Hi,
I was considering getting a Cedega subscription, since they claim that Warcraft III works well, and then was reading around on the net and saw it mentioned that it actually works under wine just as well. So I thought I'd give it a shot first; it worked well for me, so I thought I'd share my procedure with other Ubuntu users. Here's what to do:
  1. Add the wine repository to your sources list:
    deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/
    either via Synaptic or just add the line to /etc/apt/sources.list
  2. Refresh your package list:
    sudo apt-get update (or click update in Synaptic)
  3. Install winetools (this will install wine also):
    sudo apt-get install winetools
    or in synaptic search for winetools and install
  4. In a terminal, run 'winetools', it should give you a message about wine not having been configured yet, if it doesn't then you probably have a .wine/ directory in your home folder and you might want to delete that to make sure you're starting from scratch here.
    Click QK until you get to the "WineTools" screen. Select the Base setup and press ok. From the Base Setup, Create a fake windows drive; make sure to select the correct mount point for your cdrom drive (probably /media/cdrom0). Next install TrueType Font Arial. Finally, install DCOM98.
  5. Exit winetools and open the wine config file that was created in a text editor (eg nano .wine/config). Look
    for '[Version]' and under that where it says:
    "Windows" = "win98"
    change it to:
    "Windows" = "winxp"
    then save the file and exit.
  6. Now it is time to install Warcraft. Put your cd in the drive and type:
    wine /media/cdrom0/install.exe
    (asssuming that's where your cdrom is mounted)
    install as you usually would (I changed the path to C:\Games\Warcraft III, but that's just a personal preference). Exit the installer when you are finished.
  7. Unfortunately wine will not play the movies (though apparently you can watch them in xine or something) so it's best to move them so the game can not find them:
    cd .wine/fake_windows/Games/Warcraft\ III/
    mv Movies/ Moviez/
  8. Then you can start warcraft with:

    wine "Warcraft III.exe" -opengl

Note: after upgrading to 1.18 warcraft would not run until I turn on '"HardwareAcceleration" = "Emulation"' in the [dsound] section of my wine config file; there was an error and message telling me to do so in my terminal when it failed to run.

Let me know if any of this is unclear, I hope it helps.

Bjorn