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I want to install World of Warcraft on three different computers.

Is it possible to download the complete game on one machine then copy to the other PC's?

I searched the Battle Net Technical support Installations and Patches area but didn't see anything.

I also notice that they have this "Streaming Launcher" which I don't really want to have to use on all three machines. I'm limited for bandwidth and would like to download the complete game overnight then copy and install.

For example with Eve Online you can download the installer stub and the install payloads (e.g. community.eveonline.com/download/?fallback=1) directly. Is there something similar for WoW?

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  • A helpful thing I do is (once you have copied the files over) is move the Addon's folder to my dropbox and then create a junction (its software from Microsoft) between that and the original location of the Addons folder. That way when I update my addons on one computer it updates them all. – Phil Hannent Apr 23 '12 at 13:22
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Yes,

World of Warcraft can run detached from the registry and is considered portable. You can copy the files in the World of Warcraft program directory to another computer and it will run right out of the gate.

Configuration files are also stored in the program directory (unlike modern games which store them in the user's home directory). It would be a good idea to use the launcher to "reset" World of Warcraft's video settings before launching on a new computer.

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  • Thanks. Is there any way to just grab the whole game at once instead of having to use this "streaming downloader". Like you can with Eve where you can download the installer stub and the install payloads (e.g. community.eveonline.com/download/?fallback=1) – Kev Apr 6 '12 at 2:28
  • @Kev I don't quite get what you're asking, as Resorath mentioned, you can just copy the entire World of Warcraft folder between machines and it will run perfectly. For the incremental patches, the patcher will download the actual patch into the folder (or a subfolder, I forgot) and run it from there. You could just copy that and run it on other machines to keep up-to-date. – Nick T Apr 6 '12 at 5:05
  • @NickT - Yes he answered that part. But from what I've read, the streaming launcher downloads parts of the game "on demand". What I want to do is make sure I have ALL of the game client downloaded before I copy to other machines. Is this possible, can the streaming launcher be forced to get all of the game at once? – Kev Apr 6 '12 at 13:14
  • @Kev The streaming launcher will let you play with the game not fully downloaded, but if you let it continue downloading, it will download the entire game. It'll tell you how much needs to still be downloaded (if anything) before you actually launch WoW. – Brandon Apr 6 '12 at 18:34
  • @kev There are also mirrors available where you can download larger chunks of the game and use those to short circuit some of the download process. Check on WoWWiki or WoWPedia for more info. – Brandon Apr 6 '12 at 18:37
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No, there is no complete Download for World of Warcraft like there is for Eve. You have to use the Streaming Launcher. But as Resorath pointed out, you can just move the installed files to another computer.

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