Commit d836a5062141dd42293ed044debbaf25f914f383 broke sound in World of Warcraft. Yes, it sound strange but after I analyzed the issue it makes perfectly sense: a commit to dlls/winex11.drv/event.c broke sound.
According to the wine source and the ICCCM spec, wine uses either the 'Passive' or 'Locally active' input model. InputHint is always set and WM_TAKE_FOCUS only if "UseTakeFocus" is set in the registry. InputHint indicates that the window will have focus set by the WM, and WM_TAKE_FOCUS indicates that the app may set focus to it's own subwindows. Both metacity an compiz _don't_ send WM_TAKE_FOCUS to windows that have InputHint set!
The problem that arises from [1] is the following: If the WM calls XSetInputFocus() then the xserver sends a FocusIn event to the wine window, but wine ignores that event and waits for an WM_TAKE_FOCUS message. But that message never arrives because the WM never sends it. The above mentioned commit sets the foreground window to desktop if the WoW window looses focus. This makes WoW stop sound output. But the WoW window never regains focus and WoW won't resume sound output. I assume this bug has been in wine for a long time and even though it's a bug I enjoyed being able to switch away from WoW and still hear the sound (fishing/grinding while reading slashdot, hacking on wine etc).
The solution? Remove [1] (to process the FocusIn event) or remove InputHint from WM_HINTS. That would fix around the missing sound. Anyhow, 'sound while WoW lost focus' will be lost forever and I imagine there's no way to make that possible again but using a custom patch.
tom
[1]: http://source.winehq.org/source/dlls/winex11.drv/event.c#L509