What did we do without IWT?

I was doing some thinking today. IWT is such a massive boon to multiboxers. Heck I still use it when I play solo.

I started multiboxing sometime before the release of sunwell - but I was a caster only. I had a druid, warlock, priest, and shammy on my multibox team. I didn't start using IWT until I had an elemental shammy team in Cata (I think) and I only ever used it to pick up quests. It wasn't until I was defending myself from gankers at the ICC portal that I even realized that IWT had uses for melee classes. (I spammed my IWT button on accident and discovered that my shammies ran after my target.)

I almost immediately started melee teams - rogues, dks, feral druids, warriors - etc. The sight of melee surrounding a target and running in circles around the target until it splats was one of the most entertaining experiences that I've had with multiboxing. And it's all thanks to IWT.

So, in that space before I started using IWT (sometime in cata) while I was multiboxing casters only. What the heck did people do before IWT existed? Drive from tanks and mouseover heal with a pocket healer? Just run classes that had tanking pets? I can't wrap my brain around the amount of talent, skills, and tricks that were needed to multibox melee before IWT existed.

Tell me your secret! I must know :P

I think it would be down to positioning.. aggro the mob then walk around it so your followers are behind it. In bc I had caster teams with a tank and a healer and my healer got away with a lot of aoe healing via macros.

IWT is just a nice quality of life feature. There are plenty of MMOs that do not have it, and we played for years without it. It is definitely one of the most boxer friendly features in any mmo!

We didnt box melee until iwt. Elemental Shamans were all that was needed for pve and pvp.

click to move wasnt around until 2009 I believe

nostalgia inside - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8uLUBEPB-U (Video that got me into boxing)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQQRu0lUWAw

There are some videos with people doing that follow -> nudge/stagger movement constantly with paladin teams, TheRealMaxion had an early paladin team like that I think.

Looking at people's setups and their videos, a lot of people don't do positioning for their other characters except maybe 'move all slaves NSEW and follow'. So its not surprising that IWT seems the the only melee way to many people.

Melee was fine in PVE without IWT if you had decent pings to prevent mobs rubber-banding on you; just run slightly to one side of the mob until you were next to it, stop, turn towards it, now your followers were in melee range and go to town. I did that with my druids. In fact, I still do this today as IWT on a moving mob can cause followers and/or the mob to start ping-ponging all over; and I was never a fan of the circle-jerk IWT spam in PVE as it makes position control so chaotic.

For PVP, I don't think anyone did melee until it was in.

Pvp was a bit slower then it is now. You had time to setup and nuke a kill but like otjer said ele shammys was so good not many needed to think about new groups.

Itw is geart though.