A Question About 3rd Party Programs And WoW's EULA

First off, great informative site... I have been multi boxing since EQ and this is hands down the best source of info for multi boxing. I feel ashamed that I just recently discovered it.

Secondly, this post is in no way an accusation of cheating/ botting whatever...

Now on to my question, are Maximizer and AutoHotKey considered violations of WoW's current EULA?

Thanks for the answers in advanced!

Maximizer is technically a 3rd party program (anything other than wow.exe is).

But it has so many practical uses and all it really does is display the window differently. Similar to other programs thas have been used on other mmorpgs for years.

Not only has it been around nearly 2 years, it has also been partially integrated in the official client.

I don't worry about maximizer at all. AHK I do worry about a little bit.

Stick with Keyclone. For sure it has been Ok'd by a GM. There is a SS of the convo some were on these forums.

Basically if Blizzard decide any commonly used piece of third party software is a breach of EULA or TOS they can ban its use and its users.

Really you have to look at potentials, a basic maximiser program does only one thing, its doesn't actually effect how you play the game, it does nothing that you can't do your self (okay maybe something you can't do...), it just makes things easier. 99% of the people who use I would imagine don't even dual/multi-box.

Looking at AHK I would think the odds are quite high that at some point it will come to mainstream attention, and that Blizzard will ban its use, I first came accross it while looking for EVE mining macros, I know there are runescape macros, and I have heard of a good WoW fishing macro. All these are designed to avoid repetetive tasks in the games. Which is pretty much the definition of AFK playing.

The fact that I would think most of the people who use it on these forums are using it to send single keypresses to multiple clients is not really an issue. If its added to Warden to be detected anyone using it can be banned, and looking at places like the Glider forums, Blizzard don't generally accept excuses, by the time you get banned they know enough about your playing habits to know if it was a mistake that the software was running or not.

Keyclone, Synergy, Multibox, etc... Personally I would imagine that theses are in the same boat as Maximiser, they do a single thing they allow one person to send input to more than one client, be that several clients on one PC or several PCs each running a single client (or many other arrangements) what none of them do is allow automation, though with enough programming skills either Synergy or Mulibox could be modded I'd imagine. Luckily, and I think by intention, Keyclone is closed source and so if likely free from such ideas.

Bottom line as I see it from the software that is banned, any third party program that is intended to modify the client or the data it sends/recieves from the server is banned; any program that allows interfacing directly with the client at the API level is banned (inner space?); and any program that automates your actions dependent on what the client is doing, either through monitoring memory values or through color matching (fishing bots) are banned.

Of course there are others, but you get the gist. Blizzard are trying, with some success, to create a level playing field. While some may say that dual or more boxing breaks that paradigm, they would be wrong. Ask any 5x boxer what happens when people who are prepared to die attack their group, A phsycic Scream (?) in the middle perhaps? It might take another group several tries but even Xzin is not unbeatable (allegedly ;)). A level playing field by Blizzard's terms is a playing field that doesn't include the use of bots, hacks, cheats and exploits.

Though arguably they seem happy to turn a blind eye to gold sellers, advertisers and buyers.

Thanks guys...

Since I am running 2 accounts on one machine, I was most intrigued by AHK. I will look into keyclone to see if that is a viable solution.

Never used AHK, but keyclone is class.

AHK and Keyclone can pretty much do the same thing; however, Keyclone costs $10, and comes not only with alot more features and great support, but is alot easier to work with. I use AHK personally and you pretty much have to manually program every key you want passed on. If you're super cheap and don't mind alot of personal work with no support, AHK's fine; if $10 isn't an issue(or you don't hate paypal like me) go for Keyclone, will make things a ton easier :p

That said, AHK isn't a bad solution, just most people think it's more likely to get banned and requires more work on top of the multiboxing work yer already doing.