 1/4] server: Add completion information to async IO callback (try 2, resend).
2. http://source.winehq.org/patches/data/86103 - [PATCH 2/4] server: Update stored completion information even after an async IO is queued (resend).
3. http://source.winehq.org/patches/data/86104 - [PATCH 3/4] ws2_32,ntdll: Update async IO callbacks to include completion information (try 2, resend).
4. http://source.winehq.org/patches/data/86105 - [PATCH 4/4] ws2_32: Use completion information to send AcceptEx completions (try 2, resend).

Note: after applying any of "AcceptEx" patchsets be sure to run "./tools/make_requests" from the top level of the Wine source directory.

Fix for the D3D error on game video setting change/restart

If you are using an old version of Wine (<1.5.7) and are experiencing an issue where you see the dialog "An error occurred reseting D3D. Click OK to retry" then this patch (taken from Bug #28201) should fix your problem:

1. modified for 1.4+