Remote Desktop and World of Warcraft

Vorophobe

I'm trying to play world of warcraft using windows's own Remote Desktop from work - however I'm not getting too far!

I'm able to connect to my machine fine, everything works great - but encountering problems when it tries to launch! (and I have tested this before I came into work - it runs fine on my machine locally :P)

The first worrying bit is that it reports that it found that the hardware has changed, and if I want to continue or revert to the default hardware settings. Either option I choose, I get the following:

"This application has encountered a critical error - fatal exception wow.exe"

I understand Remote Desktop forces the video settings of the remote machine to be run under 16bit colour quality, but is there a way around this? I need my auction house while at work!

I've tried running it in windowed mode and forcing open gl (-windowed -opengl) but these have not helped :(

Are there other remote desktop applications which are better suited to games? And there are people who have managed to play this game remotely, there must be a way!

joe_chicken

as far as i know... which isnt very much

the visuals of the desktop client use the local machine harware


i.e. you cant stream games over desktop client... its too much info

p.s. if you do find a way of doing this... tell me

Inquitus

sorry you have no chance imho.

But should you succeed pls share

fletch

joe_chicken wrote:

as far as i know... which isnt very much

the visuals of the desktop client use the local machine harware


i.e. you cant stream games over desktop client... its too much info

p.s. if you do find a way of doing this... tell me

I was able to remote into my PC in college and play Half Life....however it was impossible to play because well fairly obviously, the net connection cannot send the fps necessary to make it in any way enjoyable....oh i was using RealVNC

joe_chicken

fletch wrote:

the net connection cannot send the fps necessary to make it in any way enjoyable

thats what i was getting at with the too much info thing....

Rev Hellfire

I've played eve over a remote connection using vnc

Now its by no means pretty, but if you're doing something like mining it can be done.

Ivan

Intriguing...

Vorophobe

It's a little slow, a little choppy - BUT IT WORKS ... and it seems quite straightforward too

I am now officially playing WoW from work - and this is in a workplace where they have Satan as their firewall (ie. practically nothing gets through.. they don't even let you PING here) and the only remote desktop client you can use is Remote Desktop.

NB - I really only intend to use WoW for trading during the day, not so much with questing/combat - so low framerates aren't much of an issue! (Auctioneer is my baby)

This solution is by no means perfect, I've had to stuff around a bit to get this working - but it does work if you happen to work under people who love Nazi port blocking. Basically, I'm connecting remotely to a machine which is also connected remotely to another machine.

Everything hangs on two questions: Can you use windows's Remote Desktop to connect to a remote machine from work? (Start->Programs->Accessories->Communications->Remote Desktop Connection) - and do you have yet ANOTHER machine to connect to from that one?

If you are one of the lucky people able to connect to a machine which is enabled for Remote Desktop (System Properties -> Remote -> Remote Desktop Option) then you can have the pleasure of this great game while u work

In the previous posts, I stated that there were video problems when connecting directly to my PC - Windows Remote Desktop cannot display the video data that WoW displays - but there was one program that was suggested that could handle the data fine - RealVNC. I couldn't connect to my home PC with RealVNC (Nazi port blockers)- which would of solved the problem immediately - so I had to find a way that I could get Remote Desktop to view the video.

So, with permission from my flatmate, I installed WoW on his machine. I then installed RealVNC on both our networked home machines, and connected to his machine from mine at home to test (he doesn't mind me using his computer - he's at work! Plus I promised not to read his secret diary). I then made sure RealVNC could display WoW over it's remote desktop connection. It could!

So with all that in place, I'm able to use Remote Desktop to view my pc at home, which itself is using a remote desktop program to my flatmates PC, which is running WoW (phew!).

Someone just now came around and said I was going to get flack for the fact that all up you have to use 3(!) machines to do this, but I do anything for my WoW

I know it's not super technical, but I didn't even think of doing this at all. Hope someone gets some use out of this.

joe_chicken

You are my remote desktop god... all praise the bringer of WoW to work...

I'll give this a try at some stage ... good job

Ivan

Nice work!

dlofnep

That's some hardcore gaming right there. I salute you.

DRakE

Vorophobe wrote:

So, with permission from my flatmate, I installed WoW on his machine. I then installed RealVNC on both our networked home machines, and connected to his machine from mine at home to test (he doesn't mind me using his computer - he's at work! Plus I promised not to read his secret diary). I then made sure RealVNC could display WoW over it's remote desktop connection. It could!

Still think you should read his diary tbh.

Drakar

Probably has entries like:

Installed keylogger to pick up Vorophobe's password so I can transfer his auctioneer profits to my character.

Dustaz

props, your a shining example of addiction

Vorophobe

My ingenious flatmate, fearful over the incriminating contents of his secret diary, found out a way for me to use VNC directly from work to my home machine (without all the assing around connecting to his machine! (see above))

Window's Remote Desktop uses port 3389, he informed me - so after I set up a VNC server on my machine with it accepting connections on this port... and then ran the VNC viewer from my computer at work... oh good lordy it worked.

The Port Nazi's have been repelled! (And it wasn't hard work... with the power of google anything is possible, apparently)

..

I still want to know if he was the one that threw up in my girlfriends shoes at a party last year.

.. I will find out.

Thren

ROFL! I salute you sir!

coyote121403

Great work, now the question is will you get fired for playing wow at work lol.

WellyJ

coyote121403 wrote: »

Great work, now the question is will you get fired for playing wow at work lol.

Well it was over 3 years ago.... he probably doesn't even work there any more or even play WOW any more.

Don't resurrect 3 year old threads ! !

Oh and welcome to boards

Kiith

Holy Necro Batman!

Funny that i'm in the process of trying something similar (although for Darkfall, not Warcraft).

Anti

Shame it wouldn't work these days as most modern firewalls pretty much block everything, even if a port is open with adaptive scanning it wont be for long. I'd love to see a way of being able to log into wow with yoru phone if even just to use the AH.

Kiith

Anti wrote: »

Shame it wouldn't work these days as most modern firewalls pretty much block everything, even if a port is open with adaptive scanning it wont be for long. I'd love to see a way of being able to log into wow with yoru phone if even just to use the AH.

I am able to login to both Eve and Darkfall on my laptop, using my meteor phone as a modem. Its a slow connection obviously, but its enough to change skills, do some mining, and i'm sure it would work for the AH in Warcraft as well.

Anti

Nah i didnt mean it like that, i mean a version of wow on your phone if you get me ?

WellyJ

Anti wrote: »

Nah i didnt mean it like that, i mean a version of wow on your phone if you get me ?

Blizz have been advertising for a "Mobile UI Designer" for quite a while now,

It wouldnt surprise me to see some kind of of WOW App for mobile phones soon - most likely an auction house app.

Anti

that would be pretty awesome, would be great to be able to do more then just AH on the phone, but i dont think many if any phones out there could handle it.

WellyJ

Anti wrote: »

that would be pretty awesome, would be great to be able to do more then just AH on the phone, but i dont think many if any phones out there could handle it.

Well I think the few that may be able to render some kind of in game WOW (iPhone etc) would still provide an awful experience.

Imagine trying to do an instance on your phone?

Would be horrible

Anti

Yeah no doubt, but maybe some form of simple quests or something to give gold/rep or whatever even if its to pass the time on your way home from work on the bus/dart/luas

Xan81

If you're not wanting to go through a whole lot to be able to do this, the solution is simple:

Before leaving to wherever you're going to be RDC'ing from, launch WoW.

Make sure your WoW video settings are set to Windowed mode, but not maximized and mute your system volume.

Minimize WoW. If you don't do this, RDC will begin streaming the data even before you've logged into the machine running WoW, therefore making the log-in process that much slower.

No need to log in, because by the time you are at a point where you can RDC and play you'll be auto-logged off. This is ok.

Begin RDC, log into your home machine, and WoW will be running and waiting to be un-minimized.

Log into WoW and play to your snail's pace heart's content!

As I'm discovering right now, at this very moment, it's great for guildmasters - and it's one of the few things you can do to any effectiveness.

To increase chat and guild control and banking and all that, have your toon stare at the ground. Less movement = less data to be streamed over RDC.

WellyJ

Or just use logmein.com

Very acceptable FPS for auction house browsing/chat

And not setup required whatsoever.

The only thing you need to do is set the quality on lowest (depending on bandwidth) and only use keys to move, mouse dragging ****s things up

Anti

WellyJ wrote: »

Or just use logmein.com

Very acceptable FPS for auction house browsing/chat

And not setup required whatsoever.

The only thing you need to do is set the quality on lowest (depending on bandwidth) and only use keys to move, mouse dragging ****s things up

Ive actually tried using logmein before, i found it horribly laggy and pretty unstable. But that was using a 2mb BT line with a ****ty 384k up. Would be interestign to see what its like with a line with a huge upload

Canis Lupus

I've tried log me in and all I get is a blank/black screen when WoW tries to load. It's not crashing as I can alt tab back to my desktop.

Tallon

Very sad!