One of the things I enjoy about WOW Radio is the diversity of podcasts for World of WarCraft. Hardcore or casual, raider or not, you can find a show that talks about how you play WOW. Catching up on some the WOW Insider podcasts hosted by WOW Radio, I listened to a show about two-boxing in games. I'm familiar with the concept having run into couples that were doing it in AC2 on a casual basis. Run spouse through <insert name> dungeon because he/she is cooking, doing laundry, dealing with the kids, etc.
I've done short spurts of two-boxing to mule items across our WOW accounts, give a toon a healthstone or soulshard or apply some priest buffs, but mostly to enchant items. In the past I couldn't do it on the same computer for more than a few minutes before my system blue-screened - a VERY scary thing when you're messing with Bill Gates and his infamous Windows OS. :-) But it was doable in very short durations for very specific needs.
Before I continue too much further let me back up a bit and define two-boxing for those who are not familiar with the concept. Strictly speaking, two-boxing is when a single person is operating two sessions of the same game and controlling two characters at the same time. These days we could probably say multi-boxing and not limit the idea to just two. WOW has a few rather famous multi-boxers - someone does 5 Mages, someone is doing an Arena team with Druid, Priest and Mages I think...blah...blah, I'm not up on the whole scene. Bottom line - for the real multi-boxers it is the act of multiple machines running the same game while they control multiple characters within that game. Another variation on the idea is running multiple instances of the game on the same computer. I would still consider that multi-boxing even though there is only a single set of hardware involved.
The conversation on WOW Insider show talked about the technical aspects of doing this, how people feel about it and why people do it. Just for clarification, it is NOT against EULA to multi-box. Both CCP and Blizzard have communicated that fact on their forums. Similar to character twinking, they might not endorse the idea but it is not illegal activity because it is NOT the same as botting (unmanned activity).
Anywho - I found the conversation very interesting. I can see the allure for someone who solos a lot to want to have more than one character available while leveling. DPS and a healer is an obvious combo, as would be Tank and Healer or DPS and Crowd Control. The other thing that caught my interest was that it's challenging to do successfully and efficiently. There's no point to doing it if you're so inept that it actually takes your twice as long to complete tasks right? That would be a huge waste of time and probably not much fun. Bending the boundaries of what should be possible is something that usually appeals to me.
I've been playing a bit of WOW again. Why does it feel dirty or shameful to say that??? I have a little more time on my hands for leisure. Not because work has gotten any better but because I'm just drawing the line on it. The hours, stress and circumstances are turning me into a semi-depressed, fatigued, angry and hostile human being. I just can't allow my life to "go there" over a job. So I either change how I process this place (and future places just like it) or I have to get gone. I'm trying to change me before having to do the "get gone" approach. But I've digressed... Short story is that none of the games I'd like to be playing have released, hence the return to WOW.
I'm playing a Mage and leveling in my typical soloist style. I'm chugging along doing my thing. I'm in a guild although, only the gods know why since I don't talk to anyone. I sound really twisted when I talk about myself and my behavior. *Laughs* A few times I've need to complete a Mage class quest that requires a group and since I won't PUG my approach has been to run the Mage which is on my account to the location. Run the Druid who is now on my son's account to the location. Have the Druid clear the mobs. Log back on to the Mage and waltz up to where or what I need and get it. That takes a bit of time. However, after listening to the WOW Insider podcast on multi-boxing, I decided to try a different approach.
With a gaming rig and a laptop at my disposal, I had two options for testing this out. I could use two computers as it’s described in the podcast but without having access to the special hardware devices used to daisy chain things together. Or I could simply try and use two different sets of keyboards and mice, but that sounded more complicated than I was in the mood to do. Instead, I decided run two different sessions of WOW on the same machine using reduced resolution, graphic settings all on low and in window-mode. I waited for the blue-screen of death but it didn't come. Hmm. I ran around a zone with the Mage following the Druid and still no blue-screen.
Great - I decided to put this to the test. What I really wanted/needed to do was to run Scarlet Monastery. I didn’t have any of the quests yet but one of the things you miss out on when you solo are gear upgrades from instances. So far all of my gear has been purchased off the AH which can be a bit expensive for the lower level toons. Players tend to charge very high for the blue items because they know that most people buying that gear are twinking or doing alts and can probably afford to pay a high price and would rather buy it than quest for it. Over time that can be very expensive. So I figured I'd try the two-boxing and get some gear from SM.
Getting to SM was the easy part. My first set of difficulties revolved around changing my hot bars around for tanking - I only kitty the Druid and then remembering what I'd changed and to be quick about switching between the Druid session of WOW versus the Mage session of WOW. In the back of my mind, I kept expecting to crash but that never happened. The way I played it in SM wasn't two-boxing in its strictest sense. I left the Mage on follow for the most part. I didn’t try to have him participate in the fighting unless he got aggro from a wandering NPC or I pulled too many by mistake. When that happened I had him use Frost Nova to root the mobs in place and move out of the way. It was very easy to clear the place with a level 70 Druid in a complete set of PVP gear. The Mage died twice which was no problem since I could just rez him.
Late into my session I got a message from someone that I'd done a few quests with the evening before. He seemed like a nice player, courteous and such, so we added each other to our friends list. He asked if there was room in my SM group. He laughed when I explained what I was doing and really wanted to come along for the ride. By the time he arrived I'd cleared almost both sides but decided to drop group and reform to help him get some loot. It took us about 1.5 hours to clear the joint again. The only crazy pull was when his pet went chasing after a fleeing mob and pulled two rooms on me. I had already pulled an entire room to hurry things along so the added drama was a bit more than I was expecting. I really thought I was going to die. My health got down to 40%. I can only attack but so many mobs at a time. I was swarmed on all sides. All I could do was to keep whacking and pounding my keyboard as quickly as possible. My Mage died. The hunter dismissed his pet and ran. It was quite a rush but I got them all down. We both walked away with so much phat loot for that level. I also have a massive store of cloth in case I take this toon to max level, at which time Tailoring will be required for decent gear. *HURL*
The little bit of excitement I had two-boxing in a towing boat fashion was fun and different. I can definitely see the allure of someone doing it for real. If you like to solo you can increase the challenge of leveling, as well as broaden the content that you can access by multi-boxing. If I’m still playing as I hit the 40s and beyond, I can see doing the instances known for good caster drops in a similar fashion.
Supposedly there is a whole community with support groups and forums for this kind of thing. I didn’t pay attention to that information when I was originally listening to the podcast but now I'll go find it in the show notes and check it out. Two-boxing an active Mage with a Druid would be fun if they were the same level. In my case, the Mage is useless with a 70 Druid tanking. Having played the Mage to level 35 now, I can also see how rocking 5 Mages in Azeroth could be the bomb. :-)
Howdy, here's the URL for the multi-boxing forum mentioned in the show:
http://www.dual-boxing.com
Cheers!
Posted by: Ben | April 15, 2008 at 05:40 PM
Thanks much!
Posted by: Saylah | April 15, 2008 at 07:49 PM
Okay so one of these crazy MoFos 5-boxed four Warlocks and a Priest. My first character was Warlock and is probably the class I play the best - offensively and defensively. I get how the OPness of the class is a draw and hell, they can drain tank elite mobs. But I would never want to micro manage four Warlocks. Shard management alone would drive me insane! More power to him/her.
I've cruised the site and am even more interested now. I think I might seriously dual box in the next game I play. Why I personally play MMOs to solo can be discussed again at a later date. :-)
Posted by: Saylah | April 15, 2008 at 07:56 PM
Very interesting topic. I have heard of multi-boxing but have never tried it. First of all, it requires 2 accounts right? I know of no other way to log in with 2 toons on the same account. Second, I am curious how you controlled 2 toons with one keyboard/mouse. I am very intrigued with this method because I solo a lot. I hate pug's very much, 9 out of 10 times I end up with morons.
I also started new toons on a new server. I still have my 70 hunter, 43 warlock, & 36 rogue on the pvp realm, but I now am playing on the Cho'gall realm, which is.....pvp! Yes, I have decided to make things interesting and fun. So far I am having fun but only level 11 right now so we will see how the world pvp goes. I also helped form a guild from some people that I met on a forum for warlocks. Pretty good people and a laid back atmosphere. Not sure if you have seen it, but check out the http://wowmb.net/ sometime. Nice people and good information.
Anyway, keep up the postings I love reading them!
Posted by: romagoth | April 16, 2008 at 10:26 AM
Yes, multi-boxing requires as many accounts as you'd like to simultaneously run. In our hay-day of WOW we had four accounts in our household. We're now down to just two and as recently as last week I was about to combine it all down to just one. However, when I looked and the total transfer fees it would actually cost more than just leaving the two accounts active for another few months and see what happens.
Since the paid transfer was implemented I'm sure I've spent in the neighborhood for 300 to 400 dollars moving toons. To many people that probably sounds like a lot but when you consider that it has allowed 6 people 3+ years of playing WOW, it's not so much. We get to trade characters when we're bored, play on different servers with different people - kids have followed friends and family a couple of times. I've followed friends a couple of times. When you factor in the flexibility it has allowed it's not much at all.
As for how I controlled two at the same time, I did it the old fashion way of clicking back and forth across the different windows. Not effective but not as hard as it might sound since I use custom keybindings and macros as a rule. In combat there was only one key that had to be pressed for each toon which was casting used a chained series of spells via the castsequence command exposed by the WOW marcoing language.
More details to come...
Posted by: Saylah | April 16, 2008 at 02:26 PM
I've just begun to dabble w/multiboxing as well. One thing I haven't seen mentioned here yet is that you can run software to broadcast keystrokes to multiple instances of the game (either on the same machine or different machines). Anyway, check this out http://www.wowwiki.com/Multiboxing_Software_Requirements
Posted by: chris | April 18, 2008 at 11:45 AM