WoW Forever on PS5

World of Warcraft: Forever, the Windows client, running natively on a jailbroken PlayStation 5. No streaming and no Linux: the game's own WowB.exe runs inside one PS5 app, on Wine, with its DirectX 12 translated to the console's GPU.

Captured from a PS5 over Remote Play. The green text in the corner was a debug label used for the recording; it is not part of the release.

Works	Login, character select, playing in the world, sound, controller (the game's own console UI), touchpad as a mouse, USB keyboard and mouse, an on-screen keyboard, 76 to 99 frames a second in the world with vertical sync off
Tested on	One console: PS5 firmware 8.20, etaHEN with kstuff, ShadowMount+ 1.6 beta 16; client builds 1.60.1.70205 and 1.60.1.70235 (_classic_beta_)
Not included	The game. You copy your own installation, and you sign in with your own account on the console

This is a hobby project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment or Sony. Use it with a game you own, at your own risk.

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Install it (about 15 minutes of your time, plus the copy)

What you need

1. A jailbroken PS5 with a homebrew enabler running (tested: etaHEN with kstuff), and:
   • its FTP server on (port 2121 is the default of the common payloads),
   • ShadowMount (or another way to register an app folder from /data/homebrew),
   • about 70 GB free on the internal drive.
2. A PC on the same network with Python 3 (Linux, macOS or Windows).
3. Your own World of Warcraft installation with the _classic_beta_ folder (WoW: Forever) in it.
4. The console's address on your network (PS5: Settings, Network, View Connection Status).

Steps

1. Download WoWForever-PS5.zip from the latest release and unpack it.

2. Turn the console on and run your jailbreak, so that FTP and ShadowMount are up.

3. Copy the files to the console, either way:

   A. With the installer (it copies everything, your game included, and can be re-run if interrupted):

   cd WoWForever-PS5
   python3 install.py --host 192.168.1.50 --wow "/path/to/World of Warcraft"

   --host is the console's address; --wow is your game folder, the one that holds _classic_beta_ and Data. Nothing needs editing.

   B. By hand, with any FTP program (FileZilla, WinSCP) connected to the console on port 2121:

   Copy this	To this place on the PS5
   the folder title/PPSA99220	/data/homebrew/PPSA99220
   the folder runtime/wowps5/wine	/data/wowps5/wine
   the file runtime/wowps5/ca-certificates.crt	/data/wowps5/ca-certificates.crt
   the three .reg files in runtime/wowps5/prefix	/data/wowps5/prefix/
   everything inside runtime/wowps5/prefix/drive_c	/data/wowps5/prefix/dosdevices/c:/ (the last folder is named c:, with the colon)
   your game's Data folder and _classic_beta_ folder	/data/wowps5/prefix/dosdevices/c:/Games/World of Warcraft/

   From _classic_beta_, leave out WTF, Interface, Cache, Logs and Errors: PC settings do not suit the console, and the game makes these again.

4. On the console, WoW Forever appears on the home screen within a minute. Start it.

5. Sign in. Press L3 + R3 (click both sticks) to type with the on-screen keyboard.

Your installation on the PC is only read. The game is about 64 GiB, so the copy takes a while over FTP.

The first start, and the first visit to each place, are slower than later ones: the graphics driver compiles the game's shaders once and keeps them.

When the game updates

The console cannot update the game itself. Let Battle.net update it on the PC, close the game on the console, then run the installer again with --skip-app:

python3 install.py --host 192.168.1.50 --wow "/path/to/World of Warcraft" --skip-app

It sends only the files the update changed (a few GiB, not the whole game). If your first copy was made by hand or with release 0.1.0, add --since "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM" with the time of that copy, once: an update changes files without changing their size, and the installer has to know which are newer. By hand, copy Data and _classic_beta_ again, replacing what is there.

A new version of this port is installed the same way as the first: unpack the new release and run the installer (or copy title/PPSA99220 again). Your game, settings and shaders on the console stay.

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Playing

Controls

Input	What it does
Controller	The game's own controller support and console UI
Touchpad	Moves the mouse pointer; pressing it is a left click
L3 + R3 (click both sticks together)	Opens the PS5 on-screen keyboard. What you type goes into the text box that has focus (login, search, chat), when you confirm
L3 + R3 again, before pressing anything else	Opens the keyboard with what you just typed, to fix a mistake: confirming replaces the old text. Confirming an empty keyboard just deletes it
USB keyboard and mouse	Work as on a PC

Frame rate above 60 (the uncapped mode)

By default a PS5 app gets exactly as many frames as the TV shows. This port adds a second way of presenting to the graphics driver, where the game draws as fast as it can and the screen shows the newest finished frame at each refresh, with no tearing.

To use it, in the game: System, Graphics, turn Vertical Sync off, and set Max Foreground FPS to what you like (or off). The game's frame counter then goes above 60 and input feels more direct; the TV still shows its own refresh rate. Turning Vertical Sync back on returns to the default.

Good to know

• Leaving the game: use the game's own Exit Game. It takes about ten seconds to close.
• Settings and add-on data are saved on the console when you leave the game normally.
• A "system software" message from the PS5 while the game runs can be dismissed.
• No voice chat.
• Advanced settings go in /data/wowps5/launch.txt on the console, one NAME=value a line. For example PS5_VIDEOOUT_MAILBOX=0 removes the uncapped mode, and VKD3D_CONFIG= turns off single-queue mode (the default is single_queue). Delete the file to return to the defaults.

If something goes wrong

What you see	What to do
The installer says there is no FTP server	Check the console's address, that the jailbreak ran, and that its FTP server is on port 2121 (--port to change it)
No "WoW Forever" on the home screen	ShadowMount must be loaded; it looks in /data/homebrew. Removing the tile and letting it be added again also refreshes its name and pictures
A black screen for a long time on the very first start	Wait: the first start compiles shaders. Later starts are much faster
The game closes on start	Make sure the copy finished (run the installer again; it only sends what is missing) and that the client is the build above
The game has updated on your PC	The console's copy needs the same update: see When the game updates
The picture freezes in the world (sound may carry on)	Close the game from the PS button and start it again. Release 0.1.1 fixes two crashes of this kind that came with client build 70235; a crash still shows as a frozen picture because the game's crash window is not visible on the console
Lua warnings about SavedVariables, or settings that do not stick	Update to the latest release: this was a limit of 250 open files that the port now stays under

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How it works, in one paragraph

A PS5 app cannot start a second program, has 16 KiB memory pages, may not read its own code, and gets about 250 open files. So Wine 11.19 runs as one process inside the app, with its server on a thread and its Unix side linked into the app's executable; a memory layer gives Windows programs the 4 KiB pages and executable memory they expect; vkd3d-proton turns the game's DirectX 12 into Vulkan; and RADV (Mesa's driver, in Mihawk's PS5 port) drives the console's GPU. Every change to Wine is one patch against a pinned revision, and each exists for something measured on the console: see docs/technical-notes.md.

What is in this repository

Here	What
app/	The PS5 app: the platform side (app/ps5), and what it does around Wine (app/runtime: start-up, files, sound, controller, on-screen keyboard)
runtime/wine-ps5/	Every change to Wine as one patch, and the memory layer
runtime/radv-ps5/	The uncapped present mode, as a patch to the graphics driver's display code
tools/	Build, install, run and test scripts; the Windows test programs
docs/	Technical notes: what was measured on the console and why each change exists

Not here: the game, anything of an account, and the third-party source (vendor/, fetched at the revisions pinned in dependencies.json).

Building it yourself

The release bundle is the supported way to install. Building from source works in the author's tree and has not yet been reproduced from a fresh clone, so expect to read the scripts:

python3 tools/bootstrap.py                 # pinned sources and host packages into vendor/ and .deps/
cp .env.example .env                       # then set WOW_INSTALL; console settings go in vendor/PS5_Vulkan/.env
bash tools/wine-ps5/build-radv.sh          # the graphics driver with this project's patch
bash tools/wine-ps5/build-console.sh       # Wine's Unix side, the app, and its deployment to the console
python3 tools/wine-ps5/stage-console.py --all --system32   # Wine's Windows side to the console
python3 tools/wine-ps5/stage-game.py       # your game to the console

The host needs Linux with LLVM 23, mingw-w64, meson, ninja and cmake. runtime/wine-ps5/README.md describes the Wine patch; tools/make-bundle.py makes the release bundle from a console where everything works.

Credits and licences

• Wine (LGPL-2.1-or-later); the patch here is under the same licence.
• vkd3d-proton (LGPL-2.1).
• Mesa RADV (MIT) in Mihawk's PS5 port, and his PS5_Vulkan.
• The PS5 payload SDK.
• The licence texts of everything the app contains are in the bundle under title/PPSA99220/licenses/.

World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. PlayStation and PS5 are trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. The pictures used for the app's tile and background are fan-made from publicly available artwork.