Opening Two windows on Mac??

[Pumba]

How can i open two WoW windows on Mac? If i try to double click on the application it just brings me to the current window i have open. Is there anyway for this to work for Apple? Please let me know :)

[keyclone]

i don't have a mac... but... make sure your wow is set to run in windowed mode.

log in, go to video settings, check windowed mode, exit completely so the settings will save. then try starting more then 1. if the mac is emulating the windows desktop, then it should look like 2 wow windows on the Windows desktop

[unionjack]

yes you can, make a folder called wowcopy inside the world of warcraft folder in your application folder

COPY the following into it, from the main regular folder
cache
interface
logs
realmlist.wtf
world of warcraft.app
wtf

the last step is to create a directory alias to data in the wowcopy folder
(do this by dragging the 'data' folder into your wowcopy folder holding option (alt) and command (apple button)

my second instalation only takes up 95 megs of room, and a lot of that is just addons

I had a shellscript do mine, I'll try to dig it up.

the second copy will have its own interface and macros based on how you ahd it when you made the copy, if you make changes in the copy they will stay there and not go into the original one. meaning, make sure you play the same account with the same wow copy or you'll have to set up your interface twice.


sites:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=75341906&sid=1

if the forum expired the important part:



I came up with a helpful shell script that will let you run two clients, but keep the cache separate between the two, and only uses about 17MB:

#!/bin/sh
p1="/Applications/World of Warcraft"
p2=$p1/WoWCopy
mkdir "$p2"
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p2/Data"
cp "$p1/realmlist.wtf" "$p2/realmlist.wtf"
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft.app"

Copy/paste those 7 simple lines into a new TextEdit doc, and then save the file in your home directory as "wowcopy.sh", i.e. /Users/YourName/wowcopy.sh should be the path to the script document.

Open Terminal and type the following two commands:
chmod +x ~/wowcopy.sh
~/wowcopy.sh

Once you've done this, check your World of Warcraft folder for a new folder called WoWCopy. Inside should be three files: a Data folder, a realmlist.wtf text file, and a WoW.app. Launch the WoW.app!

(This is essentially what Aerdrig was recommending up above, but most people probably have no idea what symbolic links are, and much less how to create them via Terminal, so hopefully this'll help.)


said Fysh< slashdance > Eredar

if you run into errors running the shellscript it could be because you need an administrator to run it

if you run the game under an underprivileged account, before running the shell script type. if not skip to part 2.

1. su <your admin name>
then enter the password

2. then when running the command type
sudo chmod +x ~/wowcopy.sh
sudo ~/wowcopy.sh


(wow lotsa edits)

[Borogove]

If all you want is to *run* two instances, then it's much, much easier.

"Applications" on a mac are actually directories. When you double-click on them, it runs a program called "open" on the directory, which, amongst other things, checks to see whether the application is already running. If it is, it switches to it instead of running another instance.

To bypass this, you can just run the program directly. For World of Warcraft on my Mac, run this at a terminal prompt:

/Applications/World\ of\ Warcraft/World\ of\ Warcraft.app/Contents/MacOS/World\ of\ Warcraft

Under a unix, the "/" character separates directories and the "\" is the escape which treats the very next character as a literal; basically, it allows you to talk about files which have spaces in their names, since "World of Warcraft" is very different from "World" "of" "Warcraft". If you're not familiar with unix or dos, just ignore the explanation and run the line above blindly (with the caveat that I'm assuming you installed WoW in the default location, like I did).

[unionjack]

If all you want is to *run* two instances, then it's much, much easier.

"Applications" on a mac are actually directories. When you double-click on them, it runs a program called "open" on the directory, which, amongst other things, checks to see whether the application is already running. If it is, it switches to it instead of running another instance.

To bypass this, you can just run the program directly. For World of Warcraft on my Mac, run this at a terminal prompt:

/Applications/World\ of\ Warcraft/World\ of\ Warcraft.app/Contents/MacOS/World\ of\ Warcraft

Under a unix, the "/" character separates directories and the "\" is the escape which treats the very next character as a literal; basically, it allows you to talk about files which have spaces in their names, since "World of Warcraft" is very different from "World" "of" "Warcraft". If you're not familiar with unix or dos, just ignore the explanation and run the line above blindly (with the caveat that I'm assuming you installed WoW in the default location, like I did).

how long have you been doing this? aren't there issues with cache corruption?

[Borogove]

With that method, it's generally just for leaving raid bank alts outside instances or in Shattrath for people's consumables. They get activity, but it's relatively tame (no UI changes, not a lot of moving around, etc.). To multi-box, I use five separate machines with their own installations. That said, I've had 2-3 instances up like this for several hours many times without an issue.

So I guess my stance is:
1) I agree that this is not the way you want to be multi-boxing.
2) I've encountered little trouble running multiple instances as-is for utility purposes. (This is entirely anecdotal, your mileage may vary.)
3) (somewhat unrelated) There is no inherent problem that comes with running a generic Mac application directly from its binary; whatever data contention issues arise are due to the application's design and should be solved by understanding what data the application does save and where. (This is exactly what jack's post explains how to do.)

[unionjack]

3) (somewhat unrelated) There is no inherent problem that comes with running a generic Mac application directly from its binary; whatever data contention issues arise are due to the application's design and should be solved by understanding what data the application does save and where.
agree, and since we don't exactly know what wow is doing with the cache folder, I prefer to play safe.

what I've been doing is playing two copies, one auto follow, one a level 70 running the guy through places. for this kinda thing, two copies on one machine works great. I can even do it in bed with no mouse. there are performance problems, like sometimes the guy autofollows too far, and I have to put one of them on the lowest settings, the other on low settings with decent sight distance. but no big deal.

my machine is a mbp 2.16gh core 1 duo 2gigs ram idunno maybe with your rig, you'll (pumba) get decent results for "serious" multiboxing.

[Psyche_DH]

I have been double boxing on my G5 and now my Intel PowerMac for quite a long time. I have never had any issues with cache corruption or otherwise. I do this without two copies of my WOW directory by simply using this shell script:


# /bin/bash

PATH="/Applications/World of Warcraft"
APP="World of Warcraft.app/Contents/MacOS/World of Warcraft"
LOG="LaunchWoW.log"

"$PATH/$APP" > $LOG &

You put that into a text file, and edit the PATH to where your Warcraft folder really is.
Save the file to somewhere on your computer as "StartWoW.bash"
Right click on the StartWoW.bash and get the info on it.
Change the "Open With" option to Terminal.

Drag StartWoW.bash onto your dock (in the documents section, its a file not an app after all).

Now just click on that as many times as you want instances of WOW on your machine.

I have used this method to get as many as five open on my machine, and the only adverse side effects have been degraded performance. No cache corruption or anything else.

The main benefit to this is no symbolic link maintenance (I did that before), and no patching multiple installs of WOW and maintaining two AddOns directories (I've done that too). Also save a ton of disk space compared with simply copying the WOW directory.

[shivetya]

I have been double boxing on my G5 and now my Intel PowerMac for quite a long time. I have never had any issues with cache corruption or otherwise. I do this without two copies of my WOW directory by simply using this shell script:

[code:1]# /bin/bash

PATH="/Applications/World of Warcraft"
APP="World of Warcraft.app/Contents/MacOS/World of Warcraft"
LOG="LaunchWoW.log"

"$PATH/$APP" > $LOG &[/code:1]

You put that into a text file, and edit the PATH to where your Warcraft folder really is.
Save the file to somewhere on your computer as "StartWoW.bash"
Right click on the StartWoW.bash and get the info on it.
Change the "Open With" option to Terminal.

Drag StartWoW.bash onto your dock (in the documents section, its a file not an app after all).

Now just click on that as many times as you want instances of WOW on your machine.

I have used this method to get as many as five open on my machine, and the only adverse side effects have been degraded performance. No cache corruption or anything else.

The main benefit to this is no symbolic link maintenance (I did that before), and no patching multiple installs of WOW and maintaining two AddOns directories (I've done that too). Also save a ton of disk space compared with simply copying the WOW directory.


Guess I will have to give this a try...

[shivetya]

# /bin/bash

PATH="/Applications/World of Warcraft"
APP="World of Warcraft.app/Contents/MacOS/World of Warcraft"
LOG="LaunchWoW.log"

"$PATH/$APP" > $LOG &

OK, has anyone gotten this to work. I guess I am still mac stupid.

my wow install is in /Applications/WOW


all I get is an open Terminal Window with iMac:~ Monolith$

(which I guess is my volume name or something silly like that)


Actually if I type it in a terminal window as show it works, just not clicking off the dock

[TheBigBB]

I don't know what you guys are talking about. I hit the "open apple" + M on my keyboard to go from windowed to full screen. It also remembers what you last had it set on when you exit the game. I make one very large main window with a small sliver on the right side where I stick the other, smaller windows and can click to look at and control them. Actually pretty easy to loot like this, too.