This tutorial is the FIRST worldwide guide about how to play the new beta of Diablo 3 in offline mode in GNU/Linux system — meaning you don’t need a key to connect into Battlenet. But hey, the only thing you can do is just wondering into the New Tristram city and nothing more. Yes, I know that there are maps you can add later in order to explore the wilderness, but again if you are a true fan of Diablo 3 and you can’t wait to spam your left click, that’s your chance. First of all you gonna need lot’s of time to accomplish this tutorial due to Linux difficulties, but yet it’s quite simple. If you already have a Windows system installed, then it’s about 30 minutes to get all this done, but if you don’t have Windows in dual boot you will need to install a VirtualBox for that.
Let me tell you some things about my computer first. I use OpenSUSE 11.4 - Tumbleweed – AMD64 bit. My graphics card is AMD Radeon HD 4890 using the latest AMD Proprietary Catalyst (aka FLGRX driver). Make sure you have your proprietary drivers installed, or you cannot load any 3D Game. If you want to test whether your graphics drivers are properly installed try to run Unigine Heaven benchmark.
1) Install AMD Proprietary drivers for your graphics card
If you have an OpenSUSE linux distribution like me, you can smile 
yeah, all you have to do is 1-click install to install the drivers. So freaking simple. In other distros, like Ubuntu, please follow my old guide. If you use Fedora 15 then follow this guide over here. Either OpenSUSE, Ubuntu or Fedora, in the end you have to create xorg.conf. This is a task easily completed by typing as root:
# aticonfig --initial
Reboot and voila 
Before you proceed in this guide, please make sure you have properly installed your GPU’s proprietary drivers, or you cannot load any 3D Game. If you want to test whether your graphics drivers are properly installed try to run Unigine Heaven benchmark.That’s a killer but a valid test about your computer can actually run games in Linux using 3D acceleration and OpenGL 4.0 .
2) Install WINE and configure it
First thing we need is WINE – Wine is Not Emulator (just in case you didn’t know that ). Open a terminal, login as root and install wine package. If you run OpenSUSE like me, just type:
zypper in wine
If you run Ubuntu just type:
sudo apt-get install wine
or if you run Fedora, just type
yum install wine
Next, feel free to configure your Wine by typing: winecfg or just install some Windows stuff by typing: winetricks . Last but not least you gonna need vcrun2010 libraries, so go for it:
winetricks vcrun2010 winetricks mono28
3) Go to Step 4 :p
4) Find a computer running Windows to install Diablo 3
Let me explain you why… You need a Microsoft Windows operating system to install Diablo III because the installer hangs on in Linux…. you will probably keep waiting and waiting for an eternity – trapped inside an endless loop – and eventually Diablo 3 will never be installed… So you need to install Diablo in a Windows machine and then copy-paste the files back to your Linux system.
5) If you found a Windows computer, avoid this step
5.1 )Install VirtualBox and then run
Windows inside Linux
Ok, let’s try to install VirtualBox in order to install Windows inside OpenSUSE. Follow my guide to install Virtualbox and then setup your Windows 7 64bit — it doesn’t matter if you install Windows XP or Vista or 7. Just make sure you are going to install the same architecture similar to your linux distro. For example I am using OpenSUSE x86_64, so I installed Windows 7 64bit into my VirtualBox. Pay attention that Diablo III installer requires 14GB free space at least, so prepare to create a 30GB virtual dynamic disk for VirtualBox. Once you have your Windows system properly installed, verify that Internet is enabled as well as USB flash disk. Again, if you have any problem, follow my guide about VirtualBox installation.
6) Download and Install Diablo III Beta
Whether you found a Windows computer or paid a visit to the girl next door who runs Windows vista or you have chosen the hard way of virtualbox (step 5), now make sure you are running into Windows environment. Okay guys, now it’s time to download and install Diablo 3 into our (virtual) Windows system. Download Diablo III closed beta
7) Copy paste the files back to Linux
Once the installation is completed you have to copy the files onto a USB flashdrive or whatever media your want (eg a DVD). The C:/Program Files/Diablo III (or something like
that) is about 3.6 GB in size. After applying the copy of the installation folder, go back to your Linux computer and paste the files into your home directory. Try an ls command from the bash termial and verify the following contents:
App-0.dmp Diablo III.exe icuin44.dll
Logs
Bnet Diablo III.mfil icuuc44.dll
Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest
D3Debug.txt Diablo III.tfil ijl15.dll msvcp90.dll
Data_D3 fmodex.dll InspectorReporter msvcr90.dll
Diablo III Beta Launcher.exe icudt44.dll Launcher.db Updates
Someone asked me: Why don’t you run Diablo 3 inside virtualbox ? The answer is because you can’t… Diablo III requires an actual GPU (AMD or NVIDIA or Intel) and not VirtualBox driver stuff.
If you try to play Diablo 3 inside your virtualbox that’s what you gonna get back in response: Your GPU is not supported.
8 ) Download and run the local server
Because we don’t have a beta key to access into the Battlenet servers, we are going to emulate a server like these in our local network, listen over TCP 1349 port. Please download the server, called
D3Sharp.exe from Filebeam filehosting services for free. After downloading the server, extract its contents into a folder and run launch it using wine. You are going to see this output:
[ Info] [Program]: D3Sharp v0.0.4283.15784 warming-up.. [ Info] [Server]: Game-Server is listening on 127.0.0.1:1999... [ Info] [Server]: Bnet-Server is listening on 0.0.0.0:1345...
This means your server is up and running. Congratulations guys, now let’s move on and launch the game too.
9) Launch Diablo III.exe using parameters to connect in your local
server
You have to launch Diablo III.exe and connect it to your local server instead of official online Battlenet’s. So open a terminal and go over the directory you copied the Diablo files (from Windows). Run the following command:
wine Diablo\ III.exe -w -launch -auroraaddress 127.0.0.1:1345
the -w parameter is not necessary and you can avoid it. It loads your game into free-transform window mode instead of fullscreen. If you want fullscreen gameplay remove this command ( -w ).
10) Type any username and any password
(whatever you want) and play the beta offline \m/. Check my screenshot 
