Mac Multiboxing (a summary 2)

[DivrDwn]

Hi guys this is my first post here on dual-boxing.com and I have a question.

I'm a complete iMac newbie, I formerly dual-boxed on a PC and recently (5 months) switched over to an iMac. I have ultimately zero Mac knowledge (not that I had much PC knowledge). I would like to start dual-boxing again, but on my iMac this time. This thread actually makes my head hurt to read , so I was wondering if I could trouble one of the Mac experts for some help. I'd like to possibly talk one-on-one to someone, perhaps on our teamspeak server, to get a little help with setting things up. I'm not looking for anything super hellish, just 2 accounts. Feel free to private message me or email.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[MultiMacBox23]

simple way to get started is

1: duplicate your warcraft folder (i've tried just duplicating the app, but there are issues with some settings getting remembered) folder is about 8-9gigs, make sure you got the space.
2: download clonekeys (mac program similar to keyclone), do a search on these forums for the link.
3: open both copies of WoW
4: open clonekeys, configure your toggle key to turn key boradcasting on/off, add each window of WoW
5: start making your macros, and experiment. i suggest browsing through the Macro/Addon forums, and look at the stickies.

i suggest that you close all other programs completely (right click or control-click, the programs open on the dock, and quit them) whewn you close a program window on OSX, it will sit in active in memory so that i can quickly be reloaded/called back into action. this will tend to soak up more of your system memory, and cause your computer to pageswap to disk like crazy, and dramatically effect performance (especially while entering a major city/or heavily populated area).

also, do a search on how to edit your .WTF file to set your maximum FPS for WoW when it is the forground window, and when it is the background window. acceptable numbers will vary depending on the performance of your graphics card. on my PowerMac G5 (dual processor 2.7 /w ATI X800XT card) running 5 copies of wow i ran 60fps on the foreground, and 15fps on the background, on my MacPro (2.8ghz x 8-Core, Nvidia 8800gt) running 5 copies of wow i have it set to 300fps forground, and 60fps background.

my only limiting factor right now is i need more memory, 8 gigs isnt cutting it, i'm still getting memory pageswaps to disk in high population areas, need to move to 16gigs of ram. Each wow consumes 2+gigs easily, so memory is your friend the more copies of WoW you plan on running.

[Valorin]

I've been meaning to update and clean up the post, as I have some more information about iMacs specifically. The tried the iMac I mention above and when I got up to 3 accounts at once, I had to stop. 4 was really unplayable. This is with no RAM upgrade from factory, so MultiMacBox is right, RAM is your friend. I've tried Clonekey and it works great. Easy to use too - just click on ''add" and then click on a window of an active running instance of WoW (IIRC). Make sure to set a toggle - I had some trouble with that. Also, on my mac I use the multiple apps and I haven't had a problem. Just drag the .app with copy or copy/paste to the same folder and rename. You have to recopy/paste every time you patch though. I haven't had issues with settings and, in fact, I only have to change my settings once. I've also gone with the multiple folders and that works just as well and allows you to have different settings if you have that need. Keep up with the questions, we're keen to help.

[DivrDwn]

Thanks for the responses guys, I'll give it all a shot when I get home tonight. I'll keep the questions coming as I get them!

[DivrDwn]

YAY I got it all figured out, I'm tinkering with Macros now and actually bought another account to try 3 boxing. I made my first official multibox instance run last night and it was great. I'm hooked. I ran my lvl 20 shammy through Deadmines with my lvl 70 lock and lvl 60 Hunter. A bit overkill yes but I wanted to try out managing 3 at a time. Shammy was only getting about 20xp per elite kill but that wasn't the point

I lead with the hunter on auto-shot, Shammy threw lighting bolts and lock threw shadow bolts. Hunter did bulk of the work as most elites were dead before Shadow and lightning bolts had fired. Only time I threw cat in to tank was on VC. Super easy and fun. Thanks for all the help guys.

[Schwarz]

Has anyone tried 5 boxing on an iMac with a ram upgrade? I was thinking that they only way to really 5 box with a single mac would be going with the mac pro. I would love to stick with macs but I don't see the point spending ~$2.8k for a mac pro when I can build a pc for ~1.8k. Just wondering what results you guys have tried.

I myself have 5 boxed on my macbook. It was really laggy. I would bring up the 5 wow's and stack them one on top of each other. I cleared Ragefire Chasm and was working on WC. WC was hard with all the pats that would run into me. Going into the ORG was a freakin nightmare.

[Eteocles]

Where's the ctrl-alt-del comic about mac gamers when you need it...it was buckley showing a friend some specimens in tubes...first tube was labelled "PC Gamer" and it had a frothy kid at his pc playing...then they came to a tube labelled "Mac Gamer" and it was empty...friend asks "But it's empty..." Buckley says "THATS BECAUSE THERE ARE NO MAC GAME(R)S YOU DUMBFUCK!" ;)

[antishadow]

Has anyone tried 5 boxing on an iMac with a ram upgrade? I was thinking that they only way to really 5 box with a single mac would be going with the mac pro. I would love to stick with macs but I don't see the point spending ~$2.8k for a mac pro when I can build a pc for ~1.8k. Just wondering what results you guys have tried.

I myself have 5 boxed on my macbook. It was really laggy. I would bring up the 5 wow's and stack them one on top of each other. I cleared Ragefire Chasm and was working on WC. WC was hard with all the pats that would run into me. Going into the ORG was a freakin nightmare.

You'll find it just as bad on your imac as you did on your macbook.

I 5 box on my imac (aluminum 24") with maxed ram (4gb) and got almost the exact same performance on that than on my macbook pro (also maxed on the ram).

Overall - Its possible but its not optimal. I'm going to be putting in an order for a mac pro here shortly - its really all about the memory. I think that if they made imacs more expandable in the memory arena we'd have no problems 5 boxing on these. I need the machine anyways for running more virtual machines for working so maybe I can write it off or something 8|