5-box leveling, balancing efficiency and "safety" ?

Ok, thanks again to everyone who has replied.
You have assuaged my concerns about being erroneously banned, so that's very helpful.
I've also been very interested in the questing vs grinding discussion that has occurred in the thread.
That having been said, there's another variable that perhaps I hadn't considered when I posted the OP: mob density.

Now, there are unknowns here as relates to Classic. We don't yet know if Blizzard is going to implement tech such as dynamic respawns or server sharding in order to accommodate high numbers of players in close quarters like starter zones. Both of those things are tech that did not exist in vanilla wow, so they may or may not be used in Classic.

If Blizzard does not implement some kind of tech that makes more mobs available....then both questing and (world) grinding could be negatively impacted if too many players are in a zone. BUT, instance grinding wouldn't be affected at all by low or high server pops. This is another reason I'm keenly interested in the viability of dungeon grinding.

Well, I wouldn't get too far down the rabbit hole yet as we don't even know what rules or patch items they're going to port over to the classic branch. It's probably a safe bet that they'll port some of the updated stability and ease-of-use UI improvements over, as I think they can get away with a lot of that without impacting the "flavor" of classic (e.g. quest progression rates, dungeons, character power, talents, etc.). Time will tell.

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Originally Posted by DasButo

I'm still torn between leveling a trinity team from the get-go, or a tank/healer duo and then PLing the rest after I hit 60. I wonder if replacing a mage with a balance druid for the crit aura would be worth it, especially if running a pally tank?

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If you just want a level 60 druid, swapping a mage out won't prevent you from clearing dungeons. Any tank, healer and 3*DPS combo will be able to clear dungeons. Some comps will take longer and may not be as viable in PvP. If you're doing it in order to gain DPS though, you'll lose more DPS replacing a mage with an oomkin than 3% crit will give you. A warlock would increase party DPS and provide more utility.

As far as efficiency goes -- I'm fairly sure you'll get 5 characters to 60 faster by grinding dungeons together rather than leveling in two separate groups. If you level in dungeons from the start you'll be in pretty much full blues by the time you hit 60 and geared enough to start farming preraid BiS. Here's a preraid BiS list so you can get an idea which pieces to aim for while leveling. As I've said before, the stat difference between rare and epic gear is immense in classic -- much more so than in other expansions. There are some level 40-50 rares and epics that are better than raid tier gear. Warden Staff and Smoking Heart of the Mountain are good examples. Warden Staff is a level 43 item but is better than Naxx tier weapons for a feral tank.

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

I think they can get away with a lot of that without impacting the "flavor" of classic (e.g. quest progression rates, dungeons, character power, talents, etc.).

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I'm one of those vehement "no changes" people but I can't see an issue with them improving back-end stuff, changing the launcher, etc. As long as the gameplay experience remains unchanged I'm fine. The fact that you can trade loot already put me on tilt a little. It shows they're willing to rationalize changes to actual game mechanics which (IMO) probably means we'll see them messing with PvP /follow and other nonsense that doesn't belong in classic.

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

If you just want a level 60 druid, swapping a mage out won't prevent you from clearing dungeons. Any tank, healer and 3*DPS combo will be able to clear dungeons. Some comps will take longer and may not be as viable in PvP. If you're doing it in order to gain DPS though, you'll lose more DPS replacing a mage with an oomkin than 5% crit will give you. A warlock would increase party DPS and provide more utility.

As far as efficiency goes -- I'm fairly sure you'll get 5 characters to 60 faster by grinding dungeons together rather than leveling in two separate groups. If you level in dungeons from the start you'll be in pretty much full blues by the time you hit 60 and geared enough to start farming preraid BiS. Here's a preraid BiS list so you can get an idea which pieces to aim for while leveling. As I've said before, the stat difference between rare and epic gear is immense in classic -- much more so than in other expansions. There are some level 40-50 rares and epics that are better than raid tier gear. Warden Staff and Smoking Heart of the Mountain are good examples. Warden Staff is a level 43 item but is better than Naxx tier weapons for a feral tank.

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Yes, I'm fairly familiar with vanilla Druid gear, as I mained as resto through MC and had both of those epics (I leveled Ench just for Smoking Heart) :). Another thought with the Balance druid (aside from crit aura) was Innervate, since a Prot Pally stacking defensive gear will have a very low mana pool and will spend a bit of time drinking. I didn't play Alli until just before TBC, so my knowledge of Pallys during vanilla is limited.

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Originally Posted by DasButo

Prot Pally stacking defensive gear will have a very low mana pool.

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Not necessary IMO. With mages in your group you'll have unlimited water to drink between pulls. The only way you'll run out of mana is if you're spamming consecration non-stop. I macro seals/judgement and use consecration manually so I know it'll be placed properly and only used when necessary. You'll only ever be at risk of going OOM in raids where the fights are long enough.

Later on, you get plenty of gear with MP5 and intellect on it. The Deathbone set is great. Tankadin pre-raid BiS. The gear suggestions there are solid though I prefer the 20/31 build that lets me heal or tank on either paladin.

Also, don't forget that most dungeons in classic are actually 10mans. Might be fun playing with other boxers doing UBRS runs, etc. Nice loot, too.

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

What might be helpful to the community is for somebody to put together a multiboxing specific quest guide that focuses on kill quests and single item collection quests with high respawn rates or that are group-lootable.

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Good resource from r/classicwow, scroll down a bit and there's a color coded list that's easier to read: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/...ng_quest_list/

I set a filter on location and found it very useful for my Mulgore research.

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Originally Posted by UFTA

Ok that's helpful/reassuring.
Do you get a lot of the nasty/ignorant whispers from other players?

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it's a daily thing on my server ever since a few bad eggs multiboxed here during MoP. You can feel the hatred oozing through the message sometimes. Though i never bothered or even met most of these players, so i just shrug and move on. Don't let it get to you.