User:Dewin14294/Multiple WoW Installs

This is a guide for how to have multiple 'virtual' World of Warcraft installations, or clones, all sharing the same physical space on disk but with separate Interface and WTF folders.

Target Audience
The following people might find this guide useful:
 * Users who multibox can have separate sets of addons and options for characters. For instance, one WoW copy might run at full settings, with other copies running at low resolution and minimal graphic settings.
 * People who want to try drastically overhauling their Addons without breaking their existing setup.
 * People with WoW installed on a laptop who want different profiles based on whether they're connected to an external monitor/etc or not.
 * People with WoW installed on a removable drive or network server who want different profiles based on which computer they're playing from.

This guide assumes a moderate amount of technical experience.

Windows

 * Operating system that supports NTFS, such as Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7
 * World of Warcraft must be installed on an NTFS filesystem.
 * All clones must be located on the same physical drive -- i.e. they cannot be split between C: and D:. There is some trickery that can work around this, but that is beyond the scope of this guide.
 * The program Link Shell Extension makes things drastically easier, but is not required if you're willing to work from a command prompt.
 * The program mklink, available from Microsoft (and probably installed as part of Link Shell Extension) if you do not already have it.
 * Administrator access to your machine.

Macintosh

 * Filesystem that supports symbolic links
 * Read access to your 'master' WoW directory
 * Write access to your clone directories(s)

Linux

 * Filesystem that supports symbolic links
 * Ability to launch WoW via WINE (beyond the scope of this guide)
 * Read access to your 'master' WoW directory
 * Write access to your clone directories(s)

Concept
Most modern filesystems support the concept of 'symbolic links', 'hard links' and/or 'junctions'.
 * Symbolic links are similar to Windows shortcuts but operate on a deeper level.
 * Hard links essentially are multiple references to a collection of data on disk and typically only apply to files, not directories. Usually the mapping of file names to their associated data is 1:1, Hard links allow multiple files to map to the same data.  Operations that replace a file typically break the link (the modified instance gets its own set of data, the other copies remain untouched).  Notably, links to files modified in WoW patch will always break.  Hardlinks cannot cross filesystem barriers.  (You cannot hardlink from C: to D:)
 * Junctions are a Windows-specific linking of directories, similar to symbolic links.

Since we want separate Interface and WTF folders, we can't simply make one symlink or junction from the main WoW install directory to a copy. What we do instead is make a new "clone" directory that initially contains nothing but links to all of the files and subdirectories in the "master" directory except for the Interface and WTF folders, since we want it to have its own independant copies of these.

Windows
Assuming World of Warcraft is installed in C:\WoW and you'd like to have a clone copy installed in C:\WoWClone. See about breakage on patch days.

Using Link Shell Extension

 * 1) Create a new directory named C:\WoWClone
 * 2) Select all of the subfolders (Data, Updates, etc.) in C:\WoW
 * 3) Right-click-drag all of the folders except Interface and WTF from C:\WoW to C:\WoWClone and select Drop Here -> Junction
 * 4) Right-click drag all the files (not folders) from C:\WoW to C:\WoWClone and select Drop Here -> Hardlink Clone
 * 5) Follow the instructions under

Using mklink

 * 1) Get to an administrative command prompt.
 * 2) * To do this on Windows 7, go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories, right click on "Command Prompt" and choose "Run as Administrator"
 * 3) Follow the instructions under
 * 1) Follow the instructions under
 * 1) Follow the instructions under
 * 1) Follow the instructions under

Final Steps

 * 1) Delete C:\WoWClone\Interface and C:\WoWClone\WTF.  You may also choose to delete C:\WoWClone\Cache.
 * 2) Recreate the above folders, either as empty folders (for a fresh start) or regular copies from C:\WoW (if you want to start with your existing UI but make modifications)
 * 3) Adjust permissions on the above folders to ensure the account you run WoW under has full access to them.
 * 4) Launch WoW using the launcher.exe or wow.exe in both locations (one at a time) and verify they are indeed operating independantly.

Macintosh/Linux
TODO: Somebody write this, using

Caveats

 * Clones on Windows will be broken on a patch, since changes to any of the files in the main WoW directory (as opposed to subdirectories) will break the links and leave the clones in a half-patched, half-unpatched state. To fix this, delete all of the files (not folders) in the clone's top directory and then re-link them (Step 4 with Link Shell Extension or Step 5 with mklink)
 * Attempting to patch multiple clones at once will likely fail and might break your install. Don't.
 * If a patch introduces new top-level directories (e.g. Data, Logs, etc.), clones will break until you repeat the steps to junction or symlink the directory.
 * Having multiple copies of WoW

Advanced Topics

 * If you want to use the same addons between your clones but separate configurations otherwise, you can link the Interface folder (don't delete C:\WoWClone\Interface after junctioning) and simply leave the WTF folders split. This ensures addons only need to be updated once.
 * If you really want to be clever, you can make links to just some of your addons by linking individual subdirectories under Interface (and/or WTF)
 * If the only settings you want to have different are general graphics settings, you can link C:\WoWClone\WTF\Account to C:\WoW\WTF\Account. Thus, the only independant files are Config.wtf and Launcher.wtf
 * This should even be safe for multiboxing setups, as they'll typically be writing to unrelated WTF files and thus not clobber each other's work.
 * On Windows, you *could* use symbolic links rather than hard links for the main WoW files. This means they won't be broken on an update.  However, you cannot double-click a symlink to wow.exe to start WoW, and a shortcut won't work either.  It does run through Start->Run or a batch file, however.