Just saying hi..I'm new here. Few questions...

[Ramesses]

Well I stumbled across one of Aelli's videos and was shocked and amazed, etc. that whole thing.

Now I am and old school EQ MMO player and I love to PVP (never been much on the PVE side). I like challenges, but I also like to win...alot.

I have duo-boxed before on EQ and WoW, but never even considered the idea of quad or even 5 boxing. After seeing it, I have the sudden feeling of a child seeing a new toy behind the glass that he must have.

However I see this as a long and expensive process. I work full time so can afford the hardware necessary but I guess i have a few generic and broad Nooby questions.

1. How much should I expect to spend on a single PC setup? I want high performance, no lag, and I'm willing to spend what it takes. I will be building the PC myself from newegg or whatever, but my current PC is outdated and this is another reason for a new system. Do i need to go RAM intensive I assume, is 4 Gigs of high quality ddr etc. acceptable? What about harddrive? Do i need a super fast RPM drive for optimal performance?

2. Time concerns me. I just leveld my first character to 70 (UD shadowpriest). Now I will have to do it all over again but x5? I realize i can quest them all at the same time, and I know there is info posted here, but just in general: Will it be faster or slower than solo questing my priest up? Should i be running instances with this setup for maximal XP?

3. The BIGGEST concern I have of all is this: Lets say I buy a $3,000 computer, 5 accounts, 5 copies of BC, and spend 1-2 months leveling up these 5 characters. Then Blizzard modifies their EULA to say duo-boxing, or anything above 2 boxing is now a bannable offense. My dreams of glory and godliness are now flushed. The main reason I see this happening are constant player complaints and /reports. Players dont KNOW that this is currently a non-bannable offense, so I would think you would get a high level of reports both from people you kill and from just people you encounter in-game. Maybe they think you are hacking, or some chinese leveling factory.

Any advice on all of these would help. Still undecided if i am going to take the plunge.

[Ramesses]

PS - I am planning to go 5xShammy but not 100% sure yet as I havent researched other 5x builds. Only drawback I see for 5x shammy is the "uniqueness" factor.

[Khazrael]

1. How much should I expect to spend on a single PC setup? I want high performance, no lag, and I'm willing to spend what it takes. I will be building the PC myself from newegg or whatever, but my current PC is outdated and this is another reason for a new system. Do i need to go RAM intensive I assume, is 4 Gigs of high quality ddr etc. acceptable? What about harddrive? Do i need a super fast RPM drive for optimal performance?

Are you planning on a single machine set up, or multiple machines? What OS do you plan on using (this has a huge impact on your RAM requirement). Also, a 7200 rpm drive is typically just fine harddrive-wise. I see a lot of people getting the 10k raptors on here, but I don't believe its all that necessary. Plus, with junctions you can do fine with a single drive as well.


2. Time concerns me. I just leveld my first character to 70 (UD shadowpriest). Now I will have to do it all over again but x5? I realize i can quest them all at the same time, and I know there is info posted here, but just in general: Will it be faster or slower than solo questing my priest up? Should i be running instances with this setup for maximal XP?

Typically at best you may break even, but that's probably pretty rare. If you decide to skip professions and collection quests, you can help your time frame, but it is most likely going to be more time then leveling a single character to 70. Probably not too much more though. Running instances will be good along the way imo to help you refine your setup, and also helps you catch up on some of the xp you lose from being grouped the whole time, as well as if you skip certain quests that can be time consuming.


3. The BIGGEST concern I have of all is this: Lets say I buy a $3,000 computer, 5 accounts, 5 copies of BC, and spend 1-2 months leveling up these 5 characters. Then Blizzard modifies their EULA to say duo-boxing, or anything above 2 boxing is now a bannable offense. My dreams of glory and godliness are now flushed. The main reason I see this happening are constant player complaints and /reports. Players dont KNOW that this is currently a non-bannable offense, so I would think you would get a high level of reports both from people you kill and from just people you encounter in-game. Maybe they think you are hacking, or some chinese leveling factory.

World of Warcraft has been in release for something like what, 4 years now? If they were going to modify the TOS to exclude multiboxing they would have done it by now. There is also an official post from a CM, but I don't have the link to it while I'm here at work. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it, just make sure all you're accounts are under the same name.
[/quote]

[Ramesses]

Sweet thanks for the quick response (im at work now too)

I'm thinking single machine setup. And I will probably be buying a pretty beefy setup.

Can anyone here who has experience 5 boxing tell me how the /reporting situation goes? Have you been contacted or warned by GMs ever?

I personally have never seen a 5 boxer in game, in WoW, ever. I would imagine seeing one would be a VERY strange and unusual sight. That being said, it is completely logical to me that you would get reported by players very often. Especially if you smashed one into the ground while leveling (i'd be on a PvP server).

[Ramesses]

World of Warcraft has been in release for something like what, 4 years now? If they were going to modify the TOS to exclude multiboxing they would have done it by now. There is also an official post from a CM, but I don't have the link to it while I'm here at work. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it, just make sure all you're accounts are under the same name.
I see your point. However, two things concern me still. 1) if more people start 5xBoxing and dominating arenas 2) if people start abusing 5 boxing for profit of IRL $$

[Eteocles]

Greetings and welcome to the forums ;p (haw haw Rob beat you to it)

1) Far as System goes, high specs would be best:
A Quad-core processor, some say Intel is best, as AMD's quads aren't quite as good
If you plan to 5box on 1 machine, 4gb DDR2 RAM is the minimum to run 5 comfortably; any more is icing on the cake though 4-5 should be plenty ;p
8800 nVidia card hands down; whether it's a GT GTS or GTX or wtfever, I'll leave to the guys who know what that difference means; I do know 8800 is more than enough to work with, and I don't hear quite as many good things about the 9xxx series. Stick with what's out, stable, and well documented and probably cheaper :p
550-750w power supply should do you well
HD get a Sata, don't necessarily aim for the highest speed, WoW isn't THAT bad about it...I'd go about 7200rpm probably. There's also some debates scattered about the forums regarding 1 install vs 5 wow folders/installs same HD vs 1 or 2 per HD for speed increases; I recommend the first or latter, 5 folders on one drive = uber queue on your HD's seeking, not a major difference but noticeable enough.
Not sure if I left anything out lol; you can probably build a comp like this under $2k, possibly $1k if you do it yourself and are familiar with them enough and you sound like you may be :p I built my current comp for about $550 and I run 3 WoWs comfortably, AMD dual-core, 7900 GS card, 2gb ddr2, etc and that was a lil under a year ago, could be cheaper now lol

2) Depends on how familiar you are with the quests, it should take you about the same amount of time, maybe less, depending on you personally. My first 60s took 21 /played days, my Rogue took about 18, hunter took 13-14; the 2 65 boomkins in my sig are at 65.5 with less than 10 /played days. You'll probably spend alot of time at lower lvls getting accustomed to your new power and learning to wield it without blowing yourself to bits + setting up macros/adapting to changes, after that it shouldn't be much of an issue.

3) Wouldn't be jack we could do about it pretty much; we play within the EULA and don't abuse our focusfire to grief or harass or ninja others so we should be fine; people can bitch all they want :p Some of them DO know it's legal...but as I have to say often here and in general, people are stupid. So very, very stupid. And in those people's cases where they're told it's legal but don't care, they're selfish/retarded/both as well. lol; basically, we're not doing anything illegal, and while blizz could arbitrarily say we're banned, they shouldn't unless it becomes a major problem abused by griefers/botters/etc, which due to the time, effort, and costs involved, is unlikely to happen.

Amendment to 3) Boxing is not profitable for char/goldsellers, someone did the math and itcomes out to $2/hour, less than half minimum wage and that's without factoring in some setup costs :p And boxers are unlikely to dominate long at high end arena places due to the simple fact that CC for us is a bitch and CC is what wins arenas; possible but unlikely vs any team at any high rank

[Khazrael]

Sweet thanks for the quick response (im at work now too)

I'm thinking single machine setup. And I will probably be buying a pretty beefy setup.

Can anyone here who has experience 5 boxing tell me how the /reporting situation goes? Have you been contacted or warned by GMs ever?

I personally have never seen a 5 boxer in game, in WoW, ever. I would imagine seeing one would be a VERY strange and unusual sight. That being said, it is completely logical to me that you would get reported by players very often. Especially if you smashed one into the ground while leveling (i'd be on a PvP server).You'll hear plenty of stories from people who get reported on a regular basis. You are correct that it draws attention, whether you like it or not. The part you may not expect however, is that most people (from what I've read on here so far, haven't had a case of this myself tbh) seem to have good run ins with GMs. Hopefully, most of them are educated in the actual TOS and what is allowed and not allowed, and the difference between botting and multiboxing.

And while multiboxing might be gaining a small bit of ground, it certainly doesn't compare to the 10 million subscribers there currently are in this game. I really wouldn't be concerned about it.

[KSboxers]

As far as reporting goes, check out No GM lovin for me. ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=5143'). you'll see 90% of the people said they have never even heard from a GM. They probably just spy on our toons and see that there's no way it could be automated. For timeframe, i think the general concensus is that 5 boxing takes about 2x the amount of time to roll a single toon. If you roll them on the same server as your 70 than you can do "boosting" using your 70 as the 5th party memeber. There's alot of info on boosting just do a search. I can't give you much info on computer setups. I have an old setup and just deal with the lag in town.

[Ramesses]

Great info! You guys are very friendly and I feel a warm fuzzy community feeling coming on already (not that kind, mind out of gutter plz).

2k would be a nice budget for me. I see wow/mmos as my hobby, and this is just injecting that hobby with a 5x shot of steroids. I am not however looking forward to going through the 1-70 grind all over again. Especially with the looming threat of the whole thing going down the tubes if Blizz gets too many complaints and decides to make it a bannable offense.

Anyone heard of any 70 4x or 5x Warlock builds and how they fair in PvP? 4 shadow bolts, or 4 drain lifes, or 4 sets of dots, and 4 pets....it seems like this could be harder to manage, but potentially near impossible to beat if played right?

[Eteocles]

If you want /that/ kind of warm and fuzzy feeling, join the IRC channel and look for Wilbur or Gurblash ;)

PvPWise 4locks + 1 priest is a pain in the ass...so many dots/dmg incoming + so many fears available + priest to dispel/heal anything you do to them + felguards/felpups effing you up etc...yea it's a good pvp group to go with. 5 locks might work too but having that healer helps if you can handle the micromanagement.

As for the Grind...2.3 made it sooooooooooooooooo much faster, quests give 10k exp each pretty quick + it's alot less exp per lvl to lvlup too, no more elites anywhere outside instances sans a few(like the alterac ogres in back aren't elite anymore for example), and all instances got turned down a couple lvls + retuned gear in some cases. While most people preach to screw collection quests, consider them instead. If the droprate is so bad after 40kills you get ONE drop for ONE char, screw it. If it takes maybe 10 at worst, 2-4 usually, to get 1 quest item drop, go ahead and do it; not only is it good quest exp + quest reward, it's time spent grinding without technically being grinding, as you have a goal and specific targets. The key is not to consider it pure grinding, because it's not :p

[Khazrael]

While most people preach to screw collection quests, consider them instead. If the droprate is so bad after 40kills you get ONE drop for ONE char, screw it. If it takes maybe 10 at worst, 2-4 usually, to get 1 quest item drop, go ahead and do it; not only is it good quest exp + quest reward, it's time spent grinding without technically being grinding, as you have a goal and specific targets. The key is not to consider it pure grinding, because it's not :pI agree with this for the most part, and in fact do collection quests with my 5 man team. I was simply pointing out however that compared to other quests, it is going to be more time consuming. He seemed interested in trying to get through levels as quick as possible, and collection quests probably aren't the way to go. Some of them certainly aren't that bad, but still slower then doing any other quest where everyone in the group gets credit for the one thing.

The only time I'd advocate doing that is if you don't have any instances to do and are a bit underleveled due to skipping quests, once again under the assumption that time is the primary factor you're after.

[Eteocles]

Just FYI I wasn't directing that in reply to you Khaz or anyone, just in general :p I've cleared almost every zone of any quest, most if not all collection quests included(I even did the infamous Southshore Murloc Heads one...apparently they drop much better when they die alot faster >D) I could do as I lvl'd my boomkins and never ran into issues and always had plenty of cash and gear to work with lol

[Vyndree]

1) if more people start 5xBoxing and dominating arenas

Hehe.

Look at these forums, and let's try to count the number of 2k+ rated shammy groups, since shammy groups are so "popular".


*crickets*


Yep, that would be just Ellay. ;) I wouldn't be worried about this. If you're willing to put in the effort and have the skill to back it up, go for it. You'll still be a pretty unique flower. :)

[zanthor]

You'll still be a pretty unique flower.

Screw unique, I just want phat pvp epix!!

Of course if I quit raiding I'd be able to level my shammies...

[Ramesses]

So after reading more on this great site, and all about the multitude of different setups I have a few more questions.

1. If i will be 5 boxing, do you reccommend I look at building 2 seperate PCs and perhaps run 2 on one machine and 3 on the other? Or should I be ok with one big beefy quad-core PC to handle all 5?

2. If I do go with a multi-pc setup, can you configure keyclone to send the keystrokes across to my other PC? Is this tough to do, and is there more of a lag time going over the network or is it negligible as I would imagine?

3. How would a 70 priest do as a 5th member of the group to help "boost" or PL the 4 lowbies up? I saw the video on boosting in SM cath with a prot paly, definately looks like thats not something a clothy could do. Should I look to level up a paly to help with this process?

Thanks!

[Ramesses]

Heh one more...

Do you 5 boxers login all 5 characters at once, 2 at once? or only one at a time? Do you have some kind of script setup for this or is it a huge pain to log all 5 chars in?

[Maxion]

More PCs means you can have higher details or whatnot on, doesn't matter that much to me/I'm not sure of all the differences/advantages. I run all 5-6 on one comp myself.
At the cost of the one-time fee of $20 for each macine, you can have keyclone on them all and they will connect and run just as smooth as if it was on one computer (I'm pretty sure its just as smooth, at least if the two/more PCs are identical in hardware).
PLing 4 lowbie with a high lvl char is very very fast if you run instances, mages and pallies are especially good at this due to the aoe, though I have great success on my lock just putting siphon life on everything. With knowledge of your class I'm sure you can find a dot or whatnot that will work for you (if you are undead the one that heals you would be great I'd imagine, if its an instant cast at least, I dont have any high enough UD priests to know myself atm), but generally, any class can boost to at least a decent degree.
Logging them all in is very easy, since with keyclone (or whatever you use to broadcast the keys) you can have it type in your password in all the windows at the same time, and set it up to have your user names entered when the game starts.

[Ramesses]

More PCs means you can have higher details or whatnot on, doesn't matter that much to me/I'm not sure of all the differences/advantages. I run all 5-6 on one comp myself.
At the cost of the one-time fee of $20 for each macine, you can have keyclone on them all and they will connect and run just as smooth as if it was on one computer (I'm pretty sure its just as smooth, at least if the two/more PCs are identical in hardware).
PLing 4 lowbie with a high lvl char is very very fast if you run instances, mages and pallies are especially good at this due to the aoe, though I have great success on my lock just putting siphon life on everything. With knowledge of your class I'm sure you can find a dot or whatnot that will work for you (if you are undead the one that heals you would be great I'd imagine, if its an instant cast at least, I dont have any high enough UD priests to know myself atm), but generally, any class can boost to at least a decent degree.
Logging them all in is very easy, since with keyclone (or whatever you use to broadcast the keys) you can have it type in your password in all the windows at the same time, and set it up to have your user names entered when the game starts.Awesome info, thanks alot!