Hey guys. Just figured I'd introduce myself as I've become somewhat of a regular reader on these forums now. I just started multiboxing a short time ago for the first time and I'm hooked. I've been playing WoW on and off since beta and have had numerous 60's/70's. I must admit I was rather bored of the game but there are no other MMO's out there that capture my attention for longer than a week.... then I stumbled upon this and it's all exciting again!
Anyways - I just wanted to say hello and thanks to everyone for the tons of helpful information in the forums and wiki that have helped me get started. My team (1x pally, 3x mage, 1x priest) just dinged 40 today and I've cleared RFC, WC, Deadmines, SFK, RFK, SM (GY/Lib/Cath). I still have a ton to learn and I'm itching to get to the Outlands and start doing some challenging instances :P
I posted this for some friends on another website and figured I'd share here as this type of info would have been useful to me when trying to figure out what it would take to make multiboxing a reality, so I'll copy & paste here as well:
Hardware
I was a bit concerned that my hardware wouldn't be enough to run a 5-box team on, however it has surprised me and is running quite well. I will be using the 18 "G Keys" on my gaming keyboard in place of an "X-Keys" device. I have my main full-screen on the 22" widescreen and then I have a 4-square grid on the 4:3 monitor for my slaves. The only thing that bothers me really about this setup is the crappy 19" that I had been using for my backup machine. It looks like hell and the quality is crap, but it's better than having to lay out the coin for another monitor.
- AMD Athlon64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0Ghz (Dual Core)
- G.SKILL 4GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
- E-VGA 8800GT 512MB
- 22" Widescreen LCD / 19" Flat Panel LCD (Dual View Mode)
- Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Software
Initially I was leaning toward Octopus (who doesn't like free? especially after the initial investment). However, after I installed it and saw the tons of configuration options - I decided my learning curve was already high enough with the macro'ing and controls that I really didn't need to add my key broadcasting software into the mix as well. I dropped the $20 on the license for Keyclone and I'm happy I did so. My only qualm with this piece of software is the licensing. It turns out that your license is checked against a server every time you launch the program. I don't like this because any kind of technical issues with the license server (or the author deciding to abandon the project) makes my "lifetime license" worth nothing. Also, any time you make a change to your system (not sure what qualifies as a "change". in my case it was upgrading to Vista from XP) your license will not work and you need to e-mail the author and wait for him to reply and re-activate your license. Other than that though, the software has done its job extremely well with minimal configuration and no headaches.
- Windows Vista Home Premium
- Keyclone
- Two World of Warcraft installations
I'm using two installations of World of Warcraft. I have one copy installed on my main partition that Windows Vista is running on, which I use for my "master toon". I also have another copy installed on a second hard drive that I run all my "slaves" off of. The reason I did this was because I want to have better graphics / more addons / etc for my "main" since I will be actually playing in this window. The slaves have "bare bones" necessities and minimal graphic settings since I'm rarely using their windows. I installed them on separate hard drives for performance reasons.
I will also note that I initially was using Windows XP and switching to Vista increased my frames-per-second dramatically. With 5 windows running on XP I was getting about 15-20fps max with all graphics set to minimum. In Vista I am averaging about 50-60fps with minimum on my slaves and middle-of-the-road on my master. I attribute this mostly to the fact that I was using Dual View on Windows XP which I have heard pretty much cuts your fps in half (horizontal span worked but rendered my computer useless for anything else but multiboxing, so wasn't really an option).
Cost
My initial startup cost was $150 (including tax). I got a deal at GameStop on the battle chests - they are normally $39.99 but were on sale for $29.99. Luckily, I already had all the hardware so I didn't need to purchase anything. I've been accused by in-game friends of throwing away money - and while $75/month does kinda suck - it isn't all that horrible if I'm having fun with it.
- $130 - 4x World of Warcraft Battle Chest (already had one account)
- $20 - Keyclone License
- $75/month - 5x accounts, monthly subscription
Characters / Team Composition
Realm: Skywall (PvE - Horde)
It was a tough call between my current setup and 5 shammies. Ultimately, I decided to go this route for a few reasons. My only character that I have left any more is a 63 warrior, so I would like to get a few different classes to 70 at the same time rather than 5 versions of the same class. I also wanted to have a mage or a pally included so that I can boost up another team once I'm finished with this one. Lastly, I like the idea of having the "holy trinity" group and everyone else seems to be doing 5 shaman so I wanted to be a bit different. If it gets too frustrating making macros and key bindings for three different classes, perhaps I'll switch over to a 5-shammy team.
- 1x Blood Elf Paladin - Tocchet (Master)
- 1x Blood Elf Priest - Mõõnraker (Slave)
- 3x Blood Elf Mage - Ishmahl, Ishmàhl, Ishmáhl (Slaves)
