2 side by PlayOnline installations with different versions

[TeoTwawki]

Disclaimer: If your PC explodes or something, I accept no responsibility.

To do this, you need 2 different regions of PlayOnline installed, and an existing installation of Final Fantasy XI (any region). This guide will use the North American (US) and European (EU) versions of PlayOnline, and assumes the US version of FFXI and POL are already installed.

Why have 2 different versions? Well in theory you could play an updated retail server and still be able to play on that private server that isn't ready for the latest client, as long as your client you try to use for retail matches the region of the account you have on retail (NOTE 1).

Here are links to all 3 regions of PlayOnline Installer:
US http://dl.square-enix.co.jp/polus/setup.exe
EU http://dl.square-enix.co.jp/poleu/setup.exe
JP http://dl.square-enix.co.jp/pol/setup.exe

Before proceeding, you may want to back up your registry and/or make a restore point.

Step 1: Install the EU playonline. DO NOT over-wright your existing install by specifying the same location! I find it helpful to not have any of my installs in the default location, and use subfolders to keep track of which region is which. C:\POL\EU\ C:\POL\US\ etc.

Step 2: Copy your entire FFXI install (not pol, just ffxi) to the new EU pol folder. As an example,
C:\Program Files (x86)\PlayOnline\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\ -> C:\Program Files (x86)\PlayOnlineEU\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\

Step 3: We need to duplicate and edit some registry info from your US version. If you are on 64 bit windows you want to export the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\PlayOnlineUS key and all info from it and its subkeys. If you are on 32 bit, its going to be HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS. Now open that in a text editor like notepad or notepad++ and edit all the paths to your other installations path, and change the key names that say US to say EU. Then merge.

POL_Dual_Install.png (3.22 KiB) Viewed 13825 times

Step 4: On running the EU pol for the 1st time it should update to the latest version. After that is done we need to force it to update the "unknown" version of your duplicate FFXI, which will incidentally convert it into that region (NOTE 2). Delete \rom\0\0.dat and do a file check, it will fine "1 problem". do the repair, it'll check against the latest version on SE's server and start updating after that. When its finished, you should have a second working FFXI.

NOTE 1: You can't play a retail account on the wrong region. EU accounts need an EU client, NA need an NA client, etc. so use the xiloader command line switch

Code: Select all

--lang NA
--lang EU
--lang JP

and the setting in ashita (not a windower guy, but I assume they have an equivalent) to select what region and language POL install you are using.

NOTE 2: The tools folders and config exe's will not be installed or downloaded, so settings and configurations tools will still be aiming at your original installation (US in the example) unless you get those copied from a valid official install of that region. The good news is they aren't hard to get from the net, I think Kriz's update pack even has them. Your start menu and desktop POL shortcuts will however point to whichever region the most recent install is - SE never expected multiple versions to be installed at once.