Newb's Guide to Multiboxing - Start here if you are brand new to Multiboxing

[Khatovar]

An Introduction to Multiboxing and Dual-boxing.com

Welcome to Dual-boxing.com. You're probably here because you saw us flitting around town in a swarm, steamrolling through battle grounds or cutting a swath through a quest area. You see a mass of toons melting face and think "How is that not cheating!? Sign me up!"

Because it's not cheating. Botting and hacking are cheating and we do not do that. What you've seen is the result of tons of behind the scenes work. And that's what Dual-boxing.com is here for. Multiboxing can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. You'll find everything from just having one toon following another to level 2 characters at once all the way up to full groups and raids and PvP teams that are so expertly managed that you don't even realize they're multiboxed until they all fall in line and follow one toon.

But wherever you plan to fall on the spectrum, you will need to do the work to see the results. Know that, first and foremost. Multiboxing is very much a learning experience, not a plug and play one. You are NOT going to just download something and that's the end of it. You aren't even going to learn all this stuff and that's the end of it. Almost everyone here will tell you that the longer you play and the more times you "start over" the more you learn and the more refined your multiboxing becomes.

Once you've read through this tutorial, don't forget to take the time to look at the links in post #5. It contains some very useful links and information to help you once you've gotten these basics down.

FAQ for Non {or New!}-Multiboxers

Blizzard's Stance and Rules on Multiboxing in World of Warcraft
Dual-boxing.com's Rules

Dual-boxing.com

First thing's first. You MUST read and understand the rules and FAQ's above. Not reading the rules is no excuse for breaking them. We have a no tolerance policy in regards to discussion of breaking the rules, including discussion of selling accounts, hacks, cheats, exploits, private servers and botting. Violating these rules will at the very least get your post closed and can get your account here banned. This also extends to the IRC channel.

Also, there's no point trying to be coy. If you're trying to get support for something that "doesn't work" by avoiding mentioning it's a private server, don't bother. You're going to annoy a lot of people who are banging their heads against a wall trying to troubleshoot a program when the program isn't the problem. Eventually, someone will figure out that the problem is you're not on a legitimate server and your thread will be locked or deleted.

The people in this community are responsible for making multiboxing what it is today. Multiboxing is a way to play games, not a way to hack or cheat. No one here wants to have their hard work associated with negative things like bots, hackers or general a**hattery.

Now that you've read the rules for this site, you should understand the rules for the game you are trying to play. You and you alone are responsible for making sure that you do not violate the rules of the games you are playing. Multiboxing is NOT allowed in all games. Even when it is allowed in a game, there are certain rules that vary between these games. For example, Everquest is very relaxed in its rules regarding macros and multiboxing. However, another game from the same company under the SAME franchise, EverQuest II, is MUCH more strict and limiting.

We do have a list of responses from various games about multiboxing here, and it's a good place to start. HOWEVER, I don't live and breathe to talk to customer service and GMs. Those rules can change at any time and that list is only updated when someone tells me something has changed. It is YOUR responsibility to make sure you are not breaking the rules. I very strongly suggest that BEFORE you start to multibox any game {other than WoW, since news on WoW is updated frequently} you open a ticket and ask a GM. Feel free to reference the ticket numbers in that post.

Keep in mind, multiboxing is not a free pass for violating other rules. The CMs who check out reports on you don't look and say "oh, a multiboxer. *close ticket* or *ban*" They will check for other ToS or EULA violations and act accordingly. So if you get banned for automation or account trading or just being a jerk, you were banned for that, not multiboxing.

Asking Questions

Understand that this community has been around for quite a while. There isn't much that hasn't been brought up, and there are guides upon guides and tutorials upon tutorials all over the place for everything from group makeups to system configurations to macros for several different games. If you can't take the steps to look for this information and do some of your own research, this probably isn't the hobby for you. Many posters have no problem doing a little hand-holding, and that is why they've taken the time to post all the information that they do. Don't expect them to do all the work for you.

That is not to say that you should never have questions. We love questions. Lots of us here love nothing more than getting our geek on, but that doesn't mean we want to answer the same simple questions 20 times a day. The first thing you should do is search. We have a search option at the top of the forums or you can search through an advanced Google search. Generally, the Google search works far better than the forum search.

You should also look at the sticky posts at the top of every forum. These are usually posts that people have found so helpful that they think they should be front and center all the time, so no one has to look hard to find them. Every subforum has its own stickies, so be sure to check them all.

If you have found something that sort of answers your question, feel free to post in that thread, even if it's not that new. For example, you find a macro in MoP Macro Library but don't understand some of it, or found a sequence that works better for you, it's probably better to post in there than to start a whole new post. This way similar information is all together in one place instead of us having a thousand different threads all consisting of slightly different macros for the same class/spec.

If you've found some information but it doesn't really reflect the questions you have, or you simply can't find what you're looking for {because we accept that the search sometimes sucks}, then you should open a new thread. For example, you've read through all sorts of threads for how to set up ISBoxer, but you are getting an error you can't find or something isn't working as it's supposed to, that's a good time to open a new thread instead of piggybacking on an old thread that only sort of reflects your issue.


When it comes to actually asking your question, provide as much useful information as possible. If it's a technical question about your system, include your system specs. If it's a question about key broadcasting, include the program you are using and if appropriate, how many computers you're using. If it's a question about a team setup or macro, include the game you're playing if it's not obvious. If you're asking about why your DPS is low, include links to your character profile. Here's some examples

Bad question -

y wont this work? I push the button and the salve dont do nething.

Why is this a bad question?

1. What is "this"? Is it a macro that doesn't work? Is it the broadcasting itself that's not working?
2. What are you using to broadcast? Hardware? ISBoxer? Keyclone? HotKeyNet? A program we don't even know about? Are you using anything at all?
3. What are you expecting it to do? Is "the button" a follow macro? A movement key? a casting macro? jumping? a song and dance? Is it the key to turn on your broadcaster? Log in?
4. What game is it you're trying to set up? World of Warcraft works differently than EverQuest, which works differently than EverQuest 2, which works differently than Rift, which works differently than Lord of the Rings....

As you can see, a question like that triggers a hundred questions from us and zero answers.

Good question -

I downloaded ISBoxer and used the wizard to set up my WoW accounts, but when I hit my hearthstone macro on alt+H, only my main hearths home.

Why is this a good question?

1. We know exactly what you're trying to do.
2. We know what program you are using.
3. We know what you are expecting to happen and what actually does happen.
4. We know what game you are playing.

We have all the information we need to make an informed response and hopefully help you solve your problem.