spoke w/ a WoW GM about software multiboxing & keyclone

[Vyndree]

i called blizzard tech support, and they gave me the green light... but suggested i chat with an in-game GM and ask specifically about keyclone

so i did that. here are the screen clips:

http://solidice.com/keyclone/wow_gm_conversation_30aug2007a.gif
http://solidice.com/keyclone/wow_gm_conversation_30aug2007b.gif

[Feardis]

what worrys me is in most blue posts they quote
"currently acceptable"
leaves it wiiiiide open for change
if enough people complain blizzard will eventually do something
how long that takes is anyones guess
but its on the horizon

[Sarduci]

...and when they want to end it they will. They say the same thing with twinks who sit in the same BG bracket. ALL of the same arguments against DB can apply to twinks. Especially the "against the spirit of the game" argument.

[keyclone]

no worries... read thru some of the conversations here:

http://dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/GM_Conversations#Belfaire_answers_all

[puppychow]

I never understood why people ask GMs questions like these - GMs are the lowest paid employees at Blizzard and do not set policy. They are the "tech support" of WoW, the people with minimal training who basically have an internal knowledge base they use to answer questions, and are not allowed to "make up answers". They don't get to decide if multiboxing is ok, or if Keyclone is cool, or how RAF works. Blizzard devs decide that stuff, and it can change anytime Blizzard management wants it to.

For now Blizzard thinks multiboxing is ok, it brings them in more income and doesn't really hurt other players. if Blizzard ever released an MMO that was free to play (advertiser supported, etc) then you can bet your sweet ass that multiboxing would not be allowed.

[HPAVC]

I never understood why people ask GMs questions like these - GMs are the lowest paid employees at Blizzard and do not set policy. They are the "tech support" of WoW, the people with minimal training who basically have an internal knowledge base they use to answer questions, and are not allowed to "make up answers". They don't get to decide if multiboxing is ok, or if Keyclone is cool, or how RAF works. Blizzard devs decide that stuff, and it can change anytime Blizzard management wants it to.

For now Blizzard thinks multiboxing is ok, it brings them in more income and doesn't really hurt other players. if Blizzard ever released an MMO that was free to play (advertiser supported, etc) then you can bet your sweet ass that multiboxing would not be allowed.They do make policy cowboy style at times, when suddenly they ban someone for 'whatever' and that soemone has to go through a week or two of bs to get their toon back, looses a pile of mail, arena loses or what have you.

They shaman that won the nVidia 'wow' talbard and was a HW for a few weeks in a row, would be one of these people, a guild just reported him for tons of crap he never did and the GM 5-day banned him then later he was banned again.

[vandam]

What i found a problem witht hat post is the Image, Usuly when talking to a GM its like :

(blizz Icon) <GM> Hisname:



in the image above well no (Blizz Icon) ?? Found this a bit strange?

[krum]

(blizz Icon) <GM> Hisname:
That's a relatively new feature.

[welwyn]

the large and fairly active comunity we have here is certainly not even a large percentage of multi accounts around. i wonder if they stopped multi boxing how many paying customers would they lose? i am guessing somewhere in the region of 15-16k paid accounts might leave and that would be bad for buisness. if they was ever going to change it they would have before now before multi accounts numbers rose too high and the income from them rose too high to lose.

[TooMuchWoW]

Nice GM, but no punctuation.

I've talked to them once or twice just to be sure I would not get in trouble when I've had serious threats whispered to me... I don't have screenshots, but seriously... AFAIK, there is no way to catch the ultimate hardware solution - keyboard splitters. Realistically, for them to actively monitor every account against every other account in real-time to check for synchronized skill/spell usage, the servers would DIE. Not just they way they have with 3.0.2/3.0.3. Even just checking accounts with the same names (legal in the EULA/TOU), it is WAY too much more for the servers to do to check that, when they can fix more lag problems and make everyone happy. There isin't a happy work around for this, and the original post about automation from blue hit it dead on.

Plus, you don't always have access to keyboard solutions. I've multiboxed for a few months now with the intent of transfering all of the new account characters to my old account... honestly, I'm still having a problem finding great class/skill/macro combos, and a lot of the time at a friends house or on PC's I can't add programs to I manually run both. I'm far from the best multiboxer, but I play two accounts and really enjoy it. I should be allowed to pay for two accounts registered legally and far from really impacting the game, right?

I've got props for the 36-man bot team, and anyone who can really streamline all of the reaction skills into ANY sort of multiboxing. It takes a ton of work, a ton of practice and a bit of luck and persistance. While he was right, that for right now it's legal, I REALLY don't think they will go back on it.

Hell, I bet they know about the 36 man team and every other major multiboxer before we did. :D

[keyclone]

catching ANY form of multi-boxing is easy for Blizzard, if they wanted to outlaw it. much easier then using warden. all they would have to do is have their servers watch for simultaneous casting in a local area, and that's it. trivial. hardware or software.

they could even just do periodic checks for account sharing using WAN addresses... and they would find all the users in a region with matching ips.. then check account names. trivial.

[Ualaa]

It would be pretty easy for them to even limit a client to one account per ISP or maybe one account online at once.
It is not good business to limit the amount of money your customer wants to give to you.

But if playing more then one account was deemed to be bad, they could stop it pretty easily.

I'd imagine if they followed the logic of more then one account is bad, they could go further and say more then one toon is bad as well.
Everyone gets to log a single toon in from an account, afterwhich all of the others get instantly deleted.
Unlikely for this to happen too, but more likely then being limited to one account per IP.
The single toon policy would maintain their full revenue and destroy twinking which so many seem to be against.

People QQ about anything that gives another an advantage over them.
They fail to realize just about anything has a counter.
If a given class is too strong in relation to others, it gets nerfed or others get buffed towards parity.
If a boxer has 5 toons against your 1, then you have 4 extra toons on your side of the BG somewhere else.
Anyone who wants to box can do it, if they can be bothered. The same goes for twinking in whatever bracket.
A boxer has the advantage of coordination in arena, and the disadvantage of less independent action; it balances out the pro's and con's.

[AwA]

some ideas here are not good here
1) one account one ISP ip - I am playing with my wife and my kids from a lan connected via a router to my ISP ... same ips visible from outsid
2) simulan casting - with some tools you can programm easy some random delays ...

the main reason for blizz is that all accounts have to be paid. And I guess that the most character transfers between accounts are made by multi box players.

BR

AwA

[Starbuck_Jones]

Its a dead horse, but it still comes down to the same thing for any mmo. Are you at the computer playing? If yes then party on. Trying to get government level detail on every micro point is as dumb as 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman'

It seems to me that a portion of this muti-box community feed this issue into an unnecessary frenzy and eventually there will be backlash. Most likely from quizzing GM's about things that are not even on their radar.

[Wha]

what server is this gm from?

if some one could message me instead of reply i would be thankful. cause i probably wont find this thread again.... :(

[wolpak]

I think Blizzard actually wants more multi-boxers. They aren't driving people away are are a huge source of extra revenue. Instead of needing 5 individuals to play, they now have 1 person paying as if he were 5. It wouldn't surprise me if they start giving discounts for more people to take up more accounts.

The reason why I think they want people to do it is because of the RAF and the new changes in the upcoming patch. First off, RAF basically is a handy for multiboxers. Gotta play with the person in a party, check, get loads and loads of experience, check, free months of service, check. It is begging for people to multibox.

I think some of the new changes are geared to people who miltibox, like the aura talents and some others.

[EaTCarbS]

I think Blizzard actually wants more multi-boxers. They aren't driving people away are are a huge source of extra revenue. Instead of needing 5 individuals to play, they now have 1 person paying as if he were 5. It wouldn't surprise me if they start giving discounts for more people to take up more accounts.

The reason why I think they want people to do it is because of the RAF and the new changes in the upcoming patch. First off, RAF basically is a handy for multiboxers. Gotta play with the person in a party, check, get loads and loads of experience, check, free months of service, check. It is begging for people to multibox.

I think some of the new changes are geared to people who miltibox, like the aura talents and some others.I doubt that Blizz does anything to benefit multiboxers... sometimes it just ends up that way :D

[hots]

I dont think they will change it neither as its already said on this forums, its a matter of money and they wont stop 1 player for paying 2+ accounts, actually i think they anytime soon will make the ability of 6 man party so we can 6 box instead of 5 box:P (joke aside)
There by after last 4 years of raiding, pvp, arena and doing more or less all instances in game multiboxing has become a new challenge for me, if they somehow remove that ability i dont think wow would be of my interest anymore, and probably many ppl would have it that way...wtf i cant play my accounts anymore...i mean, they even implement faction change for getting more money, why would they ban us, their best costumers?