Ebonhold Updater

A bash-based updater script for Project Ebonhold, a World of Warcraft custom server. The updater downloads and verifies game files by comparing MD5 hashes against a remote manifest.

As of January 24 2026, checking for updates and downloading updates requires you to be logged using your Project Ebonhold user account. Project Ebonhold's team has said that this is a precausionary measure to avoid issues related to resource management. This script will prompt you for username and password, and will request an authToken from Project Ebonhold's API. It will then store the token in a file called .updaterToken for further use. There is no obfuscation in this script and you can see that the script only connects to Project Ebonhold's API. The token is stored in plain text, but this is the same as the official launcher or your webbrowser does when you are logged into a website like Project Ebonhold. However a webbrowser does obfuscate where it stores the token.

Features

• Automated File Verification: Compares local file MD5 hashes against remote manifest
• GUI Progress Tracking: User-friendly progress dialogs using zenity
• Steam Integration: Seamlessly handles Steam launch arguments
• Game Mods: using --mods=hd_patch you can enable downloading/updating/verifying the hd_patch
• Game Modes: using --game=roguelike for the PTR server, currently it defaults to --game=roguelike-prod

Prerequisites

The following system packages are required:

• curl
• jq

Optional dependency

• zenity

Zenity is needed for a GUI, if you don't have Zenity installed you need to run the script in a terminal (not background task)

All of these are pre-installed on SteamOS and some other game releated distros, if not they should be easy to install (package name is same as the programs name)

Installation

1. Place ebonhold-updater.sh in your World of Warcraft Wrath of the Litchking directory or the directory where you want to download World of Warcraft
2. Make the script executable:

chmod +x ebonhold-updater.sh

Usage

Basic Usage

This will either update your local installation or ask you if you want to download the full game if it doesn't find Wow.exe

./ebonhold-updater.sh

Install/update HD client mod

--mods accepts a comma separated list of mods, at the time of writing only hd_patch is available

./ebonhold-updater.sh --mods=hd_patch

Debug output

Script will output information to the terminal if you run it with the debug flag

./ebonhold-updater --debug
# or
debug=true ./ebonhold-updater.sh

Verify game files

Verifying game files will check all game files, and download, missing, outdated or files that doesn't match.

./ebonhold-updater.sh --verify

Switching to Public Test Realm

At the time of writing two options are available for --game roguelike-prod is the main game, this is the default selection (if you don't use the --game option) roguelike is the Public test realm (ptr)

./ebonhold-updater.sh --game=roguelike

note not having --game=roguelike is the same as --game=roguelike-prod and will download the main game. If you want to stay in PTR permanently make a shortcut including --game=roguelike

if in the future the API changes such that the main game is called roguelike and the ptr is called roguelkike-ptr instead, Ill update the default game, and the readme.

Steam Integration (Optional)

1. If you don't already have World of Warcraft Wrath of the Litchking installed, please run the ebonhold-updater.sh script one time first.
2. Add Wow.exe as a Non-Steam Game
3. Make sure "Start In" target in Steam is the folder that has Wow.exe, it should already be the correct value.
4. Set Force the Use of a Specific Steam Play Compatibility tool by: right clicking the game, Properties, Compatibility.
5. Add the following as a launch option

./ebonhold-updater.sh %command%

Technically, the script will detect it is running in Steam, and rewrite Steam's launch command so that the script is running inside the Steam Runtime, and inside gamescope (if in use). We need to do this so we are able to display the window with the progress bar on systems that use gamescope

TODO

• Optionally display the latest news entry using --news
• Improve handling og --game= currently it works fine, but when Project Ebonhold add more game modes we might have to handle deleting files when switching game mode