Other Multiboxable games discussion for those leaving WoW

[Purpleflavor]

I, for one, think i'm done with WoW. I dont think i'll even play a single account at this time. I just paid for 6 months on 1 account and reuped 4 accounts a few days ago, so i'm pretty upset about that as well. Refunds officially denied. Thankfully i waited to buy SL's. Going to start looking for something to fill that boxing void, but i'm not sure what yet. Anybody else feeling the same, or have some opinions on other long term options?

Lord of the Rings - is an excellent game, albeit slow and movement can feel like you're on ice.

Final Fantasy 14 - i've heard good things about, but have no boxing experience. I hear you can make one team and switch jobs(classes) easily. I'd love that kind of system. There's no specific forum here for FF14 so what's up with that?

Star wars SWTOR- I never boxed this but i played it during it's beta and thought it was perfect for boxing 2-3 characters because the mercenary npc followers are completely viable to fill the rest of your party.

[Punix]

Im in the same situation. Just reupped 8 Accounts with 3 Month game time and was waiting on SL upgrade. They denied refund for the game time as I used already a few days of it. Altough they offered to transfer a big chunk of that time to my main Account (around 400 Days).
I accepted that, but I also think that I wont play 1 WoW Account.
Looking for alternative games. For some reason I find FF, LOTR etc.. pretty unappealing, although Ive never tried em out myself. Was rather thinking about 4 boxing D3 or looking into EQ2. Not sure what to do yet.

[dustofoblivion]

I'm personally gonna keep playing WoW Retail and Classic until they give me a warning. After that, I'm done with Blizzard games for good. 16 years of my life on this game all thrown out the window, not easy to digest. I might wait for Ashes of Creation's release to see if it's multibox-friendly.

[moog]

Tempted to go back to Rift... used to 5-box that for a couple of years after I quit Pandaland.

However, i do fear that other companies will see Blizzard's move and start to ban broadcasting/MBing themselves.

[sethlan]

I was thinking about SWTOR. you can box 4. Maybe something changed, i remember follow was really screwed up. but still playable.

[Braxtar]

Best game to multibox apart from WoW has been EQ2 for me. It's not as good as WoW and is very expensive but there's a huge world to discover and it's nothing close to discovery friendly as WoW is. There's definitely a lot of quests to look upon google and stuff.

There's a very very large quantity of quests and stuff to do through.

[Skyton]

Ashe of Creation but we have to wait ^^ ! They talked about it and they will allow multibox.

[Mercbeast]

I was thinking about SWTOR. you can box 4. Maybe something changed, i remember follow was really screwed up. but still playable.

I was 2 boxing swtor a couple months ago. It works fine except yes, there is a massive issue with follow. Using follow in combat causes massive FPS drops/stuttering for anyone in the area. I don't really understand why or how, but it does it. It's not much of an issue for a ranged team in PvE, but it makes a melee based team really awful to play.

Who knows though, they seem to break auto follow in swtor every 6 months, and when they fix it sometimes it works better, and sometimes it works worse.

[Mercbeast]

Best game to multibox apart from WoW has been EQ2 for me. It's not as good as WoW and is very expensive but there's a huge world to discover and it's nothing close to discovery friendly as WoW is. There's definitely a lot of quests to look upon google and stuff.

There's a very very large quantity of quests and stuff to do through.

I second EQ2. It has an absolute ton of content. It's actually pretty MB friendly in terms of how stuff works. Going forward, Pantheon is what I'm looking towards. Hoping they don't completely ban MBing.

[z0k]

Tempted to go back to Rift... used to 5-box that for a couple of years after I quit Pandaland.

However, i do fear that other companies will see Blizzard's move and start to ban broadcasting/MBing themselves.

This is my concern as well.

On topic: I'm going to give Rift a shot. I played pretty hardcore when the game first came out. I'm basically going to approach it like I would a single player RPG, and just play through the storyline and explore the game a little bit. I'm sure it won't take very long to max everything out, but it might be some fun while I figure out what next steps are.

[RedSorc]

Well, here's some thoughts from somebody who has sunk a good number of hours into almost every game you can think of on the list. For perspective, I am a PvE multiboxer who's interest is generally into trying to clear tough group content (e.g. Mythic+ for WoW). This is going to be pretty long, apologies: your post made me feel that there might be people out there that appreciate something detailed like this.

I will not be making mention of any MMOs that explicitly outlaw multiboxing (e.g. Archeage, Eve (sort of)). I will also not be talking about any dead games that have had fan-made revival servers (e.g. Warhammer Online, Star Wars Galaxies), particularly as such discussion is probably against the forum rules. I also exclude any games that I tried and completely failed to produce a workable multibox with (e.g. Elder Scrolls Online).

I will also point out rather grumpily that my favorite game on the list would have absolutely been WildStar if it hadn't died, which was a difficult to play but incredibly rewarding MMO to multi-box in this man's opinion. :(

An important absence from this list is Everquest 2. I have played it, and I think it would be quite a promising game to play that is reasonably easy to set up into a multibox, but it was so long ago that I tried it I don't feel I can give any sort of meaningful feedback upon it. For what it's worth, at the time I didn't feel that it was worth playing over and above WoW, or any of the other games on this list.

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Rift - https://www.trionworlds.com/rift/en/

My Experience: Hundreds of hours with both 5-box and 10-box teams. Cleared much end-game content.
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Easy (roughly on par with WoW)

Rift is a game that is very easy to get into and start playing, with macros, follow and all the other bells and whistles we need to get a team up and running nice and quickly. There's now three expansions worth of content to play through on top of the base game, and the level sync system means that you have the option of running through all of it at some rough approximation of the power level it's intended to be at, giving you a good number of hours of content to clear at your own pace.

The talent system allows for a lot of flexibility, and there's a lot of fun to be had in figuring out which compositions and builds work best with multiboxing teams. In addition, the fact that its free means that its very plausible to set up 10-box teams in order to be able to progress through raid content, which is a lot of fun the first time you try it.

However, there's three big problems with it that mean I probably won't be returning to it, personally.



Dungeon content is way too easy. At some point during the history of RIFT, I think around about when Nightmare Tide was released, the majority of dungeon content was rebalanced from being an interesting challenge to multibox, into a chain-pulling face-roll-y free win. End game dungeons begin to give you a sensation of difficulty, but the majority of the content (with the exception of a couple of dungeons with mechanical challenges) is now very straightforward.
Very little content at max level. To put it mildly, the most recent RIFT expansion is a little lacklustre on group content. The most recent expansion has a grand total of three(!) new dungeons, as compared to the eleven that shipped with the original game. There are a couple of old dungeons that have been given new "intrepid" difficulties, but it's still pretty underwhelming, particularly as there is no Mythic+ style infinite difficulty mode. There seems to be little prospect in more being added to the game at this point, so there's almost certainly a finite amount of time you can sink into the game.
Levelling through the newest expansion is a CHORE. Ay, ay, ay... Prophecy of Ahnket is a huge pain to level through, particularly if you want to raid in a 10-box. Levelling through the adventure system is slow and painful with such group sizes, and dungeon experience is poor. The best way to level is actually just by questing through the storyline... but the quests in the new expansion are extremely frustrating to box, including multiple compulsory scenarios that must be completed solo. It's a huge slog.


If you've never played the game before, there's absolutely a good amount of content here for you to consume. It's just a shame that it's now very finite, and much of it has been rendered trivial by system changes.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic - https://www.swtor.com/

My Experience: I would estimate 100+ Hours of play clearing all content up to level 50.
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Moderate (No macros make certain basic functions hard, but but it's very easy to get a team fundamentally up and running.

A lot of what I mentioned for RIFT is going to hold true here as well. When the game released, it had big plans for competing with WoW on all fronts, and they spent a lot of time pushing their dungeon and raid content in previews. Over time, the focus has shifted more towards the game's strength, its story content, which means there is precious little available group content for multi-boxers to consume. Again, just like RIFT, the most recent expansions have almost no group content attached to them. The most recent expansion has just one new dungeon, and no infinite difficulty mode.

Without macros or addons, managing rotations is a challenge, though I had a lot of fun trying to figure out a good party composition for multiboxing. Characters generally stop following whenever you use an ability, which is a huge pain in the ass. As an aside, this is the only MMO that I've ever boxed where I found it was much easier to manage melee followers rather than ranged.

There's kind of two ways you can box SWTOR. With a 4-box, most dungeon content will be pretty trivial, and you'll have a slightly clunky leveling experience as you will have to do almost everything 4 times over during questing. On the other hand, you can take one of each class (though some of those classes will be tricky to pull off!) and experience all of the stories all at once.

With a 2-box, you have a less arduous leveling process, but you can still clear dungeons by having each character bring along one of their companions. This is easier to pull-off, from a technical standpoint, as you have two less rotations to manage. Plus, companions are significantly weaker than player characters, so it actually puts all of the dungeons at a really good level of difficulty to overcome.

It's worth noting that you can't use companions in raids, so there's no option to 4-box, then try to clear raids with 4 characters and 4 companions.

If you've never played the game before, the storyline is rather good (I can give a particular recommendation to the Imperial Agent storyline), but this will be less attractive if you've already played the story before.

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Neverwinter - https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter

My Experience: Hundreds of hours, at various moments clearing some of the end-game content.
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Hard (Google "Alias" to help find threads to help you: some assembly required. Sadly, a recent patch broke a very important targeting slash command which broke the easy follow system)

Neverwinter was one of the wave of "action" MMOs that all hit the market at roughly the same time. It wears the "skin" of 4th edition D&D, but in reality the gameplay bears very little resemblance to that ruleset. It's a game with a very conventional, old fashioned structure though: Do simple "collect 20 monkey-nuts" kind of quests all the way through a levelling zone, do a dungeon at the end of the zones, end-game content is driven by daily quests and harder dungeons.

Before I get too much deeper: As I mentioned above, a recent update broke a targeting command that was a critical component of my follow/assist setup. I have no idea whether this is intentional or a bug that will be fixed, and I have no idea if this was specifically targeted at multi-boxers. This means it's now impossible to send a keystroke to a character that makes the character "lock on" to a target. This means that if you want to have your team follow your leader, you now need to manually go to each individual character and point it's cursor at the team leader before you push the follow button, or otherwise just pray to Tymora that your characters all happen to be pointing the right way. Unless a workaround or fix is found for this, Neverwinter is a really difficult game to recommend.

Neverwinter's best and worst feature is that your character is probably never going to be "finished": whether it be enchantments, mounts, companions, companion gear, story boons, artifact leveling, support artifact leveling or a bunch of other things I forgot about, there's almost always another way to improve your character's stats and abilities in some small way. Buyer beware: this is the most P2W, lootbox driven MMO on the Western market. It will take a LOT of grinding to eke out enough currency to get your team into a shape to farm efficiently for... more currency to improve your team further so you can begin to think about tackling end-game content.

On the other hand, this also means there is a lot of systems and content to engage with that always leaves your team with a sense of progress from session to session.

Multiboxing seems incredibly uncommon, but lots of events scale with more rewards when more people participate in them, so this might be the one game I've ever played where somebody is actually *happy* to see a multi-boxer rock up.

[RedSorc]

There was this awkward period of time where they decided to turn leveling dungeons into 3-man content, whilst keeping end-game dungeons as 5-man content. Mercifully, this has been reversed: you can now experience each of the dungeons as you level up. The levelling dungeons are a reasonably appropriate challenge, that will test your abilities (unless you outgear them).

End-game content is tough, as it involves a lot of twitch-y action-y dodging. There used to be compositions and builds that could get around some of this, but a lot of that has been nerfed in recent updates. The end-game has a decent stable of content available: there's still a constant trickle of a new dungeon or so every update, and there's a scaling system such that all content remains sort of valid forever, so you actually have quite a bit of content to clear at max-level. There is no infinite difficulty scaling though, so once you've cleared it, you've cleared it.

I've had a lot of fun in Neverwinter over the years, but it's worth mentioning a third time that there's no way I'll pick it up again unless someone figures out how to make follow a single key press again.

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Final Fantasy XIV - https://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/

*NOTE: Whilst it has a free trial, FFXIV is the only game on this list that uses a paid subscription model with no F2P aspect*

My Experience: Very limited experience multiboxing, but hundreds of hours sunk into playing the game casually.
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Easy. (You have macros and a follow command. Note that using macros for DPS rotations is incredibly suboptimal, so you'll want to try and find another way to do rotations)

FFXIV is a very fine MMO, with the most recent expansion having perhaps the best story/plot that I've experienced in recent memory of any game, nevermind MMOs. It's very WoW-esque, which makes it a reasonably easy game to box, and all of this sounds pretty good until I ask the question: "Yeah, but why would you actually box it?"

Here's the problem: FFXIV just does not do challenging small group "dungeon" content. In FFXIV, dungeons are 4-man and raids are 8-man. All dungeons are pieces of easy content that you do either as a part of the story, or once per day for a daily reward. They are intended to be done by four random guys thrown into a room together, many of whom may be playing on the PS4 and have limited ability to communicate with the rest of the party. They're easy, and there isn't really a "harder" version of them. Some dungeons have a "hard" mode, but this just means that they're scaled to a higher intended level/item level with completely new enemies and bosses, not that they are actually harder content. The challenging aspect of the game is confined to the raids. Whilst I haven't attempted it, I can tell you right now that clearing some of those with an expensive 8-box is going to be incredibly challenging because of the nature of the majority of the mechanics.

So, what is there to sink your teeth into? There's one or two features that might be interesting to do in a multibox. Palace of the Dead and Heaven-on-High are so-called "Deep Dungeons" with 200 and 80 levels respectively. Whilst the early levels are cake walks generally used for levelling alt classes, the deeper levels are genuinely challenging content for 4-man groups. Again, a problem here is that once they are done, they are done, and in spite of their layouts being randomized, I cannot see myself wanting to farm them for months on end as my only real piece of challenging 4-man content. Palace of the Dead is now 100% playable all the way through on the free trial, so that might be worth your time to have a go at if you're interested in sinking a month into the game and then dropping it.

So, yeah: my advice here is that it's a fantastic game that will make a poor multi-box game.

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Lord of the Rings Online - https://www.lotro.com/en?

My Experience: A couple of dozen hours
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Medium. (Some reading and a few hours will be necessary to get basic functionality set up; but everything will work reasonably smoothly once set up)

This is probably the game on this list I've spent the least amount of time with that I might have the most potential fun to eke out of it. One thing that should be mentioned that is difficult to overlook is that the F2P model is incredibly unfriendly to multi-boxers. Whilst it is technically possible to grind the currency to unlock content, that is a big, big ask, and a relatively small portion of the game is available in pure F2P. Buying access to all of the expansions on three or six or twelve accounts is a big ask for a game I suspect is not going to even be all that special in the long run.

Something I feel I have to point out here in my experiments with the game: it feels very "clunky" to multi-box. Perhaps I needed more time and effort with the game, but the follow range is frustratingly short and has a tendency to randomly break. Interacting with the world on multiple accounts felt clumsy. In the end, one of the reasons I haven't spent all that much time with LOTRO is that the game felt like a bit of a chore to play.

Of particular note in terms of potential content to engage with is the "skirmish" system, which is a small selection of dungeon-like content that can be scaled to be ran in a variety of group sizes, at a variety of difficulties, and might well provide a solid piece of content to sink our teeth into. Two of these skirmishes are ready to go out of the box for F2P players.

I'm by no means an expert here but the game suffers from the same problem a lot of the MMOs on this list with "dwindling" player-bases suffer from: A lack of end-game content. The most recent expansion has a grand total of one dungeon that has 3 difficulty levels, and there isn't a system for incorporating old content into the end-game.

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Guild Wars 2 - https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/

My Experience: 60+ hours 2-boxing, clearing the first couple of dungeons and a few easy fractals.
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Very, very hard (No follow command, and some very strict rules on multiboxing)

So this is a bit of a weird one. Contrary to popular belief inside the game, GW2 does allow multiboxing: they're actually the only MMO I know of that has a clear policy on it (https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013658134-Policy-Dual-or-Multi-Boxing). The policy is pretty strict and is a tough nut to crack: no using macros, all characters must be operated "independently", and one keystroke must correspond to one action on one character.

That's a tough one... but you can do it! I've had some limited success playing two characters simultaneously using what I call a "dual-wielding" setup. Effectively what I do is I play one character with the keyboard, and I play one character using a 16-button MMO mouse. There's no real trick to this set up: you are literally playing both characters simultaneously, working like a fighter-pilot to try and keep one eye on each of your screens to try and maintain situational awareness on both of them. The mechanics are no different to me "dual-wielding" two completely independent laptops in front of me.

There's quite a fun little game here in trying to figure out which classes and build work best with this playstyle: obviously, you do not want anything that has even a remotely complicated rotation to manage, as you will have to manage both rotations simultaneously with no short cuts!

Ultimately, whilst this has a steep learning curve that's pretty cool to try and overcome, there's not all that many obvious challenges that can be conquered using this playstyle. Dungeons are balanced around 5-man parties. Whilst they aren't impossible to 2-man (particularly once you have appropriately geared and built max-level characters), many of the encounters are very much built around the idea that you have a full party, with lots of situations where you need to split the party to cover multiple objectives, while also having to defend an NPC.

It's certainly an experience to be had, but frankly I think I just enjoy playing the game casually in the long-term.

[RedSorc]

Dungeons and Dragons Online - https://www.ddo.com/en

My Experience: 100+ hours multiboxing, many, many years of playing the game casually.
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Very hard (No follow command and lots of platforming aspects)

Similar to Guild Wars 2, this is most definitely not a multibox-friendly MMO. Assuming that you aren't just parking your extra characters at the entrance of the dungeon while you solo, playing DDO with a multi-box involves using the "dual-wielding" setup I described before, though there are no codified rules for DDO mandating one keystroke, one action on one character for DDO, which makes handling rotations significantly easier.

So, getting this going is a significant challenge. However, the potential for long-term play is a lot bigger. A two-man team can conceivably clear all the content in the game. The game uses a "reincarnation" system that means that there isn't so much of a conventional "end-game" like in other MMOs: people play the game to the level cap, then reincarnate to do the entire game again with a *slightly* more powerful character, perhaps this time tackling the quests on a higher difficulty level. The highest difficulty level in the game (Reaper 10) is incredibly challenging, and is absolutely not something you can expect to clear without exceptionally powerful characters that have undergone many, many reincarnations and earned many, many "reaper" points.

The game really revolves around its incredibly deep levelling system. In it's early days, the game sought to be a representation of 3E D&D, represented in a real-time 3d world. As the game has aged, it now bears less and less resemblance to its inspiration, but still has the deep system of classes, feats, skills from 3rd edition, layered with a pair of more conventional MMO talent systems to produce a startling array of different characters that can be created. Beware: it is absolutely possible to create a terrible character in this game if you don't know what you are doing! A lot of the longevity in the game is in the joy of creating a new character concept, building it out, levelling it to max level, then repeating the process because you came up with a better idea at some point during the levelling process. This also means that all content added to the game remains relevant forever: it doesn't suffer from the common F2P MMO problem of having the most recent "endgame" having only scant content as the team's development resources have dwindled.

Recently, there was an incredibly generous promotion where the creators basically gave away the entire game for free. Unfortunately, that promotion ended on August 31st. The F2P model might appear to be somewhat stingy at first glance. The game only offers a small fraction of the available quests for free, and additional "packs" of adventures are unlocked using bought currency. But... the currency to unlock more adventures is farmable, and is a "critical mass" of content that you can unlock whereupon you will gradually just end up slowly unlocking the game as you just play it. Essentially, once you have enough adventure packs unlocked to be able to comfortably level from level 1-20, you can keep on doing that, roughly earning enough to currency to unlock one new pack each time you do it. Even before the crazy Covid giveaway, I had multiple accounts with pretty much the entire game unlocked without having spent a penny, though that definitely requires you to have sunk a lot of time into the game.

In conclusion, this one is definitely a bit of a niche choice, and will provide a very different experience to your classic MMO, but offers a lot of opportunity for getting your teeth stuck into a nearly infinite progression of challenging content, with the developers still frequently adding new content to the game.

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That would be it. I can't help but feel like I've forgotten about one or two games. I can update if I remember any.

[wowairborne]

I am going to try EVE online, can't broadcast keys either but game is gonna be a lot easier to control per character cause a lot of ingame automation. i think 2-3 accounts is good enough.

[leroyreborn]

I am going to try EVE online, can't broadcast keys either but game is gonna be a lot easier to control per character cause a lot of ingame automation. i think 2-3 accounts is good enough.

might look at eve echoes its made for the mobile gaming on phones and such but can be ran on PC. i'm running 5 accounts on it now.

[wowairborne]

might look at eve echoes its made for the mobile gaming on phones and such but can be ran on PC. i'm running 5 accounts on it now.

thank you :) i'll DM you if i get into it.

[Eminiar7]

Thank you for this. I came here looking for ideas of a new game. I have been boxing 5 accounts in wow for many years, but now I've closed them. The idea of not playing wow is horrible to me, so probably I will eventually come back in some capacity. But for now I feel a need to take a break from wow and from boxing.
All my gaming focus has been on wow for the past years, so I think maybe there are some good games out there that I just didn't have time to explore. Before I started wow I played a game called Dark Age of Camelot, which I loved. Unfortunately they made some changes there that I don't appreciate, among other things shutting down an entire expansion in some kind of attempt to make the world smaller, because there are so few players. So I'm not going back there either.


I don't do pvp or gold farming, for me the game is about immersion and playing fun classes, and exploring the world. I'm interested to know, of the games you have listed, is there one that you would choose if you did not want to box, or maybe just dual box?
Preferably it would be something where I can still mostly keep to myself, and avoid group content with other players.

[Pantao]

Long story short I quit WoW in 06 due to military stuff, DCUO on and off from 10-12, Eve from 13-17, then came back to WoW in 18. Eve is a very good game, extremely competitive, and manipulative. But it is extremely unforgiving, for anyone that is new at least research the slang before attempting to play the game. a small mistake can cost you a lot in game since when you get killed, everyone else gets your stuff that's not destroyed. Ratted in nul-sec.

[RedSorc]

I don't do pvp or gold farming, for me the game is about immersion and playing fun classes, and exploring the world. I'm interested to know, of the games you have listed, is there one that you would choose if you did not want to box, or maybe just dual box?
Preferably it would be something where I can still mostly keep to myself, and avoid group content with other players.

Based on those comments, FFXIV would be my recommendation. As I say, FFXIV is probably not a great multiboxing game, but is a fantastic MMO in it's own right that also just so happens to be going through a "golden age" right now, with the community generally being very positive about its most recent expansion. There is the odd piece of group content that is compulsory, but its honestly not a big deal at all. PvP and gold farming are also not really big things in it, at all. The only bad thing I have to say about FFXIV is that you do eventually run out of content, it's not a game you could play 50 hours a week for month on end and still have things to do. But, if you're new to the game, that won't be a problem for the first 100-200 or so hours of gameplay.

In terms of "playing fun classes", FFXIV also has a system where one character can learn all the classes: the class you are using is determined by what weapon you are holding. So that's a plus if you're the sort of person that like trying every possible class under the sun in an MMO to figure out which one speaks to you.

In terms of a game to dual box, SWTOR stands out. The fact that you can bring along two companions means you can run with a "full" party to clear group quests even on a two-box. It's a pretty robust MMO with a reasonably generous F2P offering. If you've not played through the storyline before, that will be a reasonably charismatic experience. It inherits a lot of DNA from the old Bioware games with lots of good/evil story choices (think Dragon Age, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, etc), which might be a positive or a negative for you.

[Hisha]

Just wanted to send a big thanks to RedSorc for a great write up on the other options that are out there. I went ahead and downloaded and started playing SWTOR and FFXIV to test them out solo and try to determine which I would like to multibox or if I am even going too. Either way just filling time till Hogwarts Legacy drops next year, since I've gotten the wife hooked on the idea of us both playing it. Knew I would get her into gaming sooner or later!

[Eminiar7]

Thanks again! I looked briefly att FFXIV, and I do like the graphics. t also seems to have a free trial. I will try it out in the weekend.

[Lyonheart]

I have not boxed ffxiv since before the first expansion. It was fun for some open world stuff.. but difficult in dungons.

[RedSorc]

A thought that didn't initially occur to me about FFXIV: There are several moments, particularly as you get into the expansions, where there are some 8-man trials that are compulsory in the story, roughly four of them each expansion.

These are going to be incredibly awkward moments. Whilst they aren't hard content casually, if you are queuing a 4-box into them and you're going in blind, there's likely to be mechanical challenges that, to put it mildly, could cause friction with the poor group you end up chucked in.

As a mitigation to this, it is possible to enter these as an "undersized party". When you do this, the game doesn't sync you to the encounter's level. Levelling in FFXIV is not a problem: there is MORE than enough xp to go around, so you will absolutely be able to clear 8-man trials with a 4-box if you go into them with gear that's about 10 character levels ahead of the trial. This provides a viable route for clearing these trials for everything but the most recent expansion, where you might be forced to do each of the four trials four times, once with each character, if you want to avoid potential embarrassment.

There's also a chain of 3 24-man raids that's now compulsory, but they're insanely easy zerg fests nowadays, I'm not sure I'd even notice if someone else was multi-boxing during them.

...Come to think of it, clearing the extreme trials and savage raids from the previous expansion with a 4-box might actually be a really interesting challenge.

[Andreauk]

I thought FF14 was the same as WoW is now - no software can be used to box? They don't even allow addons.

I'd ask support before you drop any money on it.

[Eminiar7]

Thanks for various input. For my part, I'm going to take a break from boxing for now, and just play normally and give FFXIV a try. I try to avoid group content with other players, but I can do it if it's really necessary.

[RedSorc]

I thought FF14 was the same as WoW is now - no software can be used to box? They don't even allow addons.

I'd ask support before you drop any money on it.

Explicitly? No. Here is the list of behaviours that are banned in FFXIV (https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?kid=68216&id=5382&la=1). There is no specific reference to multiboxing, or using multiple clients (other than a prohibition against using multiple accounts for rank manipulation).

If Square Enix didn't like what they see and wanted to? Yes. There is a prohibition against "Creating, distributing, using, or promoting utilities that interact with the game". It's worth mentioning, however, that there has been similar language in the Blizzard EULA for WoW since forever, all the time we have been playing it, so the existence of such a clause is not necessarily a de facto ban on multi-boxing using ISBoxer or whatever.

It's also worth mentioning that this clause is often invoked in the FFXIV community when discussing ACT (https://advancedcombattracker.com/home.php) and other combat log parsers. ACT is used by a pretty significant portion of the community, and the only time I can remember that anyone has ever been actioned for using it was when a bunch of Japanese world-first raiders used ACT data to bully and harass other players. (This incident is literally what brought about the game's current anti-harassment policy).

Under this precedent, particularly as multi-boxing is just not a thing you ever really see in FFXIV, I would assume the principle of "if you aren't being a jerk to anyone or impeding anybody's play, we'll keep taking your money" will hold.

As Andreauk says, though, you may want to exercise caution pushing your money onto the table.

[Apatheist]

Ashe of Creation but we have to wait ^^ ! They talked about it and they will allow multibox.

They've already said multiboxing will not be allowed.


Current Intrepid stance - Players are allowed to own multiple accounts, but may not launch multiple game clients from the same computer. Players may not use any software to automate character actions or mimic keystrokes.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45151/poll-bonus-dev-discussion-multiboxing/p1



Rift - https://www.trionworlds.com/rift/en/

Rift is a very boxer friendly game but it's pretty much a dead game last I heard. Server populations are down to a few hundred players.

[smitshan]

I'm personally gonna keep playing WoW Retail and Classic until they give me a warning. After that, I'm done with Blizzard games for good. 16 years of my life on this game all thrown out the window, not easy to digest. I might wait for Ashes of Creation's release to see if it's multibox-friendly.

I just got my warning last night from blizzard.

[nodoze]

RedSorc motivated me...

I boxed SWTOR for years and really liked it but quit about a year after all my friends stopped playing (maybe was when ArcheAge launched but my memory is vague). In SWTOR you can 4 box but I actually recommend 2 boxing with a ranged tank (Trooper?) and ranged healer (gunslinger?) and 2 Mercenaries for DPS. It has a fun story to go though with lots of video and story content that changes based on your class and choices (light/neutral/dark and love interests) and is frankly worth it from the story alone. This probably would be the one I would mutlibox if I hadn't already.

I played DDO at least weekly for many many years with a static group until my old D&D friends started getting tired of it (we did for over 5 years). It has an infinite progression system with past-lives and huge option of races/classes and Epic Destinies and tons of great content dungeons (many you can solo with the right classes/builds) and is worth doing for that alone. You can have a few alts that you leave at the entrance or use in king of the hill type fights but otherwise it isn't really multiboxable. That being said I really enjoyed it and if you join a fun guild you could have years of fun.

Legacy ArcheAge (AA) does not outlaw multiboxing as far as I know but multiple AA clients never worked very well under ISboxer. I typically ran between 20-30 AA accounts (2-4 Patron with the rest Free to Play) and for many years had the best weapon on the servers (I crafted one of the first Mythic Obsidian hybrid weapons in AA). While ISboxer didn't work well for multiboxing AA I did however play my main Archeage client "solo" under ISboxer for many years until that broke so now I just use Logitech G buttons on my keyboard/mouse. I have dropped down to just 2 Patrons to hold my primary land and still do dailies and events and sometime world boss fights (my gear is still competitive) and it is OK sometimes but not that much fun to me anymore. Most of my friends quit AA or went to ArcheAge Unchained so I have to help former enemies or asshats if I want to PVP so I am not really enthusiastic or active these days. I don't recommend boxing it nor really playing it as it is a lot to catch up on gearwise unless you P2W which I don't recommend...

Archeage Unchained (AU) also does not outlaw multiboxing as far as I know but you are officially limited to 3 accounts (and I have 3 but many people I know have many more with no issues). Since AA didn't ever multibox well under ISboxer and then even 1 AA client stopped working in ISboxer I never tried AU in ISboxer. Some of my friends are still active there and like it but I just couldn't get my motivated enough to start over in AU so stopped playing... I don't recommend boxing it but it is fun to play 1 client for awhile and AU seems easier to catch up to end game than AA so joining a good guild and playing a single client (with some extra clients to help make gold) could be worth it.

NeverWinter: I don't recommend boxing it though maybe I would play it if I found a good consistent group (my friends quit after a year or so). I found it too P2W and boxing too tedious.

I did EQ way back and really liked it but never really got back into EQ2...

I tried GW2 and wanted to like it but my time was split with multiple games and Classic was announced and I just couldn't dedicate time to it...

Never tried FF14 nor ESO nor Rift... Did tons of research and they were just inferior options based on my goals and what info I could find... When doing my research before Classic was announced GW2 was theoretically better than FF14/ESO/Rift for my goals (no P2W, no forever gear treadmill just to play, best community, Trinity-classes instead of all self-sufficient-DPS).

Those are the ones that come to mind... There are multiple worth playing solo with some alts as part of a fun and active guild but few that I would truly multi-box to try to do things like clearing dungeons and what not.

[nodoze]

... I don't do pvp or gold farming, for me the game is about immersion and playing fun classes, and exploring the world. I'm interested to know, of the games you have listed, is there one that you would choose if you did not want to box, or maybe just dual box?

Preferably it would be something where I can still mostly keep to myself, and avoid group content with other players.You can see my write up above but if light multiboxing I would dual-box SWTOR (and maybe later add 2 more clients to 4box if you want to be able to replace Companions with more characters). It is more than worth it.

If you are playing solo and don't want to deal with P2W or a never ending gear tread-mill GW2 theoretically should be best option out there based on my research (Trinity classes rather than all self-sufficient-DPS and great community). I tried to try it but I just never really got going with it as my time was limited. If you try it and you like it you may be in heaven as my research indicated it had everything I was looking for (no P2W, not forever treadmill just to play, trinity classes, & arguably the best MMO community out there)... Before Classic was annouced GW2 was where I was planning on going (as I was leaving or at least minimizing my time in AA).

I played DDO solo and in groups and it is incredibly fun with tons of content and replay-ability. It isn't really boxable (you can level alts while soloing dungeons or do AoE teams in a few king of the hill scenarios but no real follow)... I do recommend you find a nice casual guild that likes to 2 or 3 man dungeons and you could reincarnte youself for years with them (or solo) and it was a lot of fun. Before reaper came out for solo content I liked to mix in a trapper class for hidden content and disarming traps and my favorite class was Artificer for soloing (could do all traps and good dps and self healing) and I also liked the "Exploiter" build which was multiclassed something like 18Ranger/1monk/1rogue which do do all content... Many, many fun builds to try over all the years and really liked it. With reaper I am not sure what classes are soloable and still able to do traps/secret doors (if any) so maybe someone else can chime in (or go ask on the forums). Bottom line DDO is really worth exploring.

[Peri Helion]

Dungeons and Dragons Online - https://www.ddo.com/en

...most definitely not a multibox-friendly MMO. Assuming that you aren't just parking your extra characters at the entrance of the dungeon while you solo, playing DDO with a multi-box involves using the "dual-wielding" setup I described before ...

RedSorc - I tried boxing DDO about 6 or 7 years ago iirc. Its very fuzzy in my memory, but I seem to recall lots of alt-tabbing to toggle targets and actions, even with a gamepad to control one character and keyboard/mouse for the other. What is your method for handling targeting/movement simultaneously with both?

[akourbat]

I am 3-boxing Lotro now (used to do 6-box a while ago but then took a long break), since many dungeons in Lotro had been reworked to have an option to do them in small fellowship (3x) in addition to regular 6x mode. The game does not have a macro system, and its combat abilities key-press system is very clunky, as 1 key-press will start (queue) an ability, but second key-press will cancel it if you hit it while it is still queued and not committed. That said, there is an awesome plugin called "Sequence Bars" ("SB") https://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info896-SequenceBars.html, that takes away most of the multiboxer's pains on slave characters. The game is allowing plugins to use fairly large API surface, so in building you rotations with SB you can use build-in constructs like "if then", or "if else" with checks for certain game events or states like debuffs, your or target hp, hunter focus, block response, whether the skill is off cooldown and many others, all from within the plugin UI from selectable drop-downs (or even use direct LUA scripts if you are so inclined). So you can craft fairly advanced rotations with nested "if elses". SB also alleviates the above mentioned deficiency of double clicking a skill and cancelling it. It requires mouse clicking one of the slots on the bar to advance it, which is not key-bindable, but with IsBoxer or AHK it is easy to do for slaves, but still awkward for my main character (which I prefer to play mostly normally anyway). SB has user events built-in, which are key-bindable - and can be used to control which bar is active. It also has a feature of snapping under the mouse when a configurable event(s) occur - like user event or change of target, start of combat etc. - so as I said it works really great for slaves, however many you have.

World content and story is what most play Lotro for, and there's tons of it. Many quests have "click x objects", but those objects are targetable and interact-able via keybind. Follow/Assist etc - all work well too. You can also configure in-game options like movement assist, where character with turn to face target if combat skill is pressed or run up to target if melee skill is being used and the distance is wrong, or skill forwarding which makes your toon to use his harmful skills on target's target (like your main's target), so those features are quite boxer-friendly. Lotro is pretty expensive though if you want to go past free content, each expansion is like $40, and some dlcs are not free either. You can earn some of the currency you can buy stuff with in-game while competing achievements (deeds), but still something to be aware of. On the positive side - once you own a piece of content, you have it for life, no need for sub or anything, so you can take a break at any time and then come back and resume where you left off, this works great for my play style. Like in battle-net, you can have one account with sub-accounts for all your characters.

My 2 cents.

[Apatheist]

LOTRO is pretty boxable and has a reasonably large community.

The main issue I have with investing in it is the amount of money it costs. It's supposedly "F2P" but everything is locked behind a pay wall. If you don't unlock the expansions the quest and dungeon content is extremely limited and to unlock everything will cost like $150 per account. If you want a full fellowship (party) that's a pretty significant investment.

[akourbat]

Yes, this is true. There was a summer give-away event in Lotro (covid related) where you could get most quest packs for free and some expansions for nearly free, but it is gone now. Still you can get away with slow progression and doing most if not all deeds in the zone before leaving it, which gives you almost enough LPs (currency) to unlock next zone and so on. Besides, deeds also give you virtue XP, which boost your virtue traits (read combat stats) - so it is something you'd need to do anyway if you want a well-rounded character. But yeah, the money grab is there, and a lot of players complain about it. My main is life-time VIP (cost me $99 at a time and was my best game investment lol), so that helps my team some, as VIP gets monthly free LP allocation that paid for all expansions on that sub-account. I still need to spend money on my other 2 sub-accounts when I want to go to new expansion zones etc. This is also one of the reasons I cut-down my fellowship from 6 to 3.

Most people would buy some content to allow progression to say lvl 60 or 70 - like Moria expac, and then spend LPs they accumulate from deeds on additional content when it is on sale.

[akourbat]

I have not boxed ffxiv since before the first expansion. It was fun for some open world stuff.. but difficult in dungons.

Yeah, I would use caution before investing too much in boxing FFXIV, as dungeons got progressively more difficult to box with each expansion due to mechanics on boss fights (there is good thread here with videos/walkthroughs if you wanna have a look what it looks like in dungeons https://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=41111#p41111) (https://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=41111#p41111). Besides, the game now has a "Trust" dungeon system where you can complete most of latest expansion's dungeons with a party of game's main character NPCs and some beginner dungeons too (up to lvl 60) with a squad system (also NPCs).

[RedSorc]

RedSorc - I tried boxing DDO about 6 or 7 years ago iirc. Its very fuzzy in my memory, but I seem to recall lots of alt-tabbing to toggle targets and actions, even with a gamepad to control one character and keyboard/mouse for the other. What is your method for handling targeting/movement simultaneously with both?

That could be a long answer, but I'll try my best to cram it into a length that doesn't derail the thread!

Basic Controls. The general principle is that I use my keyboard for one character, and an MMO mouse (specifically this one (https://www.logitechg.com/en-us/products/gaming-mice/g600-mmo-gaming-mouse.html)) to control the other. I primarily use ESDF as movement keys to guide the left-hand character, and I have the righthand window generally focused so that I can use the side buttons on the mouse to move while using right click and drag to steer.

In this setup, I have the two clients in two windows split-screen with a vertical divide on one monitor, rather than giving one character a single monitor. I do this because I find it easier to watch both characters at the same time when their windows are closer together.

This takes getting used to, but over time I've gradually become comfortable moving two characters around simultaneously. If I have to do precise movement (like a platforming section or dodging through traps) I'll usually do it one character at a time.

Character Selection. Choice of character build is important in any multiboxed MMO, but particularly important here, as you want to make your life as simple as possible. Generally, we are looking for characters that do not have many buttons to press and are very forgiving in terms of targeting. In addition, whilst DDO does generally not need a party to have a tank character, it can be very helpful here to have one of your characters be a very durable self-healer that is capable of maintaining aggro, as it means that your other character will not have to dodge and weave so much.

So, I'm looking for a "Tank" and a ranged auto-attacker. My current combo is to use a Enlightened Spirit Warlock as the tank like this (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/466496-Voodu-Warlock-A-Pure-Warlock-Enlightened-Spirit-Tank-Project-companion-thread) (tanks using his crazy refreshing temporary hitpoints, the temp HP also keeps healer hirelings alive, plus almost all his damage is AoE auras and blasts so it doesn't matter which way he points) and a Rogue Mechanic like this (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/473059-Self-Healing-Halfling-Mechanic-For-New-Players) (Can handle traps, almost all damage is done through pure auto-attacks and has access to almost all skills as he's INT-based).

If you don't have access to Warlocks (they are a premium class), then the Warlock could be replaced with any two-handed weapon fighting melee character. With the new THF strikethrough rules, THF is effectively an AoE attack so its not so important where you are aiming as long as you get the general area right. A barbarian would work well, a paladin would also be great, a warchanter bard would also be interesting as an option to replicate the ES Warlocks temp HP.

Another strong option in a different paradigm would be to go for two palemaster wizards. Double Death Auras mean double healing ticks to add tankiness, you get two pets for pulling levers and standing on pads, you can give one of them a couple of levels of rogue to do traps, having double necrotic blast removes some of the frustration from fighting undead as one necrotic blast will apply unholy avatar, and the second necrotic blast will obliterate the pack. There are more buttons to press, but you can duplicate those button presses to both characters. The team is also a bit more able to act independently of one another in rare situations where that's necessary (e.g. House C challenges, VoN6, Xorian Cipher).

Targeting. With our choice of characters in mind, allowing us some leeway here, we have a couple of ways of dealing with targeting.

Generally speaking, I have a master DPS rotation button that acts as my team's "heartbeat" using a custom ISBoxer keybind. This heartbeat alternates between mashing relevant damage abilities and targeting enemies. I generally bind it to mouse wheel, so I'm rolling the mouse wheel the entire time I'm fighting.

For the targeting aspect of the hotkey, one approach is to simply mash the "target nearest enemy" hotkey in the heartbeat and be done with it. This is particularly fine for THF melee characters, as attacking something within melee range is about as specific as they need to be.

You can also do an assist on your unselected character. There actually is an "Assist" function buried in DDO's keybinds somewhere. In this case, your ISBoxer heartbeat would do the following in order:



First Press: Target the character in the presently selected window.
Second Press: Hit the assist key.
Third Press: Hit any dps buttons. Do not advance past this step for a second or so.


Note if anyone reading is unaware: In your "Basic Feats" section of your character sheet, there is a toggle-able auto attack ability. When this is toggled on, your character will automatically attack your current target without having to hold down the left mouse button, meaning you only have to worry about abilities.

---

There's probably a lot more advice to give, but we should probably get our own thread if I'm going to go on much more than that. If it would be helpful to anybody, I'd be perfectly happy to put together a video to show how to stitch this all together and show how it works in game.

[nodoze]

That [to delineate how to best dual-box DDO] could be a long answer, but I'll try my best to cram it into a length that doesn't derail the thread!

... [METRIC TON OF GOOD INFO ON DDO DUAL-BOXING] ...

There's probably a lot more advice to give, but we should probably get our own thread if I'm going to go on much more than that. If it would be helpful to anybody, I'd be perfectly happy to put together a video to show how to stitch this all together and show how it works in game.Yes please start a new thread on how to dual-box DDO with video(s) if you can/want to.

DDO is a fantastic game with near infinite progression and play-ability with an amazing amount of dungeons and includes some of the best content ever created in any game.

Not counting leaving alts at entrances or the few "king of the hill" instances where you could park your party at a location and the mobs all come at you I could only ever dual-box DDO and even then I typically just did thing solo with a trapper capable character...

My DDO dual-boxing often leveraged toggling on/off autorun with direction adjustments over time and auto-tab-targeting and wasn't really ideal and yours sounds much better so I would love to see it in action and better understand the details to make it smoother...

If you can put what info you can on which duo you can run in Reaper mode would also be especially appreciated as I stopped playing DDO before reaper became the biggest end game scene and not sure which builds, are dual-boxable or soloable in reaper (especially also being able to do traps/chests and find secrets).

[Xhoor]

Hello everyone,
lately I have been wow classic and wow boxing (isboxer) I have now moved to the Rizlona server after Everquest 1.
I box 5 magicians and 1 bard for the start. Bard is a girl for everything. 5 magicians with pets are very powerful. And it is a lot of fun. I will probably never play Wow again after what hppened.




So I can only recommend Everquest 1, it is more than just an alternative to WOW.
Maybe I will see you soon in Norrath.


Sorry for my bad english.


Have a nice day

[Yurd]

Hi,

Since the nerf to WOW multiboxing I have been multiboxing Everquest 1 on my own private server. I can do 54 boxes on a single computer. Not sure if self promotion is against the rules or not, I only casually follow the forums. I have posted many youtube videos for most of my stuff. This is my intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUbxvZjyAmo, and this a video on how to setup a server: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HsoVkokoI0. My channel is here: https://youtube.com/c/hammackj. I found this a lot more enjoyable than mutliboxing World of Warcraft. I hope this might help someone. If you have any questions please let me know.

-Yurd

[Purpleflavor]

Hi,

Since the nerf to WOW multiboxing I have been multiboxing Everquest 1 on my own private server. I can do 54 boxes on a single computer. Not sure if self promotion is against the rules or not, I only casually follow the forums. I have posted many youtube videos for most of my stuff. This is my intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUbxvZjyAmo, and this a video on how to setup a server: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HsoVkokoI0. My channel is here: https://youtube.com/c/hammackj. I found this a lot more enjoyable than mutliboxing World of Warcraft. I hope this might help someone. If you have any questions please let me know.

-Yurd


I've been really wanting to do this with Lineage 2, i tried it many years ago but it was too difficult to get a decent clone server up.

[Andreauk]

Guild Wars 2 policy:

https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013658134-Policy-Dual-or-Multi-Boxing

FF14:

Square Enix has a zero-tolerance policy for third-party tools and RMT. Items and gil obtained through third-party tools or RMT can affect the game’s economic stability and disrupt gameplay balance. Moreover, some third-party programs contain viruses and spyware that can harm players; this can lead to unauthorised disclosure of users’ personal data, character deletion, identity theft, and other unfortunate circumstances.

https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?kid=68216&id=5382&la=1

Maybe it's time all the games were contacted via customer support to find out if boxing is okay and how (software allowed or not) with an updated list?

[RedSorc]

... [METRIC TON OF GOOD INFO ON DDO DUAL-BOXING] ...

Yes please start a new thread on how to dual-box DDO with video(s) if you can/want to

*Best Crocodile Dundee impression* That's not a <Metric ton of good info on DDO dual-boxing>...

That's (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/58011-Guide-Dungeons-and-Dragons-Online-(DDO)-Multi-box-Compendium?p=433413&viewfull=1#post433413) a <Actual metric ton of info on DDO dual-boxing>.

I've effectively written everything I know about DDO dual-boxing in the thread (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/58011-Guide-Dungeons-and-Dragons-Online-(DDO)-Multi-box-Compendium?p=433413&viewfull=1#post433413), if anyone finds it helpful.

Here's the promised video demonstrating what I was talking about earlier.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCsFJ6rzK0w

[nodoze]

*Best Crocodile Dundee impression* That's not a <Metric ton of good info on DDO dual-boxing>...

That's (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/58011-Guide-Dungeons-and-Dragons-Online-(DDO)-Multi-box-Compendium?p=433413&viewfull=1#post433413) a <Actual metric ton of info on DDO dual-boxing>.

I've effectively written everything I know about DDO dual-boxing in the thread (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/58011-Guide-Dungeons-and-Dragons-Online-(DDO)-Multi-box-Compendium?p=433413&viewfull=1#post433413), if anyone finds it helpful.

Here's the promised video demonstrating what I was talking about earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCsFJ6rzK0wYour accent pulls off a Crocodile Dundee pretty well. I was glad to be the first to reply to your full thread. Very impressive and well done. I watched a good part of the video but have to stop for a work call.