Portability of modern MMOs and other games? Copy and Paste on reinstall?

It has come to that time when the Windows 7 beta is starting to show a few issues that are apparently not there in the RC, so it looks as though it is time to upgrade again. This means a reformat and while I don't mind the time normally, updating all my games again can be annoying and troublesome.

I've heard that games such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer online are "portable". Just copy/paste the folder, and you might need to set up new shortcuts. Is there truth to this? How about most other games these days? Do you actually have to reinstall? Anyone tried this?

Xaeos said:

It has come to that time when the Windows 7 beta is starting to show a few issues that are apparently not there in the RC, so it looks as though it is time to upgrade again. This means a reformat and while I don't mind the time normally, updating all my games again can be annoying and troublesome.

I've heard that games such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer online are "portable". Just copy/paste the folder, and you might need to set up new shortcuts. Is there truth to this? How about most other games these days? Do you actually have to reinstall? Anyone tried this?

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I had to transfer the WoW folder from one computer to another because WoW wouldn't update on one computer, but would on the other.

after the transfer completed, WoW worked, so I think it should be possible

As long as the game dont rely on registry entries a simple copy and paste should be just fine.

I do know without a doubt wow can be copied and pasted with ease.

Xaeos said:

I've heard that games such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer online are "portable". Just copy/paste the folder, and you might need to set up new shortcuts. Is there truth to this? How about most other games these days? Do you actually have to reinstall? Anyone tried this?

Click to expand...

I know for a fact that WoW will simply let you copy it's directory and paste it to another pc and it will work with no changes to the registry. There is even a company selling a portable WoW Drive.

As for the other MMO's, I can't tell you. Mostly games require a full re-install, WoW has been the exception in this trend for some time now.

Steam games are portable. Just copy and paste your steamapps folder to your new steam install and it works fine. Most profiles are just as easily transferrable, track down the files, usually in "My Documents" and transfer them to the new computer.

Tudz said:

Steam games are portable. Just copy and paste your steamapps folder to your new steam install and it works fine. Most profiles are just as easily transferrable, track down the files, usually in "My Documents" and transfer them to the new computer.

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A cleaner way to do this would be to use the built in steam backup backup for your games then you can jut put the backup wherever and when you want to install the game its a nice clean installer.

Now that i think about it EQ was completely portable too.

Every single game is portable. You don't need Steaming pile for it.

1. Many of them require you to know where the reg keys they use are. Usually it is just HKLM/Software. Some retarded patches won't install unless they can see the game is "installed" (HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Uninstall). Simply export the folder to a .reg file in your common \games folder.

2. Some require other software to run. They can include video playback software, DirectX updates, and other bullshit (AKA "community software" such as Rockstar club, although this can be bypassed with a no-cd crack [as it should have been done]). Usually you can find these extra software installs in subfolders on the game's media. I usually copy any extra required software to a subfolder to where the game is installed.

As mentioned, most save games are in My Documents, but others have been known to sit in <UserProfile>\Application Data, and <UserProfile>\Local Settings.

If you edit the registry as mentioned above, make sure you get all of the roots and drive names right. The game looks in the registry to find out where its resources are (because it would be too easy to put it all in one folder...). You just need to make sure those pointers are right. For instance, I recently moved all of my games over to a new hard drive (same windows install) and rather than changing every registry entry for every game, I just changed the letter of the drive so the registry entries would point to the right place.

A lot of the new DRM infested games may not play along though.

WoW and Steam are indeed portable.
You can copy the directories from one computer to another and run the respective exe without any problem. My steam folder was created back in 2003 and I just move it from hard drive to hard drive when I upgrade.

With WoW you must run it as administrator in Vista/Windows7 so it can write to the registry but after that you run as normal.