So why did you start multiboxing in WoW?

Im just curious as to how everyone managed to stumble into this community/game-style.

I'll begin.

So it was back in umm..... WOTLK. I was in love with AV to the point where that was all I did. From dusk until dawn every weekend and after school during the weekdays. I was working toward my 100k kill thing and then it happened.

I was going through AV and bam. Something killed me and I didn't even know what it was. Then I saw five shamans run over me and kill a bunch of others! Naturally I was offended and violated at the same time. So, I quickly whipped up my report screen wrote how this guy was ruining the game and how dare he do this.

After that AV game I went to google and found dual-boxing.com. Ughh there was a community of these cheaters!!! I was so upset that I found Keyclone and bought the program and started up four trial accounts. Then I made five Draenei shamans.

Ok so how powerful is this? I went into the game and completely demolished the starting zone and then it happened. After ten minutes of messing around I became infected.

I BECAME THAT WHICH I HATED. And now I'm here, a few years and plenty ​of reports later.

For me, it started out with boredom.

I was already aware of multiboxers having ran in to a few in some BGs. They never bothered me, more just made me curious as to how it all worked. How were they moving and targetting? What were their weaknesses? How could I beat/annoy them in BGs? etcetc.

Around the middle of MoP I was just done with the game. My guild and raid team had disappeared, my usual arena buddies had quit, and since CR-phasing had not been introduced yet, being on a dying realm meant you really could not do anything unless you wanted to pay for a transfer. So, I recalled those character stacks I had seen a few times and started googling. I quickly found out I could do it with trial accounts and free software to try it out and started dabbling with some low level toons. I thoroughly enjoyed figuring it all out and learning how things were done. Since my interest was peaking, I was looking around on youtube/reddit/twitch for related content and ran in to a stream from someone called Rizzey. I was a bit floored. He was running a full raid group of toons on his own and clearly having a blast with it. I started talking to him and he was kind enough to withstand my noobish delight at his setup and all the silly questions that followed. Soon enough I was hooked and upgraded a few more accounts to start my first "real" team. 5x ret pallies, that I still have, although I've yet to level them beyond 100.

From there the usual thing happened. I started going: "Well, I wonder if I even could run more than 5", "Maybe I should have a mage for portals", "A lock would be sweet so I can summon", "I totally need healers don't I?" and kept cramming an uncomfortable amount of game clients on to a rig that was never meant to run more than the 5 I initially rolled. 0 regrets though as this is the most fun I've had in the game since Wrath. 10/10 would waste money again.

I just want to say I really enjoy reading these types of stories :)

I boxed in EQ which was a bit more common at the time, but I was leveling up a rogue and saw a someone run by with someone that appeared to be on follow (could have been two players) and grabbed maybe 5 of mobs and used arcane explosion, and took them all out! Was impressed, and I had a second PC. Thought.. maybe I can do this!
Loaded up 2 level 1 mages, made an assist macro. Used a nostromo gamepad for the second PC and pushed both buttons at the same time. Boom! magic. I literally would press a key on essentially two different input devices to replicate boxing.
Down the road after having 2, it wasn't enough. Was a good friend who I still keep in touch that is an amazing programmer, I offered him 1k gold (which was a lot back then) to somehow make an application that would send hotkeys 1 through 0 to another PC. He came through! I was now running 3 mages, by still pressing a button on my main keyboard and one on my Nostromo which would then broadcast to the third. Extremely clunky method, but it worked after you got the muscle memory down. Felt a little like a keyboard turner.

Then came the Shamans in BC, added a 4th, still using the same method. It wasn't until Wrath and adding a 5th that ISboxer came into play that it really made life easier, and now I can't imagine playing the game without it, and the game is too easy playing 1. Only able to play 5 now.

I started right after the first expansion was released and was leveling up my new Draenei when 5 shamans went walking by, all looking identical and named similar.

I thought that was the coolest thing ever. By the end of the evening I was multiboxing myself.

I boxed in Asherons Call. That game had three traits that were really amazing for boxing. WoW wasn't out yet.

1) A metric ton of buffs and debuffs (these were crazy powerful, not at all like WoW).

2) XP Chains (guilds passed XP up to their patron).

3) Portals.

You could level up a new toon in a super high level area just by portaling, buffing your toon and debuffing the mobs. All of the XP could be passed up as more than he actually earned due to the patron system and specific skills and buffs (loyalty and leadership).

I didn't box again until maybe wrath, I can't remember. I do remember a shammy team and a priest team in AV. Xzin maybe. I thought it was kick-ass and inspired me to dig a bit myself. I've been on and off wow since vanilla though, and never really get too serious, at least, not for long (the burn out is real!).

I also boxed in Everquest. Played 4 characters across 2 pc's alt tabbing my way through raids. A friend from EQ give me a trial of WoW and i initially started single boxing a hunter. One day while watching warcraft movies this video popped up of Ellay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5brtLZbXYE

I was certain after watching it that i was going to be doing the same thing. After some research i had 3 more accounts and keyclone. I was able to get a long time friend to play a holy paladin and we dungeon run straight to lvl 70 (was TBC at the time). No tanks needed.

From that point on i continued to progress getting nearly 2.2k on those 4 shamans in season 3 i think it was. I kept multiboxing and eventually moved to 5 accounts playing a tank paladin with the 4 shamans through Wotlk and cata.

Pandaria made me sick to my stomach when they removed follow from BG's.

Came back again to try WoD but only ended up single boxing. The whole garrison thing was not for me. Took the world out of world of warcraft.

I started in legion single boxing a druid then moved around to some alts until one day Ellay once again is like multiboxing is awesome u should try it! I was resilient but was multiboxing by the next day with 5 prot paladins.

Long story short. Its all Ellay's fault.

I was a kid who used to love watching WoW videos on Warcraftmovies. I had really bad internet back then (2007 - Australia haha) so I was never able to stream the movies, I had to download them overnight.

One day I came across a video featuring someone playing 5 elemental shamans and they were clearing Mana-tombs in BC.
I had to beg and beg and beg my brother to pay for 4 more accounts (lol) so I could try out multiboxing. He said if I could learn how to use hotkeynet he would happily do it. Which lead me to this lovely forum and here I am still.

I got bored of WoW during vanilla once I had been max level for a while. About 6 months after BC came out I decided to start playing again but this time as horde. I couldn't decide what class to play. I remembered this guy who was in my guild in EQ2 who 2 boxed and I thought I'd do something like that so I could level 2 classes at once.
I honestly just thought I'd have an alt follow me about and leech xp but it would still be quicker than leveling twice. A google search later and I had found this site and was amazed that so much more was possible. Couple of weeks later my 5 computer setup was complete and I was running Pally and 4 shammies.

This article about Xzin is what piqued my interest in multiboxing. At that point I'd not seen anyone multiboxing so it interested me from the logistical standpoint.

It wasn't until mid BC that I actually started multiboxing. At that point I was in a semi-hard core raiding guild, we ran TK,MH, and BT. I was farming for raid consumables and I thought to myself, "Self, I could save so much time if I didn't have to sit down and eat after every other pull." (I was playing an affliction warlock - I could pull 10 mobs, dot dot dot and kite them - but would have to life tap for the mana - so I would typically be mostly dead after each pull.

I had two computers - my home desktop and my laptop for school - so I installed WoW on my laptop, (Who am I kidding - it was already on there). I set up a wireless numerical keypad and mouse so that I could send commands to my laptop (I still use some of the keybinds from that) [ And from using the original Jamba addon, when your slave would follow when the leader emoted /followme]. I ran my warlock and my priest together farming raid consumables. Not too long after that I discovered keyclone, which made multiboxing much easier cross PC. Sunwell Patch released and I was on Sunwell Isle with my warlock, my priest, and my wife's druid getting totally ganked while doing dailies.

I don't really remember doing much multiboxing in Wrath - I think I might have shelved multiboxing because I really enjoyed solo play and raiding. In fact, I typically only multibox when I'm bored with solo play, or am getting burnt out and need something to keep my playing/interested. Since WoW is my wife's primary hobby, I have to try and maintain an active interest.

It wasn't really until Cata/MoP that I got kind of serious about multiboxing - I had my first real team that I leveled as a team in Cata - my Shammies, and then I had my first hunter team that I used from the end of Cata all the way up until WoD. I had a 4x disc priest team in MoP that I did LFR on, and I had a 4x resto druid team that I liked to run in PVP. Instanced PVP was the most fun I had multiboxing, but when they broke that I pretty much stopped playing for a while. (Also, the 75% damage reduction in mid MoP made pvp a lot less fun too) Pretty much didn't play much in WoD - ran a couple instances here and there but Garrisons being separate made it a not fun for me.

Legion was the first xpac that I went into with 5 accounts pre-purchased and ready to go - and I've kept all five fairly active since the start. This expansion is also the very first expansion that I've multiboxed in non LFR raids - i.e. I ran 2 hunters in Normal and Heroic ToV and am running two hunters in Normal and Heroic NH!

Like others i started boxing in EQ, and once you start, your hooked for life. I have boxed every MMO since, ie EQ1&2, AO, AC, DAoC ( the old school way, two PC and two keyboards/mice).

When I started WoW I only two boxed for a few months because it was hard to do it old school way at the time due to the fast pace of combat. I played solo after that until a few months into BC expansion. It was when i was leveling my first paladin in the drani starting area that I saw one toon with 4 stacked toons following him around one shotting everything. I sent the lead toon a whisper, one that I get myself a lot now, i said " WTF?" He said , its kind of hard to explain but go to dual-boxing.com and you will understand. I came here and have been 5 boxing ( and 10 at times ) since, and never looked back. I now knew how to "software box" and it changed my life forever ( not sure if in a bad or good way lol )