copy's of wow

[Theanara]

hi guys,

just a small question. ive readed a few times that ppl completely copy their wow-folders for each account they run.

my question... why?

Im currently running 3 clients on 1 pc at the same time and it goes smoothly, (later on ill add a 2nd pc for the last 2 clients).

So why make multiple copy's off your wow directory's?

[Wilbur]

Some people have problems with Launching WoW 3x, some people don't, Its entirely dependant on your setup.

[laeelin]

Different settings, different hotkeys, different add-on's, ect...

Thats why I run more than one copy of the wow folder...

My main has many add-on's, and her movement is bound to "A,S,W,D", but not do the arrow keys.

My clones use almost no add-on's, and dont have movement bound to "A,S,W,D", ect...

This way I can move all my clones with the arrow keys, without moving my main (primarly used to make my clones turn for LOS) and move my main without touching my clones....

[Theanara]

Thanks for the quick reply's i tought i was doing something completely wrong. :)

[The IT Monkey]

Having copies of the wow folder also allows you to not have to type in account names each time.

[mxracer050]

you guy have it all wrong!!

having copies of WoW is just plain sexy :wink:

[kllrwlf]

Different video settings, more (or less) mods.

I have mine on 2 different hard drives... in theory it runs smoother.. but I haven't done any tests. :)

[Wilbur]

you guy have it all wrong!!

having copies of WoW is just plain sexy :wink:

No, having multiple copies of WoW opened over one computer will result in slowing your HDD's significantly. If you have one copy opened five times at least you will benefit from the cached data. It'd be well worth investing in 4 low capacity SATA 2's Raid level 0 and stick WoW on there, should give you some much improved load times ;-)

[Tamu]

How do you handle the patching process for each instance of wow.exe?

[keyclone]

after each update, where you will need to download an update, you would have to run the launcher for each folder... updating the files for each copy as needed.

after that, you can run the wow.exe directly until the next update.

[fling]

I have 2x SATA 3.0 160g HD's in a RAID0 config, and it works great. Being lazy, I just let each of the 4 installs patch itself. As far as why I run 4 copies of the game files, it crashes if I run them all from the same install. Vista seems a bit... quirky if you will, so I just go with what works.

[Crunchie]

you guy have it all wrong!!

having copies of WoW is just plain sexy :wink:

No, having multiple copies of WoW opened over one computer will result in slowing your HDD's significantly. If you have one copy opened five times at least you will benefit from the cached data. It'd be well worth investing in 4 low capacity SATA 2's Raid level 0 and stick WoW on there, should give you some much improved load times ;-)Thats what i was hoping to do with mine, especially since i will only have 2, MAYBE 3 toons going at once.

[Djarid]

has anyone tried using junction.exe to set hardlinks to a single instance of the WOW subfolders, leaving the config.wtf and Interface as a real entries?

this would mean one instance to patch and possibly the disk access benefits of a single copy but could give the flexibility of many.

I would try it myself... but after a day at work managing a huge Active Directory... I just like to play! (and with a baby daughter and pregnant GF I don't get the time anyway ;) )

[keyclone]

the only reason for multiple wow folders would be different configurations for each instance. you actually get increased memory usage this way, as DLLs would not be shared.

keyclone could manage the profiles, insuring a different profile just before starting wow. only problem would be changes to the profile would have to be done through keyclone or an editor outside of the game... as any changes saved within the game would be lost/overwritten by the other wow instance.

i have read some requests for keyclone to manage "profiles".. is this what people meant?

[Djarid]

Keyclone can already change gResolution... can it change the other graphical settings?

if yes then that is probably all that is needed....

Saved Variables are character specific
Addons can be disabled by character
keybindings can be character specific

anything I have missed?

[steelfrog]

I have three separate installations because the video, interface settings and mods differ from the main to the "follower" accounts.

[Skulk]

has anyone tried using junction.exe to set hardlinks to a single instance of the WOW subfolders, leaving the config.wtf and Interface as a real entries?

I tried it, but it works not as perfect as you might think.
The Folders, were you setup Junctions, have to be empty. So you can't set a Folder "WoW_1" to point at "WoW_0" and have another Directory in it which does "WoW_0" not have.

The only possibility you might have, is to set junctions for every subfolder in "WoW_1"

But then, you still have the problem, that you have du duplicate WoW.exe and everything in your WoW Rootfolder...
A workaround could be a simple sync-batch, which copies all these these files beetween all wow-instances. (this shouldn't be much more than 15MB)