Everybody Likes Kitties and Jaffs

[Tykhon]

Hey all, I just want to send a huge thanks out to the community here, especially Khatovar and Jafula. You see, I bought a WoW RAF account during the sale a few weeks ago, because Alts. All of them. All the alts. Essentially, the RAF account was going to be a glorified 300% heirloom on follow with a great on-use of level grants. Once the RAF bonuses expire and all level grants have been done, I'll let the account expire.

Let me interject an important note: I'm married. My wife plays as well. So when I bought my account, she bought an RAF for herself, too. I'm still disappointed in myself that I was surprised by this.

Now, I had a buddy who did 5 team multiboxing back in the BC days. We all thought he was nuts. Turns out he IS nuts, but he had a good setup, but most of his knowledge was outdated. I had another friend who 2 boxed, but had a Nostromo for the broadcasting. So, time for the Google, which led me to dual-boxing.com.

Holy Cow this place is amazing. Lots of of great knowledge, clear answers, and a very effective use of locking threads. Y'all are so helpful, it's not even funny.

One of my requirements was a free tool, and after reading several write-ups, I settled on HotKeyNet. As I researched it and tweaked it, I noticed a trend. Khatovar was giving answers and help in every single thread asking for assistance. Not handwave BS answers like our helpdesk at work likes to give because they don't have a clue. Real answers, even going so far as to try loading someone's script to test for an error.

Over time, I've got follow working effectively, I've got region based mouse broadcasting for Clique healing, and for the love of Pete I was able to setup pass-through gathering. All this was based on searching for the issue I was trying to solve, finding someone who posted a similar question, and scrolling for Khatovar's answer. Oh, and every link in the sig is gold.

So, I setup a team with my account, my RAF account, my wife's account, her RAF account. I added my kid's 90 DK to howling blast all the dungeons from 10-85, and I'm not even half the way through the RAF and here's what my login screen looks like after leveling and grants:


That's right. That's one of every class. Only the pala-squid and priest were >85 when I started. Everything else was RAF'd. Yes that's a word now: RAF'd.

I'm finishing up Horde on Earth Ring, now. I had quite a few characters there, so only needed 3 more to fill it out. I've taken the monk to 85, now a mage to the 70s, a shaman to the 40s, then level grants to get everything including an old warrior to 85.

All this without having to post a single question here, because the information was so complete. Add to this, if I'm reading it right (and I like to think that I am), Khatovar's not even playing WoW right now. Yet still, answers! Answers for everyone! She's like the Oprah of HKN answers.

Lastly, I can't imagine WoW multiboxing without Jamba. Just the quest completion is amazing, oh and it handles follow, and hey don't forget the team management, and for the LOVE OF PETE ITS GOT A DASHBOARD. I've barely scratched the surface of it, but this leveling process would have taken A LOT LONGER without it. Jafula, you've struck a good balance of a good toolbox without useless feature creep.

Thank you all, so very, very much.

P.S. Remember when I said I was going to drop the RAF accounts when this was all done? I've been having so much fun with this I MIGHT JUST KEEP THEM. (Don't judge me ok?)

TL;DR <3 DB.COM

[MiRai]

Thanks for posting this. It's very cool to hear how players (new or old) get sucked into multiboxing come to be multiboxers and hopefully you can continue to find fun in the playstyle as we all have.

I noticed that you mention an RP realm and your image is of a list of characters on a second RP realm, and I'd like to point out that multiboxing can also serve as a type of storytelling tool (if you will). Luxlunae recently posted a blog entry explaining that she was using macros to talk to people and ease them into the fact that she's a multiboxer (since it either tends to scare people away or have them attack us), but I also have a few video examples of some scripted RP from a recent video series I did which might interest you or give you some ideas (01 / 02 / 03).

[CDNProdigy]

P.S. Remember when I said I was going to drop the RAF accounts when this was all done? I've been having so much fun with this I MIGHT JUST KEEP THEM. (Don't judge me ok?)

I had a chuckle at this Tykhon! Your in the community now where the standard is 5 accounts or more.

I see your on Wyrmrest Accord. I look forward to seeing you alliance toons around for mine are there as well.

[Khatovar]

P.S. Remember when I said I was going to drop the RAF accounts when this was all done? I've been having so much fun with this I MIGHT JUST KEEP THEM. (Don't judge me ok?)

Thank you for the compliments. I am humbled by both your praise and your excitement! I can certainly relate to both. When I started and first found my way here, it was just going to be 1 to fill a raid slot and spam HoTs to back up my Holydin. Then, thanks to the discussions here, I was a trio - let the other raid healer DPS. Then it was "Oh, one more and my husband and I can 'duo' dungeons when no one else is online." From there, it was a really short trip to shoving my husband out of the way and doing it all myself. It's a strange feeling to have to decide which DPS you like least so you know who to "leave home" when your significant other wants to group up, lol. Thankfully the geek pride level of having a wife who not only games, but does so in such an extraordinarily geeky fashion, far outweighed any epeen shrinkage that might have stemmed from twiddling his thumbs while I obliterated everything.

Add to this, if I'm reading it right (and I like to think that I am), Khatovar's not even playing WoW right now. Yet still, answers! Answers for everyone! She's like the Oprah of HKN answers.

Hahah! The times when I'm not playing are the best times to be posting! When I get bored enough, my brain starts fixating on long, tedious, probably impractical/impossible projects - it's doing wonders for my grout right now. Multiboxing and figuring out how to make things work better is exactly my kind of crack. Spending hours, days, even weeks figuring out how to make something work the way I want it to is totally like having a love affair. Even if the question or issue someone posts is simple, sometimes it still gets me thinking about something else to try or gives me a piece that I'll end up coming back to later.

Any post can do it, not just the HKN ones, not just posts from long time members. I'm sure I'm not the only one around here who's been inspired like that from someone who doesn't know you "just can't" or who wants to know exactly why we do something a certain way. I know Jafula and Lax can certainly attest to that!

So questions are awesome. We love questions. Stuff I can answer brings me to life, lol. Who will be the inspiration behind my next great time waster? Could be you! But for now, I have a half-degrouted bathroom with my name on it, heh. Welcome to the community, hope you find it as addictive as we do!

[luxlunae]

Any post can do it, not just the HKN ones, not just posts from long time members. I'm sure I'm not the only one around here who's been inspired like that from someone who doesn't know you "just can't" or who wants to know exactly why we do something a certain way. I know Jafula and Lax can certainly attest to that!

Amen! Two or three (or four?) weeks ago Beeq was playing around with the armory and his php server, and linking us the results in Isboxer chat, and that reminded me that I always meant to automate some of my multiboxing spreadsheets so that they downloaded information from the armory. I wrote a perl script that downloaded and parsed the first three pages of the wow recruiting forums this spring, throwing out any posts originally from more than a week ago, and I figured the armory couldn't be harder than that. The result was the baby version of my script http://www.dual-boxing.com/entries/9...acters-(Basic) and then the "grown up" version (which generates 3 different csv files, one of gear, one of professions, and the original) that I import into excel by clicking a big sexy "import data" button. None of this would have happened if I hadn't seen Beeqs enthusiasm at the exact moment I had some free time and was looking for a programming project. And I wasn't actually playing Wow at the time!

Another great example is your own Khat fishing guide. Now I didn't care that much about fishing but seeing that guide challenged me to set it up just for the fun of following a complex guide and I got the stupid ironforge fish in less than an hour. I still use the hotkey, actually, because syncing camera views back up helps to negate the headaches you get from watching one character run from the side out of the corner of your eye.

[Jafula]

Yes, I agree. Khatovar is a legend. Freddie did a great job with HotKeyNet and it was really gracious of him to leave it available for us to use.

I really like the community here. I've not had much time recently to interact with it, but that is changing with WoD and my daughter becoming a bit more independent (at 10 months).

I still think this (FTL) was a touch of genius, it revolutionized the way we box WoW.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Ha! Welcome aboard. Yes, we do have the most awesome community in gaming, IMO.