I just finished building a new computer. Was looking for some help regarding what files I need to copy to a thumb drive off of my old computer, and paste into my WoW folder on my new computer, mostly just looking to save add-ons and UI.
Any help/input would be greatly appreciated.
You’ll just wanna copy over the contents of your interface folder, let wow rebuild your cache and WTF folders
The interface folder contains your addons. The wtf contains your current setup for those addons. If you want everything to transfer over as-is you’ll need to copy both into the same location on the new install.
I would delete the config.wtf file from inside the wtf folder - it contains computer specific settings.
It isn’t a bad idea to take this chance to have a fresh start - install your addons fresh and set them up again. if its been years since you’ve done this, corruptions in your settings can worsen game performance. simply not copying your wtf folder over basically does this, but if you’re going to do that you might as well install brand new copies imo.
I have a few computers all with totally different hardware and setups, and have found copying the whole “retail” folder to a thumb drive and then copying that to all the machines works fine. It preserves all of your addons settings and data so that they are the same across all machines. When installing new addon updates for any patch, after backing up old retail folders (for sure) I typically do the same. That is, I download the latest addons, extract them, install them (on one machine) and then copy that folder (“Retail”) for replacing it across all machines, saving it to a thumb drive. (Typically, on the other machines, I then delete the old “Retail” folders, and then install the new one (backing up old “Retail” folders just in case, too)).
In summary, you should be totally fine copying your “Retail” folder from your old machine onto a thumb drive, then deleting your “Retail” folder in your Wow folder on your new machine, and replacing it with your “Retail” file from your old machine.
As an aside: If anyone thinks there would be a problem with that, please explain. It is my understanding that whenever you start Wow, your system specific info will be checked and pertinent settings, etc. will be automatically adjusted and copied to your folders (such as your WTF folder). Hence you will have all of your UI and addon data and settings just the way you like them and have set them up, while at the same time, your system will be optimized for its specific characteristics. You can still tweak your FPS, graphics settings yourself if needed–I do that differently for each machine.
PS. This is definitely the simplest way to do it. I’m not sure if it is necessarily the fastest way–but I typically let the computer do all the work while I do something else in the meantime. How long it takes will depend on your hard drive(s) (and how fast they are) and your raid setup, etc.
There is nothing wrong with just copying your entire world of warcraft folder over. It is often recommended if you’re trying to save on an internet download cap or your internet is slow.
there are sometimes benefits to fresh installs though. namely, they can reduce the size of the folder. over time the install can bloat and there is no way to shrink it without reinstalling. and also, if you have fast internet a fresh install is often faster and easier than copying.
so if you’re going to do a fresh install, copying over the interface and wtf folder are all you need to have it be identical to your old game. interface+wtf+fresh install = copying entire retail folder.