Back to Boxing! Probably!

[That Darn Satan!]

Hey guys, I used to post here up to the end of WotLK as Malekyth. I had a group that I was using to take down the Northrend dailies and heroics. It was fun and satisfying gaming, but then Warhammer struck. I didn't have time for two time-intensive hobbies, and had to let WoW go for the Orcs & Goblins. Now, I'm contemplating a move back to a city without a strong Warhammer scene, and think I might be interested in reviving my old five-man WoW group. At any rate, I've been running my old pally around the beginning of Cataclysm and it feels wrong, even lonely, not to be dragging the warlocks and priest along with me!

How is multiboxing these days? Has anything changed to make PvE content difficult or less fun to accomplish since WotLK, or can I expect more of the same? I heard about /follow being removed from Battlegrounds, which is a shame but wouldn't affect me. Are macros and addons basically the same as in WotLK? I noticed a lot of phasing in the first zone of Cataclysm, but I got used to it in Northrend and could probably deal with it again. I see ISBoxer in a place of prominence; is that a sponsored position, or is it the standard software for the discerning boxer these days?

Thanks for any info you can give me. I think I can pick it up again pretty quickly, but a bit of catch-up before upgrading the other four accounts would be great.

[luxlunae]

PVE multiboxing is much better in pandaland than it was during cata, but it isn't easy enough to mb raids so once you clear the heroics you won't have much to do unless you really love lfr. And LFR probably won't love you, so pick discreetish names. The game is also geared more towards doing a lot of dailies than chain running heroics, so that's much more unpleasant unless you like dailies (and if you do what is wrong with you?). I personally found Cata content to be very very painful, even multiple patches in, with the stupid hard hitting trash of ZA especially burned into my mind. Pandaland is much more fun.

Macros and addons yes, but you don't have the ,, ,,,,,,, click macros so people tend to use several spammable or sequence macros instead. You'll find plenty in the macro forum, or just ask about your specific classes.

Isboxer is the standard software for people on these forums but we support the others as well (with the exception of pwnboxer, although no longer banned from discussion, I don't think we have enough people using it here for this to be primary support). At this point the forums are owned by Lax (dev of isboxer) but other software is supported and there are people that help with and use others (HKN especially).

[That Darn Satan!]

Oh no, I don't like the sound of "very very painful". I remember gritting my teeth to get through Zul'Drak, reminding myself that this might suck but it would soon be over. A whole expansion's worth might take too much grit! Maybe I'll forge ahead with my pally and see what I think after another zone. Are there some decent instances that I could get stuck into, instead of swimming and collecting?

I used HKN and may do so again, but am open to checking out the latest and greatest. It'd be nice to use software that's still being updated.


Thanks for the info!

[Khatovar]

Cataclysm was...well, really bad. Questing was a pain because of phasing and the number of collections. There's also a lot of back and forth, where you're only getting like 3 quests, you go do them, come back, do three more... it's very formulaic.

Instances {from my PoV as a melee team} were simply cruel. A lot of gimmicks in the Cata instances. Lots of CC, interrupts, curing, movement, positioning and item usage to deal with. And they all seemed to take a very long time. But maybe that's because you had to grind instances to get rep to buy gear to do the next instances rinse and repeat. Oh, yeah, you also need to do quests up to a certain point to get the rep to buy the tabbards that you wear in the dungeons to get the rep you need for the good gear. At least you can skip that part since Cata isn't the endgame anymore.

Speaking of expansion changes, as far as instances go, they changed the way curing works with MoP giving a fairly long cooldown to things like Cleanse (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=4987) but not adjusting the old boss mechanics to account for the new cooldowns. Not too big a deal with good gear, but as a newb team trying to run in quest greens that's going to cause issues. I don't know if they've since adjusted it, but that was not pleasant when I went through with a new team.

MoP is much, much better (http://www.dual-boxing.com/entries/87-Downtime-whooties!) than Cata. More along the lines of WotLK as far as instances. Questing was still kind of linear in a way, but it flowed a lot better than Cata. Supposedly collection quests were getting changed to allow everyone in the party to update when one person got a quest item {ground collections, most body collection quests were in fact updated to drop for everyone in the party} but last I heard it wasn't working for ground spawn items. *shrug*

Phasing only got worse with the addition of Cross Realm Zones. Now you lose phase with your team pretty much every time you cross into any zone. You can no longer make use of multi-person mounts, your passengers will get ejected when you cross a CRZ line or a phase line in the air or on the ground. Also, sorry to say, Crusader Aura for your mount speed boost is self only and most classes do not have a comparable self-boost. CA is also always on, so you can't shut it off, mounts are all the same speed based on the mount training you have, so that all kinda sucks.

And then there's dailies. Like Luxlunae said, So. Many. Dailies. Dailies are everywhere. You could spend like 8 solid hours just doing dailies.

Honestly, I really couldn't say if it was worth it at this point. I don't think I could go through Cata again. And while I enjoyed MoP, I was "done" relatively quickly as they seem to have invested all their resources into raids and "outside stuff" like more dailies, group mobs and stuff like that to encourage world pvp.

[MiRai]

So, why did you create a new account if your old one still exists and is in good standing (http://www.dual-boxing.com/members/9830-Malekyth)?

[That Darn Satan!]

Khatovar: I noticed last night, in Vas'jir at least, the formula seems very strong: "now that you've done our twelve quests, go talk to my buddy over there, who just might have twelve more for you!" I can see how it might benefit Blizzard to do it this way, it's efficient quest development, but it does create a feeling of linearity which might not appeal.

I don't think I have a problem with difficult instances, but then, I haven't experienced Cataclysm difficulty yet. :) My favorite multiboxing memories are of successfully taking down bosses that were a brick wall for me, like Lokken, Paletress and Nadox. All those had only a single difficult issue to deal with, of course. If taking down an instance is possible after some iteration on the problem, writing some macros, adjusting an addon, etc., I should be happy.

Great news on the change to collection quests, even if it doesn't work all the time. Last night I was reminded why I dislike goblins -- so many of their quests involve picking up bits of something they built which subsequently exploded. I've learned to fear them. The change sounds like it should help a lot though.

MiRai: My password has vanished into the ether, and the 'send me a new one' link isn't connecting with my Hotmail account. Dunno why, nothing is showing up in the Junk folder either. It's enough of a break in continuity anyway that I don't mind using a different nick.

[MiRai]

MiRai: My password has vanished into the ether, and the 'send me a new one' link isn't connecting with my Hotmail account. Dunno why, nothing is showing up in the Junk folder either. It's enough of a break in continuity anyway that I don't mind using a different nick.
Well, if you would like your original account back then just report your own post with the details and I'll go find an admin to contact you. They'll be able to update your old account settings.

EDIT: I'm only suggesting this if you want your old account back. We choose online names as an identity and you've already got ~450 posts on this forum with a join date of 2008. If you don't want the veteran account back, then so be it.

[That Darn Satan!]

Yeah, I don't really care. :) If it's good etiquette, we can make the effort, but otherwise I'm good. Thanks for the info anyway.

[Asterix]

So, why did you create a new account if your old one still exists and is in good standing (http://www.dual-boxing.com/members/9830-Malekyth)?



I've done the same - couldn't get my password back after the change to the new forum :)