1. Downloading the client and copying your characters
Navigate over to http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/services/ and on the right hand side scroll down and select "Public Test Realm" under the Character Services section
At this point you will be asked to log in to your Battle.net account. Do so and you will be greeted by the following options
Depending on if they allow you to copy your characters or not or if your gear is sufficent for the PTR content will determine what you do next
If you choose to copy a premade character you will be given a menu of various Classes and Specs to choose from
If you choose to copy one of your characters off live then you will be given the following;
You should then proceed to select which character you wish to copy from the dropdown menu's and the destination realm. The realm we will all be going to, if there are more than one test realm, will be decided when the realm selections are available. If you get there early and before a destination realm has been decided by the guild and you are only playing one character, you should copy that character to both realms to avoid uneccisary waiting in the transfer queue
After copying your required characters you now need to download the client. So at the top of the page navigate to the "Download Client" section from the bar
You will then be given the window with a download link for the client which you should proceed to download and install
When asked where to Install the PTR I would suggest putting it in the same folder as your live WoW Client. This can be found at
C > Users > Public > Games
2. Addons and copying your settings
To ease the transition from live to PTR, you are most likely going to want to be able to use your interface that you do on live, thus we need to do the following;
Firstly check that all of your addons are up to date and working properly then click on start and open up your computer and navigate to the World of Warcraft folder, this is usually found at
C > Users > Public > Games > World of Warcraft
You should then open the Interface folder to come to a window that looks something like this
Next you should either press Ctrl + C on the addons folder or right click it and select copy
Now you should navigate to the World of Warcraft PTR folder where you installed it earlier
C > Users > Public > Games
Once again go into the Interface folder and now press Ctrl + V or right click in the folder and select paste to copy your addons folder from live to the PTR
Now that we have the core addons installed you are most likely going to want the settings you use on live to be mirrored on PTR so;
Go to your live WoW Directory at
C > Users > Public > Games > World of Warcraft
and open the folder labelled "WTF" and open the accounts folder. Select the account that the character you wish to play is on and you should be presented with a list of realms that you have played characters on that looks somewhat like the following
You should then select both the folder for the realm you play on and the folder called "Saved Variables" and copy them both
Then navigate back to your PTR folder and if the "WTF" folder doesnt exist, proceed by creating one. To do this, right clicking in the WoW PTR folder and creating a new folder which you should call "WTF"
You should then do the same and make an "Account" folder inside the "WTF" folder and inside the "Account" folder, create one with your account name
Now we have done that you should then paste the realm and the "Saved Variables" file into the folder with your account name you just created
You should now Re-name the realm folder to the realm you copied your character to on the character copy page. For example; If your main was on The Maelstrom and you copied to Brill, you would rename the folder "The Maelstrom" inside your account name folder, to "Brill"
Then go inside the renamed folder and look for your character that you copied. If you are keeping the same name then you don't have to worry about this step
However if your character is changing name then you need to select the folder of your characters name on live and rename the folder to what you are going to rename your character to on PTR