Common Interests / Backgrounds / etc? Why do YOU multibox?

[Xzin]

As this site is clear evidence of, there are quite a few of us multiboxers out there. We are still certainly in the minority but there are dozens of us 5 boxing and many, many more dual boxing. (Not sure how many are 10 boxing though )

Anyway, it occurred to me that perhaps there is a common thread that lead us to multibox. Maybe there isn't but what lead you to multibox? Was it the complexity of the system design, the power gained by using two characters, the feeling that "normal" WoW was too boring, not getting heals, etc? What made you decide to pony up the money and go for broke with 5 characters or even just adding a second one?

For me it was a desire to PvP as best as possible. I wanted to ramp it up to a level that most players would be unable to match. I wanted to be able to make a difference in AV when you normally have 39 other idiots running around one at a time into a mass of Alliance players. I enjoyed the elegance of the setup.... this would not be possible to do with most other MMORPGS for various reasons and I enjoyed making WoW (which is a fairly easy game) into something more challenging. I am sure there are other reasons - what are yours?

[Gallo]

For me, one of the main factors that got me into 5-boxing was the prospect of doing PVE instances on my own. Since the release of BC, my work schedule has been so that I cannot raid... EVER. I have a stupid rotating shift schedule, so I wanted to 5-box in order to do alot of things "solo" when I did have time to play.

I am also intruiged by the complexity of how to accomplish these setups. I'm still fine tuning my macros and button placements, and I'm sure I will be for quite some time.

[Bunny]

I started two boxing back in daoc when everyone and their mother had a buffbot so i had one too (shame on me... i know)
In wow I was actually one boxing for quite some time playing a rogue in a raiding guild. When BC came out it was fun at first doing the 5mans but after a while we started working on kara and thats what it was: "work".
Many things came together that made me stop playing my rogue: Rogues were not wanted very much in raids, we didn't dps as good as we used to, playing a rogue is incredibly boring and our raid leader (a mage) was sure he knew better how to equip and play a rogue than I did.
At first i considered rerolling a warrior because i have always liked the responsibilities warriors have in a raid but there simply were too many tanks in our guild so i stopped playing at all. Aftrer a month of not playing lotro came out so i started dual boxing that but the game somehow didn't "feel" right - I think it is the fact that you push a button and sometimes the char does the assigned action later, sometimes not at all.. i don't know, it is a nice game but just not for me.
After a week or two not playing at all i decided to 5box - i had that thought a couple of months back but was scared of the money i had to invest (I needed 2 complete systems and one monitor). After contemplating for a couple of days i just went to my local dealer, got the hardware and started playing my now lvl 47 group.
Why do i do it?
* Because oneboxing (especially a class like a rogue) is boring
* Because it is something not everybody does - i think it is interesting how people react (yesterday someone posted a ticked because he saw my toons all in the same guild and named almost the same just standing in UC). I have had alliance guys spit on me and other log to a horde alt to tell me how cool they think it is what i do.
* I want to see how far i can get: can i do all the 5 mans in BC? is it possible to do heroics? How about old stuff like ubrs and ZG? Just wanting to find out what is possible.
* And most improtantly: Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can!

Bunny

[Yarddog]

I started dual-boxing a little over a year ago, a complete newb to the concept. It was fun having two mages running around together. I then decided I needed a priest to heal my little group and got a third account.

Three is as far as I'm prepared to go at the moment. Actually its more like three is as far as my wife will tolerate at the moment, LOL.

Anyway, for a while I was having fun writing LUA code to automate stuff. Yeah, making bots I suppose. Mostly it was code for my following priest and mage to function with one button press. There was a lot of noise at the time about whether this was cool or not, from players and from Blizzard. My philosophy was that if Blizzard provides the ability in LUA to do it, then they should just shut up when people used it to advantage or take it away. Of course in December, they took it away.

There haven't been many times that I've been harassed by other players, probably because the majority of my triple-boxing has been with a Warrior/Mage/Priest and I think its not as obvious as something like 3 mages throwing fireballs at the same time.

Last night I was playing 3 warlocks that I just started and got a lot of stares from other players and was called a cheater by one. I told him I was multi-boxing, which he didn't understand. I gave him the URL of this site. He left. Probably reported me, LOL.

Three-boxing is really just a time filler now between regular sessions with some RL friends.

[Flight]

I've been boxing since just after EQ1 started, 8 years ago. Most classes have never been able to solo in EQ1, so thats what started me off. I got up to 5 boxing, only on 3 PCs though, a couple of years or so after that. Even my best friends didn't really understand what its all about and it was like being a pariah - up there with child kidnappers and Al Queida to be a boxer.

Most hunting in EQ1 is/was static camps, no moving about, so it was no drawback having two copies running on the same PC. I ran Warrior / Cleric / Enchanter / Druid / Ranger on Bristlebane server. Most of my boxing was done off peak times as I was also in a very active raiding guild for years.

I've never boxed in WoW, though I already have multiple lvl 60's across 2 accounts. I stopped playing about 18 months ago. I like a challenge - I was first 60 on Terenas and one of the first in Europe, about a week after the game went live (no spoiler or help sites back then either).

I found this forum from a post by Ellay on FoH forums and you guys have inspired me big time I already have 3 PCs side by side, so I've got the bits coming to put together 2 more boxes tomorrow and my 3 new monitors arrived today.


This community is terrific; my first forum searches when I start a new game is always about boxing and usually theres nothing.

[zachwlewis]

I work with Shockbeta, and he told me about it. I've two computers and access to two accounts (mine and girlfriend's), so I decided I'd give it a go. I played them for about five hours total and had a good time.

I'm not that deep into it, but I think it's a fun way to play and experience a game in a new way.

[hapiguy314]

I two boxed on EQ as well back in early 1999. At first I used two computers to 2-box a Cleric and a Monk.

When EQW came out - it was the best thing ever. I could now run 4 instead of just 2 characters. I then switched to playing a warrior, priest, and 2 wizards. When I got more ram modules and a better vid card, I had 6 EQW's running but the other 2 were just buff bots (Enchanter for buffs and Bard for songs).

With WOW - I've always 3 boxed right off the bat. However, I played with 3 separate computers, one main keyboard, and 2 number pad only USB attachments since I only use 0, +, and - keys for autofollow, nuke1, nuke 2. I havent heard of Nostromo Yet.

Now - my multi boxing has reached its heighted potential. I love 5 boxing instances. I'm not sure though on other people's tactics, but I love my Paladin, Priest, 3 Warlocks set up. Most of the time when I'm lazy, I just pull with Captain America Shield, Ret Aura, Blessing of Sanc, and Concecrate away. This allows my 3 warlocks to just Hellfire away (on Auto using Nostromo (I have 4). I rarely lose agro on the 5-7 elites I have on me.

I do not use Synergy or Multibox. I just have my 3 warlocks on 3 different comps and my priest + paladin on my main box. I can't really use Synergy's keyboard broadcast since I have to press a lot of buttons on my paladin/priest box. But maybe I should use Synergy/Multibox for my warlocks though instead of making a tripod out of my left hand fingers to press all 3 nostromos at the same time to chain Hellfire - or execute the macro recording I have to cast the 5 Dots on the boss.

My goal is to be able to do Heroics alone - but my paladin will probably have to be in T4 gear to be able to do this so I doubt it for now. AEing packs in SH is hard enough as it is on my paladin let alone Heroic Mode

I also use Hunter, Priest, 3 Locks when I'm farming for NW Cloth or Primals since the hunter instant hit and long range is quite necessary when you are competing with 10 other farmers

Cheers to all the fellow multiboxers

[Kyosakana]

For me, it started after my initial gaming computer got fried, and being in school at the time, I decided I really needed a computer to type papers on, do research with, etc. So I ended up buying an el cheapo dell. Problem was it was a real POS, and it wouldn't run FFXI, my game of choice at the time. So, after much poking around and scraping up money, I managed to get some replacement parts for my original computer, and got that up and running again. The El cheapo dell just sort of sat around for a year after that, until one day after I had started playing WoW, I decided to try and install it on the PoS. Surprisingly it worked, and so I figured I would roll a healer on a second account. That way, I could still play my hunter main, but I could get it into groups by attaching the healer at the hip.

Well, it turns out liking orcs so much I decided to roll a shaman instead of an actual priest or druid, again, wasn't the best of ideas. Oh, it was a very nicely equipped shaman from 1-40, with me grabbing all the good instance quests and finishing the stuff that would normally be done in a group, but it didn't really accomplish its purpose.

So then that October my wife got me a laptop for our anniversary. Well, with 3 computers sitting there, I figured I could run instances with my own mni-group if I actually had a tank. So I leveled a Warrior to go with my shaman/hunter combo. It worked a little better this time, and I even managed to clear uldaman with the trio while it was still level appropriate for warrior, and a bit underleveled for the shaman. Eventually though, I got them BRD, and the plan just sorta fell apart, both because my Warrior kinda sucked, and with only 3 people, DPS really wasn't killing things as fast as they needed to die.

So at this point, I started leveling a trio of hunters, and questing and grouping goes really fast at low levels with them. However, I couldn't get past the 2-people-too-short issue I thought I would come across later, so eventually, I broke down and bought 2 more el cheapos from Dell, although this being some years later than the original, they actually run WoW pretty well with the exception of capital cities and really laggy areas.

So, now with 5 computers, I decided leveling 5 hunters would be a good idea. 5 solid DPS, 5 tanking pets, and 5 people who could heal their tanking pets if needed. Well, I get them all to 60, and came across an annoying factor: gearing 5 characters of the same class is a pain in the ass going just by instance drops. So I resorted to PvPing my gear. Now, while really fun, it also gets repetetive and easily blown up by more than 2 mages (although it was really fun to watch some lone mage/lock run up thinking they could be a hero and seeing them get eaten by 5 glowing red tigers).

After getting about half the PvP set, BC comes out. At this point, I decided I'd really like to try a straight PvE group, that didn't have overlapping gear concerns, so I rolled my Paladin, Shaman, Druid, Priest, and Mage group. It has worked amazingly well thus far, and provides me with plenty of options for whenever I feel like controling a single character.

edit: No idea why some random link popped up in there.

[Xzin]

Most classes have never been able to solo in EQ1.

I beg to differ Wizard level 50 could kill all but the Ghoul Lord dead side lower Guk. Had quite a few close calls though *hug root* but yeah, a lot of classes in EQ could not solo AT ALL.

[Wilbur]

Which is why us cool people played a bard ;-)