Is it possible to have multiple instances of WoW installed on one computer?

[Cryosepsis]

I'd like to start off with the disclaimer that I'm totally new to everything to do with emulation. I'm very eager to learn though, which may result in my peppering this board with stupid(ish) questions. Apologies in advance, I'm learning everything from scratch, and I do appreciate any help I can get.

My first goal is pretty simple; I'd like to set up a non-public server to learn with. In the meanwhile, I am still playing retail. My question is this: is it possible for me to maintain two seperate instances of WoW on my computer, one being retail, the other being my private project server? If so, I'd very much appreciate any direction you could give me as to how this would be done.

Thanks for taking the time to help out a noobie.

[stoneharry]

You can have as many copies/patches of WoW as you want, I have 2.3.3, 3.0.9, 3.3.5 and retail on my main harddrive.

However, I don't advise running a server and playing retail at the same time.

[Cryosepsis]

Ok, cool. So then would it be a simple matter of installing the private instance of WoW to a differently named, alternative folder?

[thefallen1one]

Yep, I have 1.12.1, 3.3.5 and 4.0.6, its def do-able dude

[stoneharry]

Yes. Just copy + Paste it, and rename the folder.

[Cryosepsis]

Really? I assumed that this wouldn't work because I'd have to then downpatch from Cataclysm (which I've read is not possible). Maybe I'm missing something. I'm currently downloading the discs for vanilla through wotlk, but if this is unecessary, please do stop me! Haha.

At any rate, thanks for helping out guys.

edit: I suppose I should mention that I have a cataclysm disc. But I'm not sure how I would control a clean install, that is to say, prevent it from patching automatically, etc. It's nice that everything's automated by the Blizzard installer until you want to do something like this. It's little things like this that I get stuck on, and unfortunately, there are no tutorials for this first and I'm assuming most obvious step.

[Facerolling]

Sorry to hijack stoneharry's help

I assume you're trying to make a 1.12.1 server as you're using the vanilla discs. Once you have downloaded the discs and mounted and installed them, I assume they're the 1.0.4 Discs.
Go to here :World of Warcraft Downloads
download the 1.12 full patch of your corresponding region (enGB for European English, enUS for American English) from the folder "v 1 12", then the 1.12.0 -> 1.12.1 patch from the folder "v 1 12 1".

[stoneharry]

Sorry to hijack stoneharry's help

I assume you're trying to make a 1.12.1 server as you're using the vanilla discs. Once you have downloaded the discs and mounted and installed them, I assume they're the 1.0.4 Discs.
Go to here :World of Warcraft Downloads
download the 1.12 full patch of your corresponding region (enGB for European English, enUS for American English) from the folder "v 1 12", then the 1.12.0 -> 1.12.1 patch from the folder "v 1 12 1".

What he said.

You can just copy + paste a folder of WoW and they will both work, however you can not downpatch from 4.x to 3.x, and 3.x to 2.x etc.

You will have to install/download freshly to downpatch an expansion.

Once your at your desired patch (you can get patches from other mirrors since blizzard skips loads, e.g it might try and go from 3.1 to 4.x straight away) just run the wow.exe instead of the launcher. Running the launcher will make it want to patch up.

[Cryosepsis]

Thanks very much for the informative responses, I think I have everything I need now.