MAC OSX WoW: My Dualboxing Warlock exp Update. My thoughts so far!

[Goldie_Locks]

Just wanted to update anyone who is a newbie, like me, of my experience so far Dualboxing on a Mac. I first set out to Dualbox 2 Locks. But thru suggestions from the pros on here, I switched the main to a Dwarf Paly. And let me tell you...

A Dwarf Paly & Gnome Lock kick ass together! Amazing synergy! I leveled the Paly/Lock to Lvl10 50% faster than I did lvl my 2 Locks together to Lvl6. Thanks for the tips guys. I had no idea how well designed the Paly is! (Lock user here - never had another class!). I will continue on with this setup: Paly Main, Lock follower/slave. I already have a Lvl80 Demo Lock waiting in Dalaran for these two new toons so I will keep it this way and use the Paly/Lock combo for PVE and the Duo Locks for PVP (Muah hahaha WSG & WG should be FUN!).

About my Mac
There seems to be a bit of a lag and some graphical errors sometimes. Even though I have the best computer - I mean the best for sound editing, so I figured it should have worked for Wow! My set up is:
2.8ghz 8 core Mac Intel
10G Ram
1TB HD Main (Main WoW account on it)
1TB HD 2nd internal storage (Slave Wow account on it)
Nvida 512mb 8800 GT
1 22" Monitor
AT&T Ethernet connected DSL with 1.5mbs transfer rate
CloneKeys keyboard software

The problems I faced so far (Not sure if every computer goes through these)
1). Slave Toon turns black color on Main Window and Main Toon turns black on Slave window after more mobs appear on screen
2). Lag about every other 10 minutes of play -especially when I pull multiple targets
3). Disconnects from server at least twice an hour - and sometimes right when I am collecting a quest item for both toons (Grrr)
4). Slaves FOLLOW takes a while to start. I find it annoying that she walk so far behind me and not as close as others' slaves looked in their youtube videos.
5). Using CloneKeys keyboard software. The newer ClonedKeys DID NOT work on my Mac! Not sure why. It would not let me broadcast anything from the keyboard no matter how I tried to troubleshoot. So I went back to the original CloneKeys which works fine.

Solutions:
1). I tried lowering all graphics for both windowed accounts to minimal (looks so ugly). Helped a bit with Lag. But what is the point of playing if I have to look at graphics that remind me of Maniac Mansion back in 1996?! LOL! I don't like gimping graphics, so I upped them a bit but the lag came back. Grrrr.
2). I probably should invest in another monitor. Maybe the windowed mode I have them setup as with the windows overlapping a bit might be the route of all my graphical problems.
3). Another alternative is I may have to boot Windows on my Mac with Fusion emulation & play WoW there. I was told that it is a lot better. I love my Mac machine, but I am not stubborn at all when one company or the other does something better. I know PC still rock for games so I might do that and see if that helps.

That is it for now. Thanks guys for all your help! I will write another update when I hit lvl 30.

PEACE OUT!

[mikekim]

5. ClonedKeys has issues if you have applied the latest updates to your system. it is an issue that is being worked on at the moment

[Fef]

A few remarks :
- Your video glitches look pretty much like a video card driver issue. Did you update drivers recently. Ok, drivers are not updated too often on Mac.
- Seen from your main's window, your slave should look like it follows from very far. This is just a latency issue. It must be much closer in "reality" (like seen from a third person).
- Do you have a good internet connection ? You should not get disconnected from the game that frequently, if at all.
- With this kind of machine and only two clients, you should not see any lag, at least not in newbie zones. Even Dalaran should be rather smooth. The only thing you could really improve is to add a SSD and put you WoW folders on it.
- I would recommend installing windows on a bootcamp partition (real dual boot install, no virtualization) and do all your gaming from there. Several concurrent WoW clients work really better under Windows XP than under MacOS on my machine (my set-up is described in this thread ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=111158&highlight=Five+boxing+iMac#post111158') if you are interested). Also, running Windows make Octopus or Keyclone accessible (I love the PiP features).

Have fun ! :)

[elsegundo]

glad you took the pally as your main.

when i was playing a lock in instances and stuff pre-boxing days, the pally was my tank of choice.

[Indestructigal]

The problems I faced so far (Not sure if every computer goes through these)
1). Slave Toon turns black color on Main Window and Main Toon turns black on Slave window after more mobs appear on screen
2). Lag about every other 10 minutes of play -especially when I pull multiple targets
3). Disconnects from server at least twice an hour - and sometimes right when I am collecting a quest item for both toons (Grrr)
4). Slaves FOLLOW takes a while to start. I find it annoying that she walk so far behind me and not as close as others' slaves looked in their youtube videos.
I don't experience any of these problems dual-boxing paladins on my iMac, so I don't think these are hardware issues.


5). Using CloneKeys keyboard software. The newer ClonedKeys DID NOT work on my Mac! Not sure why. It would not let me broadcast anything from the keyboard no matter how I tried to troubleshoot. So I went back to the original CloneKeys which works fine.
There are instructions floating around here (http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=162067&highlight=clonedkeys#post162067) for building ClonedKeys with the same patch that is in the newest CloneKeys. It's a bit messy, but you only have to do it once. If you're happy with CloneKeys - don't bother. I just can't stand not having my movement keys excluded (and the beta exclusion functionality in CloneKeys was not working for me).


3). Another alternative is I may have to boot Windows on my Mac with Fusion emulation & play WoW there. I was told that it is a lot better. I love my Mac machine, but I am not stubborn at all when one company or the other does something better. I know PC still rock for games so I might do that and see if that helps.
Windows WoW has a definite advantage in terms of 1) better tools (Keyclone and Octopus) and 2) Maximizer/PiP functionality. In Windows, WoW clients can be resized to any window size. In MacOS, you cannot shrink the window beyond it's base resolution. Probably not a big issue for dual-boxing, but if you ever want to start running more than two clients, it becomes much harder on a Mac without multiple screens.

I'll second Fef's suggestion about Bootcamp over Fusion. I've done both and Bootcamp is much much much better for WoW. I can multibox five clients on my iMac under Bootcamp without too much pain, but running even one WoW client under Fusion wasn't much fun! :-)

[shivetya]

Just wanted to throw in my two cents. I multi-box on an iMac, 2.16 C2D, 3gb RAM, and a 256mb 7600GT card; yeah one of the good white iMacs.

Textures going black is a driver issue. Some notes on how to make it easier ( I ran five sessions at once on my machine ... not fun but it worked)

You only need to turn down the graphic options for the second session. Best to turn off all sound for it as well.

If your "lag" and disconnects are cyclic then check your system for some event which is waking up. I do not let time machine back up my alternate copy of wow (only really need one copy but two makes it easier to deal with no matter how many accounts are active)