Changes: World of Warcraft functionality on Macs

Revision as of 05:35, 27 December 2007

Mac is an abbreviation of 'Macintosh', a brand of computers manufactured by Apple Inc.

Mac OS is short for Macintosh Operating System; Mac OS X is the 10th major revision (hence the Roman numeral X). The current release of Mac OS X is version 10.5 "Leopard".

WoW System Requirements

Minimum (from Blizzard)

Mac® OS X 10.3.9
933 MHz or higher G4, or G5, or Intel processor
512 MB RAM or higher; DDR RAM recommended
Intel, ATI or NVIDIA® video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more
6.0 GB available HD space
56k or better Internet connection

Player Recommended

Most recent Mac OS X release, updates and patches (Mac OS X 10.5 is current as of this writing)
Intel processor (or dual/multi-CPU G5)
ATI or NVIDIA® video hardware with 128 MB VRAM or more
2 GB RAM or higher - note that buying RAM from Apple is notoriously expensive, 3rd party sellers have been known to sell at 1/10th Apple's price.
10 GB available HD space (WoW + BC is around 8 GB; you'll want more for downloading patches)
Broadband internet connection

User Interface Addons

Users are sometimes unsure if Macs are able to make use of User Interface Addons. In fact, all UI addons are built on an XML/Lua scripting system built into WoW and cannot contain native code, so they'll run on any platform World of Warcraft runs on -- Windows or Mac. Simply place an addon in your World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns/ folder and restart WoW. (Switching? You can copy that entire folder from a Windows box to get all your addons onto your new Mac. Copy theWorld of Warcraft/WTF/ folder too and you'll get all your macros, chat window settings, and addon saved data, too.)

Caveats:

Most addons are available in .zip files (which can be opened with Mac OS X built-in software). Some Addon authors like to package their products as self-extracting/installing .exe files; while the addon will work on a Mac, the .exe file won't. If you find an addon that's only available in an .exe, ask the author for a .zip version -- most will be happy to oblige.
A few addons come with an external program -- e.g. for uploading game info to database sites or downloading auction prices for viewing in-game. The addons themselves will work on the Mac, but you'll need a Mac version of the external program to get the functionality it provides. (Note: use of third-party programs in conjunction with World of Warcraft may violate the Terms of Service.)
As a general rule, .exe files should only be trusted as much as you trust the person or entity it comes from. Very few people will click an .exe file that comes in an unsolicited email, but the same cannot be said for .exe files that purport to be self-extricating wow addons. Let the player beware, though this is less of a Mac issue and more about prudent personal security.

Technical Support

Blizzard offers a support forum for Macintosh-specific problems playing WoW. The Mac team has proved highly responsive to known issues.

Official Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum

NB: This forum is for players registered through the US servers only, and will not recognise login details for those on other servers. Mac users on the European servers should post Mac queries on Blizzard's European Technical Support forum.

Performance Tips

This thread on the Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum offers good information on how to optimise WoW both through tweaking options and upgrading graphics cards. Furthermore, Accelerate Your Mac has a page dedicated to user reports on WoW performance on individual Macs.
General Tips

The more RAM you have, the better; 1.5 to 2 GB is a good baseline. - note that buying RAM from Apple is notoriously expensive, 3rd party sellers have been known to sell at 1/10th Apple's price.
The Fullscreen Glow effect (in WoW's Video Options) has a much greater impact on performance under Mac OS X than on Windows. Turn it off if your framerate is too low. The Anisotropic Filtering and Multisampling settings can also also drastically lower framerate.

PowerPC-only Tips
A recent thread with posts by Blizzard employee Tigerclaw on the Blizzard Mac Technical Support forum has important things to say about WoW on PowerPC Macs running Tiger or earlier OSes - specifically, that performance will always be limited by the exclusion of certain OpenGL features that are available on Tiger on the Intel-based Macs. Until the release of Leopard (available October 26th, 2007) or OS X 10.4.11 (either of which may or may not include these OpenGL features for the PowerPC), or in lieu of upgrading to an Intel-based Mac, PowerPC users may wish to try the following tweak:

PowerPC OpenGL tweak

G4 users should specifically note the information provided by post 47 on this thread, which highlights that G4 Macs have an insoluble bottleneck limiting graphics card performance.

Intel-only Tips

Multithreaded OpenGL is enabled by default, increasing performance on dual-core (or multi-CPU) Intel Macs. An experimental version of this technology can be enabled by typing /console GLFaster 2 in-game -- it's even faster but can sometimes lead to noticeable mouse/UI lag. (Type /console GLFaster 1 to return to the normal setting, or /console GLFaster 0 to turn it off entirely.)

World of Warcraft on Intel Macs

On January 10, 2006, Apple announced the first of the Intel-based macs (Macbook Pro and iMac) which can still run older PowerPC programs in emulation mode with Rosetta. Intel-ready programs are usually available as Universal Binaries, programs that can run on PPC and Intel.

As of Patch 1.9.3.5059, WoW for Mac OS X supports Intel Macintosh. Performance is generally considered very good.

Intel-based Macs

Mac Pro – Professional desktop without a display
iMac – Consumer all-in-one (built-in screen) desktop
Mac mini – Bare-bones desktop (bring your own keyboard, mouse, and display)
Macbook Pro – Professional laptop
Macbook – Consumer laptop

Note: If you're shopping for a new Mac and intend to play WoW on it, beware -- several low-end models use an integrated graphics chipset (Intel GMA950) instead of a dedicated GPU+VRAM, which hobbles game performance. According to many players, WoW is "barely playable" under Mac OS X on such models. (On most Intel Macs, WoW performance can be marginally improved by running under Windows using Apple's Boot Camp utility, but requires a purchase of Microsoft Windows. Getting a better Mac model would be more affordable.)

WoW on OSx86

'OSx86' (or 'hackintosh') is the name gave by the community that is modifying Mac OS X to run on regular 'beige' PCs to this proyect. The level of compatibility depends on the hardware used but in most cases is stable due to the recent modifications to OS X's kernel and drivers.

It has been reported by several OSx86 users that WoW runs stable and smoothly on this systems though few graphical glitches can be seen on some systems where the GPU drivers doesn't fully support the GPU used, besides this, no bug related only to 'hackintoshes' has been reported. As many OSx86 users tend to remove Apple's macs only proceses and components, they can even get slightly more performance with similar hardware than real macs.

Voice Communication

WoW offers a built-in voice communication feature as of version 2.20. Blizzard's Mac developers have confirmed that it'll work cross-plaftorm.

Ventrilo

Ventrilo Mac Status, Ventrilo Download Page

The official Mac port of Ventrilo is currently in beta and missing some features. Ventrilo's developers promise full cross-platform feature parity for their upcoming 3.0 release.

Ventrilo servers use the GSM codec by default; the Mac client only supports the Speex codec, so usually a server will need to be reconfigured to support Mac clients. A common misconception among Ventrilo users is that using the Speex codec results in poor audio quality; this is actually an effect of the Ventrilo client/server architecture when mixed-version clients are connected. All clients, Windows included, must be updated to the latest version of Ventrilo or Speex audio quality will be reduced.

Using "Push To Talk" functionality in Ventrilo requires turning on "Enable access for assistive devices" in the Universal Access pane of System Preferences.

TeamSpeak

TeamSpeex for Mac, TeamSpeex Download

TeamSpeex is a third-party client for TeamSpeak 2 servers. It supports only the Speex client (however, this is default on TS servers, so it's less likely to be an issue). "Push To Talk" functionality is available without enabling Universal Access.

Mouse Issues

Older Macs came with one-button mice, and the built-in trackpad on Mac notebooks has only one hardware button. Since WoW's UI is designed for a 2+ button mouse, this can lead to some confusion.

Left / Right Click

The single mouse button corresponds to "Left click" in WoW's UI.
In WoW, holding the Command (Apple or ⌘) key while clicking is equivalent to a right-click.
Recent Mac notebooks include a feature where holding two fingers on the trackpad while clicking produces a right-click. This can be turned on in the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences.

Any standard multi-button USB mouse can be used with a Mac. (Macs with Bluetooth can also use any standard BT mouse.) No third-party software is necessary to make use of the secondary button or scroll wheel, or to be able to bind additional buttons to WoW actions. (Third-party software may be useful if you wish to customize extra-mouse-button actions outside of WoW, though.)

Mighty Mouse

Current desktop Macs come with Apple's (USB or wireless) Mighty Mouse, a 4 button mouse with a bidirectional scroll ball. It, too, has some caveats when it comes to WoW:

Right-clicking is disabled by default. It can be enabled in the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences.
The mouse uses a touch sensor to determine when to send a right click signal, and falls back to sending a left click signal if it's unsure. You may need to lift your finger away from the left side of the mouse while right clicking.
The mouse cannot send a "both left+right buttons down" signal, which in WoW makes you run forward while allowing you to steer your character with the mouse. This "Move and Steer" action can be set to a different mouse button in WoW's Key Bindings window, however. (It uses Button 3 -- pressing on the scroll ball -- by default.)

Swimming While Dead

Patch 1.10.1 added key bindings for pitch control, so one no longer needs to use the mouse to swim (or fly) upwards or downwards. However, these controls only change the orientation of your character, not that of the camera -- swimming below the surface of water while water-walking (or while dead and in spirit form) requires making both your character and the camera point downward. This can only be done using the mouse: hold the right mouse button (or equivalent) and drag the mouse cursor down.

Mouse Acceleration

World of Warcraft’s mouse sensitivity controls seems to be more useful on a Windows based machine.

People who regularly use a Mac may not have any problems with the OS’s mouse acceleration in game, however people who switch between Mac and PC often will find two totally different mousing experiences.

There are a few tools available to fix acceleration in OS X since the operating system has no system options to do this on its own.

USB Overdrive is a shareware (free) option. It offers a message upon boot, but has no restrictions and the message can be removed with purchase.

Keyboard Issues

Help! My Function Keys Don't Work Like Normal Function Keys!

Part of the whole Mac Experience thing is to figure out how to get things like the keyboard to work like they do on 99% of the rest of the computers in the world. System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Check 'Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys'

Switching to Other Apps

On Windows, one can use Alt-Tab and related shortcuts to switch to other applications without quitting WoW. On the Mac, Command-Tab generally serves this purpose, but when an app "captures" the display to go fullscreen on the Mac, it usurps such system keyboard shortcuts even if it doesn't do anything with them.

WoW (and older Blizzard games, since they've been nice and consistent about it) can be switched between fullscreen and windowed modes with Cmd-M. After switching to windowed, you can Cmd-Tab to another app, Cmd-H to hide WoW, etc.

You can also use 3rd-party software to fix what Apple overlooked:

Exposé Keys

There is an — apparently — well-known issue of the WoW client overwriting the default Exposé configuration on exit; these keys get used within the client for various functions but not restored after exit.

A currently untested patch from a third party purportedly works around the issue.

In a thread on the Blizzard Mac Tech Support Forum an alternative work-around has been suggested: removing the Key Bindings for keys F9 to F12, and simply using Shift-B to open all of your bags. This has apparently met with a reasonable amount of success.

Another workaround: some have noticed that the loss of Exposé settings tends to occur when quitting the game while in full-screen mode; making a habit of switching to windowed mode before quitting (Cmd-M) seems to reduce the frequency of the problem.

Image and Video

Screenshots

To take a screenshot in WoW, press the F13 key (or, since some Macs don't have an F13 key, go into WoW's Key Bindings menu and change it to something convenient. This saves the latest frame drawn to a Screenshots folder inside your World of Warcraft folder. (You can also use the Mac's builtin screenshot key shortcuts, but these aren't synced with the game's graphics engine, so they may capture an incomplete or "torn" image.)

Screenshots are saved in the JPEG format by default. This is a lossy compression format -- it produces small files, but with reduced image quality. The format and quality of screenshots can be changed via the screenshotFormat and screenshotQuality config variables. For example, to switch to a high-quality PNG format, type the following into the chat frame once logged into WoW:

 /console screenshotFormat png
 /console screenshotQuality 10

For more details, see the [#Console Variables] section below. (The screenshotFormat control has been available on the Mac since Patch 1.11; it and screenshotQuality were made cross-platform in Patch 2.1.0.)

Video Capture

Patch 2.2.0 brought a built-in video capture utility to WoW on the Mac.

Third-party solutions also exist, however Mac OS X has yet to see a screen-recording product that performs quite as well as Fraps for Windows. Ambrosia's Snapz Pro X is a popular screenshot tool that can also capture video (and now has an Intel-native version). A newer product, iShowU, is also available in a Universal Binary and provides a fairly good capture framerate.

AFTER PERFORMING A FIRMWARE UPDATE, Video Capture native to the WoW UI can now be enabled on mid-2007 iMacs (see several stickies in the WoW Mac Tech Support Forum linked above to see if you're affected and what the in-game command to 'ForceEnable' the video capture options are). Capture/Compression/Editing/Publishing is still a potentially very cumbersome process, with a fair amount of possible pitfalls for the not-so-technologically-savvy, and I'm not posting the process to Force Enable it here since it's a bit of a big deal and I'd rather you go get the word from someone who gets paid to know this stuff. Go look at the stickies. NOW.

Another problem is that Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express, two expensive and now commonly bought video editing software programs for newer Mac buyers, are unable to load the .mov (QuickTime-format no less! *DOH!*) files that come out of the WoW native recorder/compressor process. Go figure. You therefore, as of December 2007, need one of the following intermediary programs (please add alternatives if you know of them, or edit out if this issue gets fixed):

MPEG Streamclip - free, tons of options (too many for the casual user), fast as a speedhacking farmer and with a decently intuitive interface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_Streamclip

VLC Player - free, but not as fast as Streamclip, and just as problematic, but may be a little easier if you're more focused on playing downloaded videos than on converting your own stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlc

Quicktime Pro - $30 upgrade from Quicktime Player (the free QT Player will play the files, but the ability to export them as .mov files that can be read by FCP/FCE is turned off (this just blows my mind, you have to turn a .mov file into a .mov file due to some sort of sound/framerate issue). To upgrade, boot up Quicktime Player, first drop-down menu should have 'Buy Quicktime Pro' - this takes you to Apple.com where you pay, get a registration key and go back to unlock the Pro features with the registration key. QT Pro is quite simple to use, doesn't bother with all the options of the other three and is reasonably fast, plus it has all the weight of Apple, Inc. behind it, which means a GUI you'll recognize and a simple, logical layout.
iMovie - bundled with newer Macs and also bundled with a bit of a learning curve, if you want to use this to get video into FCE/FCP you're basically stuck with a bit of a big process and learning two video editing programs instead of one. Go figure. UPDATE: Apparently not all (if any) sizes and formats of .mov files that come out of the WoW recording process are importable into iMovie. Beats me how this works. UPDATE 2: You can't just right-click on a file and select 'Open With iMovie', you actually have to go into iMovie and use the Import Movie tool. UPDATE 3: Not an all-together horrible final editing program, and absolutely rocked when rendering. Lack of documentation means you'll have to mess around, changing one option at a time and rendering the same little learning project about ten times before you understand what's going on. Frequent trips to google or wikipedia also helps for learning what different compression options mean. About 10-15 video tutorials on www.apple.com are an absolute must-watch before you get down and dirty.

Two of the above are free downloads, but not necessarily your best option. I've been learning about this for two weeks straight now, and I'm confused as all ... In either case, the information you need is hidden in the stickies in the WoW Mac Tech Support Forum. iMovie is also capable of final-editing of WoW Movies, but afaik not halfway as powerful as FCE/FCP, more along the lines of Windows Movie Maker compared to Sony Vegas.

The guide for using VLC Player as an intermediate to get your video into FCE/FCP can be found at: http://www.tombfury.com/modules/newbbex/viewtopic.php?topic_id=5&forum=4 Imho, VLC Player is quite the lumbering cumbersome giant, though it does have its other uses (plays stuff easily that QTP doesn't or does with a painful process). Using iMovie to get to FCE/FCP is a bit of a mess unless you know what you're doing, and can take even longer. QTP seems reasonably quick and smooth (ok, at least smooth if not quick). I'll be back about MPEG Streamclip, which right now seems pretty darn powerful, tons of options, and also is a program much more focused on video conversion than any of the other three. Good luck understanding all the options though, unless you have a 4-year degree in this stuff.

Available Codecs

A codec is a computer process that takes raw video, which contains massive amounts of information, and uses very complex algorithms to turn this information into something manageable by taking little shortcuts, like ignoring all the blue sky in the background for 40 frames while a player-character stands still. E.g., that blue sky only needed to be compressed once, with a note for how long it lasts. There are four available codecs to compress with (not record with - more on that later) and, as of December 2007, the H.264 codec seems the hands-down winner for the casual WoW movie-recording user. From a few test runs I made with a 15 lock at the entrance to Deadmines, using a brand-new aluminum 24" iMac with 2GB of RAM:

Motion JPEG - turns out to actually be "Motion JPEG A", 1min 02sec footage turned out to be 675.5MB with 2.2 mobs pulled and a fair amount of camera spinning. Seemed to have pretty bad color, which I'm assuming could be manually corrected in an editing program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MJPEG

H.264 - 2.2 mobs pulled, some camera spinning with possibly slightly more graphical effects than other pulls (caught a flamestrike at the end), 1min 01 sec of footage = 141.5MB, and with nearly as good visual sharpness as Motion JPEG but without the colour problems, I don't see why in the heck I would ever use Motion JPEG over H.264 unless there's an editing program problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264

Apple Intermediate - 2.3 mobs pulled, some spinning, 1min 01 sec = 331.9MB. Had some audio tearing, but who knows what that was due to? Little discernable A/V quality difference to H.264 leads me to believe that I'm just better off with H.264.

No Wikipedia article, not much other info either that I could find easily. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301599 http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/appleintermediatecodec101.html http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Apple_Intermediate_Codec http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=397547

MPEG-4 - [3 movies all turned out to be 1min 02 sec, with final size being 215.6MB, 192.8MB, and 244.5MB. 4th one was 1min 10sec and 229.9MB]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4

Sneaky Faster Video Compression Process While You Make A Sandwich

According to Tigerclaw, a Blizzard employee poster on the WoW Mac Tech Support Forum in the Movie Recording Sticky:

"By the way, the programmer for this feature reminded me that if you trigger movie compressions while logged in, and then log out but leave the game running at the title screen, the compressions will continue (you can open up the movie dest folder and watch it consuming the temp files and generating the .mov result as it goes). To really speed this up, do this in chat before logging out:

/console maxfpsbk 2

then log out and leave the game running at the title screen, and put it in the background (some other app frontmost). This will max the available CPU for the game's compression engine to do work.

We'll look into adding a little visual feedback on the title screen for a future release. The idea of a standalone compressor tool is not high on the priority list, however we do allow export in Apple Intermediate which is a great format to feed to other third party compressor tools. "

NOTE 1: These console commands have, as of 2.3, no visual feedback in the chat log and are not documented anywhere. And set values that are stored in either the WTF or Cache folders. And don't change back if you log out or exit WoW. You'll notice the effect if you alt-tab out with the game running in the background, it'll be choppy as all heck, exactly what you'd expect running at 2 frames per second. Should the time come, there is a way to change this back, but how to is hidden on either the Mac Tech Support, the regular Tech Support, or the UI & Macros forum - posted by a blue.

NOTE 2: As far as compressing videos is concerned, it seems to matter little what your codec choice is when you record the video in-game. It does, however, become crucial when you start compressing. I learned this the hard way, thinking I could record a few movies with different codecs and then go make a sandwich while they were all compressing using the above sneaky speed-up thingy. They all of course ended up compressing with the last codec I had selected. Go figure.

Changing Recording Location

This may be useful if you wish (as you should, rumour has it greatly affects video recording) to record your video to a separate hard-drive from what the game is running off, though I don't recommend using an external drive for that purpose, unless it's faster than anything I know of. Or if you want to record to your desktop, in order to give yourself a very nasty graphical reminder that you need to compress a bunch of video or leave a hopeless cluttery mess on your desktop. Again, Tigerclaw:

"SET MovieRecordingPath "/Volumes/MyOtherHD/etc/etc"

in config.wtf.

If in doubt about the precise path to a given older [sic], just drag the folder into a Terminal session and the full path will appear there (though our paths do not need spaces escaped with backslashes). "

Mac-specific Console Variables

These can be set by typing /console variablename value while in WoW.

GLFaster - Enables Multithreaded OpenGL on dual/multi-core Intel Macs.
- 0 - Off
- 1 - Default
- 2 - Experimental faster option, may lead to UI/mouse lag
maxfps - Caps framerate (useful to minimize CPU usage / temperature or extend notebook battery life). New in Patch 2.1.0
- <number> - framerate not to exceed.
maxfpsbk - Caps framerate while WoW is not the frontmost app. New in Patch 2.1.0
- <number> - framerate not to exceed.

NOTE: 'maxfpsbk' can be used in a bit of a convoluted process to maximize the speed at which WoW compresses player-recorded video. Details above or in WoW Mac Tech Support Forum.

screenshotFormat - Controls which graphics file format is used for screenshots taken in-game.
- jpg - JPEG, a widely-supported format using lossy compression. (Default)
- png - PNG, a format using lossless compression, fairly well-supported on all platforms.
- tga - Targa, a lossless format, but not supported by many cross-platform viewers.
screenshotQuality - Controls compression level and image quality of screenshots taken in-game.
- <number, 1-10> - Lower number: smaller file, lower quality image. Higher number: larger file, higher quality image.

Patch Mirrors

For those having trouble with the Blizzard Downloader, mirrors of patches and other WoW updates are often available at MacGameFiles.

"Dual-Boxing" on one Mac

Dual boxing (being logged in on multiple characters at once) is possible on the Mac -- in fact, with the abundance of multi-CPU/multi-core Macs, it works quite well -- but requires some setup. You'll need to make a separate copy of the World of Warcraft application, as attempting to re-launch the same application will just refocus the already running copy. Depending on your goals, there are three common ways to go about doing this:

Copying the entire WoW folder:
- Open the Applications folder (Command-Shift-A in the Finder).
- Select your World of Warcraft folder.
- Duplicate the folder by typing Command-D.
Copying just the WoW app:
- Open your World of Warcraft folder.
- Select the World of Warcraft.app Application Bundle.
- Duplicate the Application by typing Command-D.
A hybrid approach:
- Make a new folder outside your main WoW folder, and copy just the World of Warcraft app to it.
- Make a symbolic link (not an alias as created by the Finder, but a Unix symlink; see [1][2] or #Hybrid_Approach_.22How-To.22 for info) in the new folder, named Data, pointing at the Data folder in your main WoW folder.
- If you want both copies to share the same addons, make another symlink for the Interface folder.

Whichever approach you choose, you'll need to repeat some of you work when a WoW patch comes out. If you copied the entire folder, you can just run through the normal download/patch process for each (though you can skip the download process by copying the "WoW-x.y.z.n-to-x.y.z.n-enUS-downloader" and "WoW-x.y.z.n-to-x.y.z.n-enUS-patch" from one WoW folder to the other once the first copy is patched). If you copied just the WoW app, you'll need to re-copy it after patching your main WoW install.

And of course, any approach to multiboxing requires multiple separate WoW accounts (one for each simultaneously logged in character).

Pros and Cons

Method	Pros	Cons
Copying the entire WoW folder	This lets you keep everything in each WoW installation separate: addons, settings, etc. It's just like having two machines to play WoW on. Blizzard employees have recommended this approach when the issue has been discussed in the Mac Tech Support forum.	Everything is separate, so if you want to keep the same addons, settings, etc. for both copies you'll have to keep them in sync manually. It takes up a lot of disk space (7+ GB for all the game data) unnecessarily.
Copying just the WoW app	Uses only a tiny bit of extra disk space (just 17 MB for the app itself). Both copies share the same addons, settings, etc.	Two copies of WoW trying to write to the same files (notably, settings and cache files) at once may lead to unexpected behavior. If you want separate addons or settings for each copy, you can't do that with this approach.
A Hybrid Approach	Uses minimal disk space without any worry of cache/settings issues. Settings are kept separate for each copy, but addons can be shared if desired.	Setup is non-trivial for casual users. Settings can't be shared between both copies.

Hybrid Approach "How-To"

Here is a shell script that greatly simplifies the Hybrid Approach for users who are not comfortable with creating symbolic links. This script allows you to run two clients, keep the cache separate between the two, and only uses about 17MB of additional hard disk space:

#!/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"

Optional: If you would like to share addons between the two installations, add the following line to the bottom of the shell script:

ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p2/Interface"

Copy/paste the script into a new TextEdit document, and save the file in your home directory as "wowcopy.sh", i.e. the path to the script document should be something like:
```
/Users/YourName/wowcopy.sh
```
Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app), type the following:
```
chmod +x ~/wowcopy.sh; ~/wowcopy.sh
```
and hit enter. This gives the operating system permission to execute the script, and then actually executes it.
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 World of Warcraft.app. This application bundle can be launched completely independently from your main installation.

WARNING: Whenever a patch for WoW is released, patch your main installation, and then copy the patched "World of Warcraft.app" into your WoWCopy folder. Do NOT attempt to patch both installations, as you may corrupt your Data folder and be forced to reinstall the game.

Further Resources For Mac WoW Players

Official forum, places to get RAM and hardware, free internet speedtest site.

@@ Line 121: / Line 121: @@
 == Keyboard Issues ==
-===Switching to Other Apps===
+=== Help! My Function Keys Don't Work Like Normal Function Keys! ===
+Part of the whole Mac Experience thing is to figure out how to get things like the keyboard to work like they do on 99% of the rest of the computers in the world.
+System Preferences -> Keyboard  & Mouse ->  Check 'Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys'
+=== Switching to Other Apps ===
 On Windows, one can use Alt-Tab and related shortcuts to switch to other applications without quitting WoW. On the Mac, Command-Tab generally serves this purpose, but when an app "captures" the display to go fullscreen on the Mac, it usurps such system keyboard shortcuts even if it doesn't do anything with them.

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