Just introducing myself

[Maz]

Hi All,

I've just registered so I thought I'd take the time to say hello, let you know who I am and talk a little about my plans.

I've been playing WoW for three years now. I started on a PVE server and leveled a dwarf priest to 60 then rerolled horde to play with RL friends and leveled an orc rogue to 70, an undead priest to 60, a tauren shaman to 63 and raided MC/Onyxia/BWL along the way. I took a break for ten months and when I came back, the old characters were just... well old. So I rerolled to a PVP server where I'm now playing a gnome warlock as a 100% battlegrounds plaything. I'll not go back to a PVE server after leveling on a PVP server. Who would of thought that collecting 10 bear asses for Afflick the Lazy could be so exciting :)

But I'm coming to the point where I'll have ground all the honor I can and I'll soon be wearing the best PVP gear I can get without stepping foot in arena (which I'm not a fan of) and I'm looking for a new challenge. I've always fancied the idea of multiboxing and recent encounters with multiboxers both in my battlegroup and now in my guild lead me here.

I had thought that multi-boxing was just that, a whole bunch of boxes and was pleasantly surprised that it was possible to multi-box on... well one box TBH.

Here's the gear I have access to:

A relatively low specced PC (bought specifically for WoW with the caveat that it be quiet) running 1GB of RAM, a 1.6GHz Intel Core Duo, an nVidia 7600GT and a Dell 1680x1050 20" widescreen monitor.

A reasonably beefy laptop running 3GB of RAM, a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (one of the new 45nm T8300 chips), nVidia 8600M GT (256MB) into a 15.4" 1680x1050 display.

I'd rather multi-box on just one machine (the desktop) so that the laptop is available for my wife if she needs it but as a long-suffering WoW widow, she's probably resigned to me taking over every piece of kit in the house in my lust for WoW. At least I'm not down the pub spending the housekeeping :)

I'm not sure if the desktop can manage five instances of WoW but it occured to me that I could run five windows with identical aspect ratios by turning the monitor on it's side. I could have two 525x420 windows across the top, a 1050x840 window in the centre, and two more 525x420 windows across the bottom. Alternatively, I could run one 1680x1050 window on the desktop and four 840x525 windows on the laptop. I'm a little unsure about using the laptop though to be honest; it blows a fair amount of heat out of its side just running one WoW (admittedly with everything turned up to 11) and I'd hate to melt the poor thing.

As far as setup is concerned, my plans are less clear. I'm unsure whether to concentrate on PVP or PVE for starters. Whichever I choose, it'll probably be a fairly simple setup for my first time. I'll learn the ropes with something like three shamans but doubt I'd carry that too far as I've done a shaman and it didn't hold my interest to 70 so I doubt three shaman will prove any more attractive. Still it seems like a good setup to learn with.

So there you have it. If you have any comments about my gear, my suggested rigs, or advice with setups, I'd be grateful for any guidance you can give.

Maz.

[Steph]

Welcome Maz!

[Mak]

Hey Maz, welcome! I'm rather new too and this place is definitely a great avenue for a wealth of information from dualboxing to 5-boxing it. I'm a five boxer with a similar setup to yours. I'm running my main on a AMD Athlon 3700+ 2.2 (clocked to 2.4), 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7900GT 256M on a 22" monitor. I refused to sacrifice my 22" amongst 4 other characters so they're sitting on my laptop which is very similar to yours but with only 2GB RAM. The laptop does pump out some heat but so far with all the video setting turned down I get decent FPS and little to no lag. Your laptop would probably be a better bet I would think but if you're hooked on using your desktop, why not try it out and see how it runs. I had to play with the settings for my setup but eventually it all works out the way you want it too.

As for what toons to run, I have two sets I'm currently running. 1x BE Pally, 3X BE Mage and another set Orc Warlock, Tauren Druid, Undead Priest, BE Pally, Troll Mage. I have noticed that the Pally/Mage quad group is easier with only two classes and the in sync casting is awesome looking but the 5 different classes is a nice challenge. I'm more of a PVE kinda girl so I'm planning on destroying instances but I'd say if you're into PVP go with 4x DPS, 1x Healer or something like that. At least that seems like the general consensus here or else go for 5x shaman b/c they seem to destroy in PVP and PVE (even though I've read 5x hunters are insane too!).

I also plan on having a 5x druid team so I can spec them for PVP or PVE. Whatever you choose, as long as you enjoy playing it, that's all that matters. Good luck with leveling!

[Maz]

Hi Steph.

Hi Crazy,

Yeah, I've been reading around the forums and I reckon five accounts on the desktop is pushing it. I'm at least going to try it but I think I'll end up doing what you've done and run my main on the desktop with everything set to 11 and the alts on my laptop with everything set to 1.

The good news is that I've taken the plunge. Four copies of the battlechest and four 60 day timecards have been ordered :)

Maz.

[merujo]

I'll learn the ropes with something like three shamans but doubt I'd carry that too far as I've done a shaman and it didn't hold my interest to 70 so I doubt three shaman will prove any more attractive. Still it seems like a good setup to learn with.


hi and welcome :)

oh, with that setup, u gonna learn how to love a shammy thats for sure.
i never had one, until now... im gonna have 3 :P
it's an insane combination, with stackable buff's and high burst dps, and thats the best way i find to describe it. In some seconds u can melt someone, and im only gonna have 3, and for that i envy Boom from 20 Totems :P

good luck

[Diamndzngunz]

Welcome To the Forums!

[Maz]

Quick update.

I'm now the proud owner of five WoW accounts and two keyclone licences.

I ran tests on both my machines and had three instances running on my desktop and four on my laptop. They were only running the login screen but proof of concept was achieved.

Tomorrow I'm going to set up the p2p side of things and see if I can control the laptop instances from the desktop.

[keyclone]

howdy Maz and welcome to the forums!

sounds like you're diving right in :D

drop me a note if you have any questions, and i'll see what i can do

[Maz]

'Sorted out the p2p side of things tonight and settled on my setup.

I'm running the main on my desktop (not using maximiser) and the four alts on the laptop.

I've configured keyclone to auto-start and auto-connect so I start keyclone on the laptop and wait until the four login screens are up then start keyclone on the desktop. I have to give it a couple of seconds after the login screen has appeared on the desktop before I start typing my password as keyclone seems to need that time to connect up.

Still haven't decided on my team. Five elemental shammies seems the most obvious starter setup. That'll allow me to concentrate on getting the basics down without distracting myself with the hassles of coordinating multiple specs/classes.

My battlechests have arrived but not my timecards so I'll have to wait until after the weekend to get everything up and running in anger.

[Marathon]

Welcome Maz !

[Kaynin]

You could run 5 on that desktop, but you can forget about PiP and will have to run the background windows at absolute minimum, with a very low maxbkfps.

I'd suggest like, maxfps set to 25 and maxbkfps set to like, 5. Also, run it from two directories. Your main from one and alts from another. Then you should be able to run it. It's edging it though, a single core CPU will likely have trouble with this. :p

[Maz]

I edited my top post as I'd got the spec of my desktop wrong. It's not single core/2GB, it's dual core/1GB.

I spent Saturday evening building a new UI with multiboxing in mind. It's worked out really well and I used far fewer addons than I expected. Basically, it consists of Bartender3, cyCircled, Squeenix and Pitbull. I know people here prefer Bongos but Bartender is what I know. I'll probably try Bongos at some point though.

Pitbull has some really nice features. I'd tried it once before and found it too complicated so this time, I turned everything off and then added features one at a time until I'd arrived at something I liked.

My timecards turned up today so now I have no excuses. I'm a little intimidated TBH. I'm unclear about how I'll handle things like gathering quests, quest hand-ins and the death of my toons. I'm just gonna have to dive in and find out.

I'm also thinking that my laptop/desktop setup might be awkward to use. Once I've had a go, I might consider some changes. Either a KVM or an upgrade to the desktop to enable me to run all the clients there.

Once I've created my team, I'll take a screenie of my UI and post it. Wish me luck :)