Looking to get into multiboxing, have some questions

[poogle]

I'm looking at getting into multi-boxing, but I have a few questions. I'm looking to get into a 5-box setup and be able to run the master character at decent settings (others on low to medium).

Is it doable on Windows XP? Or does Vista offer significant gains.

What sort of system will I need? Currently running on a AMD Athlon 6ghz dual core, 4gb ram, Nvidia 512mb 8800GT video card, 20" monitor.

I've read some conflicting material about one hard drive versus two? Does running the clones from a different copy of WoW on a different hard drive greatly improve performance?


Thanks for any advice :)


Poogle

[phetish]

first, check your CPU - i don't think that AMD has released a 6ghz processor yet. :)

XP is preferable to Vista - going to a 64bit vista is debatable though sinc you can go past the 4GB limit of XP (32-bit)

basically, as long as you have at least a 2Ghz dual core processor you should be able to run 5 WoW's at a time. don't expect phenomenal FPS, but serviceable at least. That's where I started, although i eventually OC'd my proc up to 2.5ghz and saw a pretty good difference.

Separate hard drives is preferable, but the speed gains are fairly minimal - most gains are seen in load times when changing zones.

Good luck and have fun!

[poogle]

Hmm maybe I misread it, dual core 6000+ it says. Hardware isnt my strong point :huh: .

[phetish]

that's a dual 3Ghz proc - you're in good shape :)

you'll get good FPS with that even in congested cities.

[Binaryzero]

I find in the whole Vista Vs XP think it tends to be more about ease of use, XP takes less work than Vista to setup and get going. My Wife and I have boxed on both Vista 32 and 64 with no real issues, just a few small issues that are workable but nothing major.

[poogle]

Thanks for that, I'll see if I can get my 2nd hard drive plugged in.

One other thing I was wondering is what would be a good set up of professions to take? I'm leaning towards either a shaman or mage group, for now I just want to start off with a dps-spam train before I get into anything complicated. I'm a fairly well established player as is, so I've got something of each kind already except for leatherworking if anything needs to be made for my new toons. Does it slow down levelling too much to have 1 of each gathering skill? I plan on taking the questing approach for now at least as a levelling method.

[poogle]

One more question - is there any way to set up ground-targetted spells (and mouse usage in general) when running 5 players from 1 machine? I looked around and read some threads, but they only seemed to refer to broadcasting mouse info to multiple machines, not other windows. Is it possible? Did I miss something obvious about it in another thread?

Thanks again


Poogle

[OogaJiggaWooga]

From my experience so far, and in the reading up I have done, there is no way to broadcast mouse signals to multiple windows on the same PC (and if you could there would be placement issues as the toons that are on follow are displaced with respect to your main character). I get around this using rapid double clicks on slave windows (the first click enables the window, the second performs the action) and it works fine for the three screens I have active, though I image that for five screens you will need a bit of practice to get it right most of the time ;)

[Oswyn]

Thanks for that, I'll see if I can get my 2nd hard drive plugged in.

One other thing I was wondering is what would be a good set up of professions to take? I'm leaning towards either a shaman or mage group, for now I just want to start off with a dps-spam train before I get into anything complicated. I'm a fairly well established player as is, so I've got something of each kind already except for leatherworking if anything needs to be made for my new toons. Does it slow down levelling too much to have 1 of each gathering skill? I plan on taking the questing approach for now at least as a levelling method.

My recommendation is to pick up gathering professions. Definitely have someone that can disenchant. Holy cow, I ended up with a boat load (not quite Titanic sized, but bigger than the SS Minow).

Also, my goal was to get to 70 as quick as possible so I didn't do any other professions. Heck I didn't level first aid either (still need to do this, but lucky to have kept all my cloth drops).

Leveling a profession once 70 is pretty easy.