New Dual Boxer, A Few Questions

[pmellyn]

I have been reading about Dual Boxing all day, and I am very interested in it.

First off, everyone says that running 5 copies off of one machines isn't a good idea. Why is this? I am looking to do some very basic stuff first before get real in depth with it, would this be a good way just to get started to learn the Macros I will need and basic controlling with a program like Keyclone.

If I was to setup all the extra computers I have laying around, I do not have room to have all of them around my desk, does Synergy still work if I have 4 machines in separate rooms of the house, or is it best to have the 5 displays with the 5 boxes all next to me?

Is it harder to control a group that is melee based over a group that is range based? Would something like a Priest, Mage, Rogue, Warrior, Hunter be a lot harder to work with then say a Priest, 4x Mage group? Also, would all melee be pretty easy to work with like the 5 range group seems? I was thinking of trying something a little different like Warrior, 4x Rogue.

I am looking for any advice on where to start and what is the best basic setup to get me started. I am a system admin for a company so I am quite familiar with computers and shouldn't have much of a problem setting up some of the more advanced stuff as well. :D

[Stealthy]

There's a few reasons you wouldn't run 5 copies on one machine - firstly its very CPU / RAM / GPU intensive, i.e. you'd need a fairly well specc'd machine to do it. Secondly you need to do a lot of alt-tabbing to interact with your alts, which can be time consuming and inconvenient.

You can of course do it on separate machines in different rooms, but once again it makes interaction with alts very difficult, moreso than running 5 copies on the one PC.

Having 5 PC's next to each other, with the monitors set up in some kind of array is the easiest way to multbox IMO. You can quickly see if one is being attacked, or has stopped following for some reason. It also makes collection quests much less tiresome, as you just need to mouse over to that screen and click.

Melee based groups are harder to control becuase almost always the toons have to been in melee range and facing the mob / opponent, which can be tricky if you're trying to get 5 toons into the right position. Spellcasters can fire a spell off anywhere from point blank to the range limit of thier spell. Warlocks have the benefit of having dots that don't require you to be facing the enemy. Also the more classes you are trying to control, the more complicated it becomes, as you need to assign buttons / keys to a whole bunch of new abilities for each class, and micro-management goes up accordingly.

This being said a lot of people start off with 4 locks and a priest. Holy priests are the best party healers in the game, and 4 x voidwalkers provide good tanks for almost anything up to heroic instances. However if you're planning to do heroics, you're better off going for a proper tank/healer/dps combo. 4 x locks and a priest is also a good combination for pvp as well.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,
Stealthy

[pmellyn]

Are there any type of addons that will auto accept shared quests, that way if I was running 2, 3, 4, or even 5 instances of WoW on my computer, I could use the main machine as the master to grabbing quests then just share them to my "slaves." I know with Deadly Boss Mods, it has a feature to automatically turn in the reputation quests when you interact with the NPC. I know there are ways to auto accept party invites, so I don't see how accepting a quest would be much different. As far as turning in I would probably have to tab between them. I want to try and do 5 at once off my box, it should have enough power, it is comparable to other people that have done it. Any suggestions welcome. :)

[Stealthy]

Place this macro on all secondary toons to accept quests/rez/etc:

/script AcceptGroup();
/script AcceptQuest();
/script AcceptTrade();
/script RetrieveCorpse();

Have a look at the Macro's & Addodn's forum - heaps of great info there!

Cheers,
Stealthy