The Daily Grind: Multi-boxing mayhem

I dual box WoW with two nearly identical druids. They fill in the missing DPS spot for a group of friends, so we can do the 5 man content with a full group. It works easily enough, since both druids run around doing melee damage in cat form.

Outside of this though, I haven't done much with the setup. I tend to enjoy the social and exploration aspect of MMOs the most, so I don't have a huge desire to try and control multiple diverse characters for solo dungeoning.

Nasq: "Out-of-game wealth should have nothing to do with how you play in-game."

Why, do mmo's somehow exist outside the normal rules of capitalism?

Here's a fun fact about the real world: more money means you have more options available to you, and no amount of the wealth-envy that's currently in vogue will change that fact. If people want to run 16 accounts and can pay for it, more power to them. There's nothing unfair about it, provided they earned their money honestly.

I've never understood the appeal of this. This is work people are talking about, waaaay to much work. These are supposed to be games, you do them to enjoy, to relax and have fun. I have absolutely zero interest in doing any of this "boxing" and never will have. If a game in some way needs you to do this to make the game playable, then that game mechanic is simply broken, leave it move on to a game that works.

I leveled my Warrior from 1 - 45 using my wifes level 45 paladin and pretty much used that setup all the way to 70 since she didn't want to play as often as I did. It is really easy once you get the hang of it. I just mapped the 10-key on another keyboard and pretty much just healed my warrior the entire time. There were a few times that I had to work a couple of people since I was on a PVP server... but really that was easy... you stop following and just throw heals. It didn't work against smart players that crushed my healer first but for those not so bright.... I couldn't imagine doing 5 at a time but I am sure you get use to it.

Sure is great to spend $75 a month + all the additional hardware in order to have your own 5-mans in WoW... er... what am I saying?

I think it is odd. First, it seems, why pay so much for an MMO just to eliminate the need to play with anyone else? There are great games built for a single player to control multiple avatars.

It is a shame that the genre seems to be moving to Massively Single Player Online Worlds. It would save developers a lot of money to fake servers and just claim that they have perfected the "solo" experience. Everyone gets their own instance!

Misinformation on this topic is so rampant. As Jason has explained, it is NOT against the EULAs of any AAA title I've played. I have multi-boxed twice. Once because I was curious and another time when I wanted something more challenging to do than level up yet another character in WOW.

It doesn't provide an advantage! How on earth can doing PVE content multi-boxed be an advantage when 3 chars doing content multi-boxed is the same as 3 separate ppl doing the same content. In PVP, it might seem like an advantage because they can focus fire but a team communicating can do the same thing - focus fire targets. In all cases, it is CONSIDERABLY more work to effectively coordinate multiple characters via one person, especially if they are different classes as they were in my case. It's a fun challenge. Like some players test themselves against hardcore raid content, others test themselves in Arena style PVP, others max out crafting, many max out gear and stats, etc. Lots of players play in a way that is a personal challenge to what they can accomplish in a game as character growth. I think multi-boxing for many, falls squarely in that area.

It costs people more money who multi-box but why would anyone care if someone can afford to spend more money in one game versus accounts across several games? People aren't showing off, it's a style of play - an exaggerated solo play style, where these players pretty much stick to themselves and do their own thing. Game. Entertainment. People express and experience "fun" in different ways. I made it into the mid thirties with my multi-box trio. It was A LOT of fun. It felt very rewarding when I completed content. However, it was also a ton of work. More work than just showing up to play and asking others to join a group or help me complete a quest object. In a group I perform only one role. Multi-boxers play all roles and solve all problems of an encounter themselves, which is part of the challenge and appeal.

http://notadiary.typepad.com/mysticworlds/2009/07/multiboxing-wows-5man-content.html

@itssounfair - Amen. I earn every dollar I make - period. I'd bet the vast majority of other players do too. They earn their money for gaming or their parents do, for younger gamers. If someone finds value in having 5 subs to one game, it's not really financial concern for anyone else. I could say that people who spend money on beer and cigarettes are complete wasting money and jeopardizing their health, because I don't choose to consume those items. Everyone who has discretionary spending, spends those dollars where they "personally" find value. One man's trash...

I have a really hard time playing the same story through twice. I don't mind reading a good story multiple times, Dark Jewels Trilogy yum, but there's so much lack of things going on in an MMO, such a story lite sequence, that doing it twice feels mind numbing.

I would dual box solely for the ability to level up multiple characters at the same time so I could enjoy different play styles at the level cap. I have no other interest in it, and even consider doing it for the reason I just outlined isn't worth the money. Sure if I was younger and didn't have a car and was trapped in my house with nothing to do that'd be great, but we can't live lives doing that.

I have nothing against other players who choose to multibox. It can be annoying, especially if you're currently really into an MMO, to see 5 or more guys running in a line all on auto follow. My GF has dual-boxed a number of times from the same computer, helping us level actually, her on a main and an alt, and me on an alt. Besides the sudden jarring question "is that guy botting or multi boxxing, and why do I feel so affronted if he's botting?", I could care less.

I see no problem with them playing solo with their little electronic friends. However, the person in the photo stereotypicaly looks withdrawn and wrapped up in their personal world, food spread all over the place, i would imagine the play area is nasty too. Legs folded up in the fetal position concentrating intently on something that should be enjoyable but is now a job with set things to accomplish.

Multi boxing is a fail, macros required. This is the pinnacle of solo players wanting to group but refuse to work with real people for whatever reason, mainly to access content they would never be able to do using one avatar. It is a sickness and blizzard condones it. Macros only help things like this continue to thrive. Macros should be outlawed and should never be used in any game. Without macros multiboxing would be close to impossible when these type of folks play pvp or enter a raid dungeon.

Wrong - Macros are not required to multi-box. The real key is intelligent and artful keyboard layout/mapping and being very coordinated. It's like solving a huge puzzle which doesn't appeal to many in their gaming. Much like people who don't like EVE Online calling it a spreadsheet game because participating in the economy is "work", it doesn't detract from the fun of it for people who find that sort of thing enjoyable.

Sure, macros simplify the number of things you need tied to a single key but it does that for everyone who chooses to use macros. not just multi-boxers. People who are really into multi-boxing wouldn't be stopped by a lack of macros. EQ1/EQ2 are the most macro restrictive games I've played and you can multi-box in that game just fine. I know of people that do it without a single macro.

FFXI had multiboxing. Most common was multiboxing a white or red mage to power level a low level party or soloer. Next common was RMT multiboxing to level up a lot of characters in a short time; however it was heavily automated.

FFXI made multiboxing too difficult to go beyond that. You could never really multibox an entire raid like I've heard in other games, because tanking, healing, and support are too labor intensive, requiring a lot of positioning and timing that can't be simplified down to spamming a rotation of buttons. You could bring in a multiboxed alt to contribute, but in any group situation it often meant splitting focus to the point of being unproductive or killing your party.

I'm not really a fan of it. It's very rare for a player to be skilled enough to multibox solo any real event in an MMO, so what happens is they just use it to skip levelling. Or other unsavory uses, like multiple alts to harvest, or claim multiboxed alts to get claim on a big HNM. It probably would just be best if someone took that aspect they found attractive in multiboxing and made a game out of it.

I used to dual box a fair bit in FFXI using friends' accounts. At one point I tri-boxed a BCNM (event battle type thing for shinies) using three low level summoners. Coordinating that so astral flow went off at the same time on all three was pretty fun. I'd also often log in a white mage to raise myself or friends if my main character was busy at the time, or a thief if we were trying to get something rare to drop. It's just not something I liked doing all the time- while it was more fun, it was also more stressful.

I've found I can't really do it effectively with faster paced games though, like WoW or Aion. My attention span's just not there, I guess. Maybe with practice, but I really don't have the money to be paying for multiple accounts and multiple monthly fees myself.

M the sheep: "ahh, more elitism, more "the wealthy have, and should have greater rights then anyone else"

Learn to read please, and refrain from putting words in my mouth. No where did I say the wealthy have or should have greater rights. I simply said they, by definition, have more money and the options that that opens up to them. How they got that money is really none of my (or your) business, and if they came by it dishonestly, they'll answer for it at some point. Assuming that 'the vast majority' of rich people inherited their wealth is a hysterical projection. You have absolutely zero factual or statistical information to back that up, it's just a gut feeling you have and of course like most liberals, you never let facts or logic get in the way of your feelings.

I'm what most people would consider poor in terms of my annual income and my creature comforts. I don't delude myself into thinking that I somehow deserve better, or that everyone who has more than me must've cheated to get it. My circumstances are a result of choices that I've made, and I accept responsibility for them, which is something that brainwashed liberals like yourself are incapable of doing.

Keep bad-mouthing Christians though, as well as conservatives and whoever else doesn't fall into line with your intellectually misguided group-think orgy of irresponsibility. It's doing wonders for the economy and the future of this nation.

No one said capitalism is pure and right. It is simply the best system that imperfect, corrupt, and inherently greedy human beings can hope to achieve. Would it be great if everyone were equal, got along, and were happy? Yes it would, but that will never happen in this life because of human nature, and so the best you can do is reward the people who are willing to work hard and achieve, not sit on their ass and collect handouts.

The logical fallacy of liberalism is that it assumes a perfect system run by perfect people, and if you think such a thing is even remotely possible, you're even dumber than your post illustrated.

I personally am not much into dealing with multi-boxing. I have done a bit of dual-boxing in WoW before which was ok, but I didn't care for it so much. Back in the day with EQ my friend and I used to do it all the time where we would both run a couple accounts and have our own group... simply because we could and we knew what we were doing. So many people don't know how to play any of these games anymore which is just sad. (anti-pugs!)

On another angle to what some folks were saying... I wonder is WoW would benefit at all from doing something like EQ2 and CoH where you can "Mentor" folks or knock your levels down to lower characters to be able to group with lowers. They already have Bind To Account items that you can transfer to other characters that adjust to the level of that character... why not be able to do the same thing only drop your levels down with your gear to group with lower folks? *shrug* I dunno... have given up on WoW anyways... they are lost in their ways anymore.

Multi-boxing in and of itself isn't really bad. However, once you take that multi-boxer, put him in a pvp environment, and give him the 3rd party programs to effectively run all his characters at once easily, that's where it starts becoming a problem to other players.

In World of Warcraft, I've ran into 4-5 man multi-boxers that just kill you in a second or two. There's nothing you can do about it. They mash 1 button on their keyboard to send signals to each 'box', and bam, you're dead.

That's the problem with mutli-boxing and the thing that ticks off those that don't agree with it's use. The 3rd party programs gives real multi-box jugglers a bad name.

For a very brief time a few years ago, I dual-boxed in WoW with my warrior main and a mage alt on my wife's account, just to help the mage get some levels. It was fun, I didn't put too much thought into it, made a level or two and then gave it all up as a bit tiresome. So I guess it's something to do with player mentality.