Most monitors are wider then they are tall. So you COULD do this but the scaling would be..... odd with a single screen.

It works great if you use five individual 17" monitors but say you use a single 30" to do what you propose.

2560 x 1600

would be wider than your example, more like this:

/-----------------------\
|..2.|................|..3..|
|.....|................|......|
|----|........1......|-----|
|..4.|................|..5..|
|.....|................|......|
\-----------------------/

Each end one would be 640 x 800 and the middle would be 1280 x 1600. Go much smaller than a 30" and forget it. WoW at 512x640 would be near unplayable.

So with the 30" - playable? Yes. But your aspect ratio would be quite a bit strange looking. Tall but not wide. Try it out and see if it is workable for you or not. My personal suggestion is to get a 2nd monitor or of course a dedicated monitor per box