EVE New Citizens Q&A

Wasn't sure where else to put this, figured this is close enough that it'll get answered.

I remember reading that you need two seperate clients installed in order to run two accounts at once? Is this true, or is there at least a benefit to doing so? What prevents you from/is bad about running two clients from the same installation?

Thanks.

I think you misunderstood the question but answered it nonetheless. I am well aware of what dual boxing is and the benefits of it. I was more curious about why I hear about people having seperate EVE installations for each of their accounts, or maybe I just misread that somewhere.

I'm currently tripleboxing EVE, launching same EVE.exe 3 times for different accounts. I have noticed that while many settings are kept separated (window locations can be different for each account), some are not (all accounts see same browser bookmarks - can't have different list for each).

So one benefit from multiple copies would be that all settings are separate.

One potential issue with running multiple clients from the same installation is the corruption of preferences, bookmark folders, overview settings, etc. Some people (as witnessed above) will never have problems, other people will never get it to work consistently.

The EVElopedia page dealing with multiple clients might have some clues for you.

Several years back there was more reason for doing it. I had multiple installations set up and it seemed to work better after I did that. However the program has changed a lot since then and they've made one installation work better with several instances running at once - so - when I lost all my installations for whatever reason (don't remember now) I didn't bother to recreate them and it's been working fine for me since then. Well ... it's not perfect but I'm not having any trouble I attribute to not running multiple installations.

The most I've run on one machine, using one installation, was 4 clients (alt tabbing) but it ran pretty slow. I think the real limit is your hardware when it comes to one machine. Over multiple machines the limit becomes YOU.

Running in windows is slower than running full screen for me. YMMV.

Some activities lend themselves better to multi boxing than others. Time impression I've gained is that Mining works the best with PVP working the worst. Here the problem is not hardware but the ability of the user to control multiple clients in an efficient manner.



For the most part, you can probably do fine with one installation but if you wanted to do a second and see how things changed it wouldn't hurt anything that I'm aware of. That is to say, you still have the option, as far as I know, of executing multiple installations if you want to. All you, probably, have to lose - is the time you expend fooling around with it.

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In previous versions of the client there were stability issues when running multiple clients from the same folder. With the current version, this is no longer an issue.

I frequently run multiple clients. All I do is launch the game again. I find that I get best results when running in windowed mode.

One reason that remains for having seperate copies is that will keep seperate settings for each copy. Keyboard shortcuts, default video and audio options and many other settings are stored at the game-installation level, rather than the account level. If you want to have each of the accounts remember different settings for these options, then having multiple copies might be helpful. Personally, I do not have a need for this, so I use just one copy.

BTW - if you do decide to run multiple copies of the client, an easy way to save space and avoid needing to install multiple patches is to use a Junction point to copy the folder. ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768 ) With a Junction there is only one real copy of the files. Changes to the files affect all of the virtual copies. When I have wanted to maintain multiple settings profiles, I have found this to be the best way.

I run 2 clients on 2 monitors every time i'm on eve.


I dont think anyone pointed this out yet... It is important to note that you can't log into the same paid accnt twice and try to use different toons on that same accnt.