Why do you do it?

[layne]

As a, ahem, normal player on magtheridon-us, alliance no less, i have to wonder, why do you multi-box?

what do you gain out of paying ~$150/mo subscription fees to play a multiplayer game...by yourself?

doesnt it get old?

wouldnt it be more of a challenge to solo things while...well...solo?

i've got to wonder what makes you guys spend the big money on multiple pcs, monitors, and subscriptions.

[Trowabarton756]

As a, ahem, normal player on magtheridon-us, alliance no less, i have to wonder, why do you multi-box?

what do you gain out of paying ~$150/mo subscription fees to play a multiplayer game...by yourself?

doesnt it get old?

wouldnt it be more of a challenge to solo things while...well...solo?

i've got to wonder what makes you guys spend the big money on multiple pcs, monitors, and subscriptions.

I wonder why you play with just one computer, monitor, and pc. Because its fun for you. This is what is fun for us, don't hate appreciate.

[layne]

because its just a videogame.

i cant see spending thousands on multi setups and monthly fees to play a game alone.

in my videogame hobby, the most money goes towards my arcade collection. and i do so because theyre the games you get to play with other people the most, in person no less.

[Wilbur]

in my videogame hobby, the most money goes towards my arcade collection. and i do so because theyre the games you get to play with other people the most, in person no less.

I'd say we are fairly similar, just much more selfish :-)

As a note, you don't *have* to spend a huge amount to get a multiboxing setup, a 5box could be run on a computer that costs <£1000

[Kilh]

what do you gain out of paying ~$150/mo subscription fees to play a multiplayer game...by yourself?


I'm an Achiever/Explorer (http://www.brandeis.edu/pubs/jove/HTML/v1/bartle.html) with a rather limited play time.

I have reached the limit of content I can access solo and I really do not like to have to be dependant on others = wasting my precious time.

So the next step, for me, is multi-boxing.

I also really enjoy the planning and setup fase, tweaking stuff to improve my performance =)

[Xzin]

Why do most people walk around with their eyes gazed at the horizon when others avert their gaze to the stars and try to get us to the moon? Those few, brave souls are what move us forward and what progress our species.

Simply because you feel that your way of playing is the best does not mean that everybody else agrees with you.

[layne]

thanks for the civil replies guys.

i was expecting my post to go over as trolling and get some more replies like twowabarton's.

i guess i understand wanting to be able to explore the content without having to depend on other people. hell ive been looking for groups for a few days so i can get my kara chain done, and my guild is useless. :evil:

so yeah no hard feelings i hope.

i guess its just annoying when you get ganked by 5 people at once, wether its one or five people controlling em. :wink:


Why do most people walk around with their eyes gazed at the horizon when others avert their gaze to the stars and try to get us to the moon? Those few, brave souls are what move us forward and what progress our species.

Simply because you feel that your way of playing is the best does not mean that everybody else agrees with you.

i never said one was better or righter than the other. i just asked why you would go to the lengths to do what you do. chill out man.

[Trowabarton756]

thanks for the civil replies guys.

i was expecting my post to go over as trolling and get some more replies like twowabarton's.

i guess i understand wanting to be able to explore the content without having to depend on other people. hell ive been looking for groups for a few days so i can get my kara chain done, and my guild is useless. :evil:

so yeah no hard feelings i hope.

i guess its just annoying when you get ganked by 5 people at once, wether its one or five people controlling em. :wink:


Why do most people walk around with their eyes gazed at the horizon when others avert their gaze to the stars and try to get us to the moon? Those few, brave souls are what move us forward and what progress our species.

Simply because you feel that your way of playing is the best does not mean that everybody else agrees with you.

i never said one was better or righter than the other. i just asked why you would go to the lengths to do what you do. chill out man.

How in the hell was my post flaming you in anyway...I just said I multibox because its fun for me...and to stop the hate :wink:

[beyond-tec]

why I am doing this?

Because I can.. 8)

[Otlecs]

As a, ahem, normal player on magtheridon-us, alliance no less, i have to wonder, why do you multi-box?

As you've seen from the replies so far, everyone has their own reasons.

My personal ones include the need to find something genuinely challenging in what is essentially a scripted game, and the fact that I'm still sulking over my perception of what TBC did to my raiding characters ("thanks for all the effort so far, now go and start all over again").

I expect to get over that just in time for the next expansion :)

I'm using my teams to see "old" instances completely end-to-end, in a way that it would just be impossible to get a group together for. It's really quite refreshing to see absolutely everything an instance has to offer instead of taking every possible short-cut to get to XYZ boss in the quickest possible time.

When I instance, it's nice knowing that nobody can screw up my plans with a sudden sulk or departure. Except me, obviously :) The quality of my play-time is actually improved by being able to pick and choose when I want to play with others, rather than having no choice.

And therein lies the clue: multi-boxing empowers me with choice.

Most importantly, perhaps, to the way in which your question was couched is that playing a multibox team is in absolutely no way mutually exclusive with normal raiding.

I'm certain that most of us have a "main" character that's used for raiding, and that main character is probably not part of a multibox team (although there's no reason why it couldn't be).

Indeed, I know that at least one person here is the guild master for a very large, very successful guild on a European server and spends tens of hours each week raiding whilst still having two successful 5-man teams of his own.


what do you gain out of paying ~$150/mo subscription fees to play a multiplayer game...by yourself?

For some of us, $150 really isn't a great deal of money. I don't mean to be glib with that statement, because I also know that for some of us $150 is a significant chunk of money.

For me, personally, $150 is about what I spend on a three course meal at my favourite restaurant. With no wine. It's a quarter of one tyre on one of my cars. 30 - 45 minutes in the air with a club-hired aircraft in the UK (or about a week in the air at US rental rates ;) ).

You get the picture. If I had to scrape the cash together, I simply wouldn't do it personally.

For many of us, there is no "playing alone" involved, either. Magtheridon is a great example of that. There's a vibrant, growing, community of multiboxers over there. They obviously provide a great deal of support to each other.

And, of course, not everyone five-boxes. Some are two/three boxers and will still be hooking up with people to do the tougher instances.

I'm glad that people bother to ask this sort of question in what appears to be a genuine way, because it gives us all a chance to actually think about it. I can't say I really had before.

Cheers.

[Team_Supa]

because its just a videogame.
the most money goes towards my arcade collection. and i do so because theyre the games you get to play with other people the most, in person no less.

Yes you may spend your money on something that gives you the immediate satisfaction, we multibox because it gives us a good amount of satisfaction / laughs / fun over a long period of time, and at the end we get alot of appreciation and interest from the general public whom see us hanging out in main cities ingame.

But yeh, evaluate how long you have stayed interested in 1 arcade game afer you finish it, rather than playing a game that is always changing and with the advantage of 5x the power and the ability to not have to sit around all day waiting to do group quests and dungeons.

[Feehza]

why I am doing this?

Because I can.. 8)

Hahahahaha, that was exactly my thoughts.



"NA WEIL ICHS KANN!" :P

[cepheus]

Personally I began multiboxing when TBC released. I wanted to roll a bloodelf paladin to help out my guild for pve, since I knew there would be a need for paladins when this became aviable for horde.

However I had a problem: paladins is no killing-machine like my well-geared shadowpriest used to be.
Then I came to this soulution, why not play the paladin as my raidmain, and supplement with 4 shadowpriests(now holynuke, but shadow was my thought then :P ) for killing stuff on my own?

My paladin is protection specced, and is used for tanking in raids. Especially aoe-tanking.

Now having a fairly well geared paladin is really helping for boxing since I can aoe tank most things instead of cc'ing. Even in heroics :)

Allthough I 5-box, I frequently also 4 or 3 box to make room for a friend or two. This makes my boxing a bit more social, and can also be a big improvement when doing e.g heroics.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

[edit]Nevermind.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-common-practice.html

Take the blue pill.

[beyond-tec]

As Otlecs already mentioned:

1.
I enjoy playing the game when I got time. I don't want to depend on other players to visit an instance, I don't want to spend my whole afternoon in Shattrah spamming "LFG / LFM xxxx". When I get online I want to play. When I need to exit the game I don't want to justify myself in front of the rest of the group why I need to leave - I just want to leave because I'd like to so something in real life, with my friends or my girlfriend instead of hanging around in World of Warcraft.

2.
I got the hardware - why shouldn't I use it? Haven't bought that many stuff especially for multiboxing.

3.
12,99 € / account * 5 = 65 €.
It depends on your income if this is a lot of money or you don't need to think about it. I've got a job, I've got a car, I've got my own home and I've got a solid financial plan. And this plan tells me that I can spend the 65€ for my hobby. I've had photography as my hobby before I started with World of Warcraft - I've spent about 100 - 200 € / month for this hobby so Warcraft is quiet cheap.

4.
it kickz ass running around with 5 toons and one-shot everything that passes your way! :lol: :lol:

[Team_Supa]

beyond-tec

Has another valid point.

I used to spend in excess of $900 per month in tires and fuel when i was running pro circuit karting.

And i was playing wow as a high end raider as well at the same time, then i was just cruising around one day when i saw a 5boxer in 5v5 arena , 4mage 1 priest team, and i thought well this could be fun, and was retiring my kart so decided ill try my hand at multiboxing :D.

So yeh most people will find the same if they evaluate how much they spend monthly on hobbies :P

[kalih]

Why did you climb Everest?
"Because it was there"

My multiboxing version is "because it's hard". I get to replay WoW on "hard-mode", as far as I'm concerned. My goal is to do all the 5-man content, by myself. I don't have to wait for groups. I can start and stop any time I want, in any instance. There's alot of upside, for me, in being able to experience the parts of the games I enjoy (5-man content) at my own pace.

The notion that it's expensive is a myth. You can get a 5-box-able PC for 800$. A decent gaming computer for Crysis will 5-box WoW.

The notion that monthly fees and/or game boxes are expensive is equally bizarre. 75$ a month is somewhat expensive, I guess. It's expensive for college kids, sure. I mean, I paid 60$ for BioShock and am pretty sure I didn't play it for a month. Halo3, maybe. I'm gonna get Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect, too.

Besides, if you work out the actual costs of multi-boxing, the opportunity cost of -my-time- is, by far, the biggest expense. My time is worth X$ per hour (or so my boss tells me), and if I'm perfectly willing to spend it playing WoW.. why wouldn't I add on a tiny fraction of actual cost to do so?

Expensive? My fiance and I went out to dinner the other night and dropped $200. You don't want to know how much the ring cost. In the grand scheme of things, how much is that extra tenth of a carat diamond gonna give me compared with... say... 5-manning wailing caverns! woot!

[Heenan]

The biggest reason to dual-box for me dates back to EverQuest, where you NEEDED another character (heal-bot) to help you out. The game was far from solo-friendly. Ever since then I have at least dual-boxed every single MMO I have had (EQ, EQ2, AC, AC2, E&B, SWG, AO, EVE and now WoW).

If you have the hardware lying around, why not do it?

People have already justified the costs of hardware, accounts and subscription fees. But if you're asking this question, then you'd probably ask the following:

1. Why do certain people pay $1,500 for a car, and then drop $30,000 in parts into it?
2. Why do certain people spend up to $10,000 for an A/V stereo receiver, and then up to $4,000 on each speaker of their 7.1 surround sound system (<- my Uncle).
3. Why do people spend anything above and beyond what is "needed"?

I'd say the first thing to come to mind is "bragging rights". Being able to show your friends your new "setup" will forever be a guy thing.

But with multi-boxing I think a lot of it has to do with the way MMOs are setup. Once you've been through the content 4 or 5 times it gets a little stale (I've literally brought characters up through the Barrens 9 times now -- not fun). End game is fun, but you find yourself wanting to branch out to other characters. So for me, I use multi-boxing as a way to bring multiple characters up to play in the end game together. It just gives me more options.

Ultimately though, the answer is: I have the ability to do it and I've already justified it to myself.

My rebuttal question would then be: Why do you care that I'm spending my money the way that I want to?

[Slats]

Because I had reached the peak of what I could do by myself, I was sick of being the one solo person in a PUG BG where the only way to kill me was to focus fire and if I had just a couple of heals I would have dominated even harder.

So now I can do battlegrounds, I am the group I am the healer I am the dps. *shrugs*

Its also incredible fun to setup, very fun to play, very difficult to play and very challanging.

[caldvn]

Farm gold, ebay, gg.

[Stealthy]

It was the challenge that was the main appeal for me. Not just within the game itself, but hooking up 5 PC's, networking them, getting Synergy set up, etc. Also there's a certain amount of pride in seeing your group function after writing a bunch of macros for them...

The other thing I really enjoy is that it lets you play the game on your terms. You want to run that instance or complete that group quest? You can do it whenever you like...and no more wiping becuase some nub can't tank or a lock keeps pulling aggro. You really learn to appreciate that tactics of a boss encounter if you're doing it yourself.

In short, mutliboxing breathed new life into a game that was getting a little stale for me.

Cheers,
Stealthy

[kllrwlf]

The challenge... and mostly to see all the instances that I haven't seen... which is pretty close to all of them.

I've gone through an instance about 8 times my entire 80 days played on my main.

It's mostly because I usually play at around midnight server time and most of my guildies are sleeping... so that leaves with PUGs... which are a PIA.

/2 LF Tank/Healer

I also hate relying on another person.

With my 5 man, I hope to see most of the instances, learn 3 more classes at once, and just enjoy the challenge. :)

[Ebola]

I started 5 boxing becuase i sucked 5 times worse than the average player, and for a small investment i am now as good as any single player on the server.

Ive spent 12 thousand dollars on my setup and appx 75 dollars per month on my 5 accounts and its still significantly cheaper than most of my hobbies or pastimes

[Dor]

..because I hate lfg and pugs