Dual Boxing as built in feature

[Morlife]

I think the Muit-Box community is larger them most believe.
I believe there is a large portion of players that would do it, but don’t, because of complexities.

Can Multi-Box be a built in feature?
You log in an account, then from inside the game you log in additional characters. You control the characters all running in a single process.

I think the answer depends on two issues, additional revenue, and technical.

Typically, if a new feature can generate (or retain) enough revenue it will be implemented. Simply put, if a company can make enough money on it, they will figure a way around technical issues.

How much additional revenue would Blizzard require to consider implementing an in game Multi-Box feature?
Each player that moves from a single box to a 5 box would generate the following additional revenue - $1,040* first year / $660 each year after.
Players that move from a single box to 2 box would generate $210* / $150.
(* counting software sales)

If 1% of the player base (8 mill ?) decided to multi box 2 accounts Blizzard would be looking at additional revenue in excess of $12m annually, plus an instant 4.8m in software sales. This only includes players using 2 accounts, if 5% of that base (.05 of total player base) 5 box, that would generate an addition $4m annually for a total of $16m additional annual revenue.

Technical – Can it be done?
I think this depends on requirements. There is a vast range of how this could be implemented. If all characters occupy the same position it may make things easier.
If all characters are locked in movement, that too could simplify the technical requirements. Basically, you are getting abilities of the additional characters you log in, but still only using a single camera view.
If the technical requirements are keep low, then I think the current architecture could support the feature. It wouldn’t be easy, but I don’t think it’s impossible.


I guess the first thing that would need to be done is get voice of customer to determine interest in such a feature. Any ideas on how we could do this? I was thinking Blizz Con, or maybe start out with the official forums?

[Xzin]

It is most certainly doable. The question is: is it worth it from a actual cost incurred AND from a fallout effect perspective?

If all of a sudden, one could simply "buy" another account and this was something easy to do, would the player who did not be at such a disadvantage as to decide not to play?

In WoW - probably not.... but most people (99%+) single box as is and I suspect that the vast majority have no interest in doing so. The ones who do (like myself) are willing to accept failures and challenges and come up with unique solutions to problem that are encountered multiboxing. Hopefully, with my guide, people will find it easier to get started 5 boxing - but the considerable cost and complexity will still turn almost everybody away.

Plus, $75+ a month is still, for many people, a nice chunk of change.

So even if you COULD do away with the 2nd or 5th computer requirement (possible with dual+ cores these days) and figure out/provide a robust autohotkey like program to send data to all of the "clients" - would it pay off from a cost to implement AND make sense in that it would retain "balanced" game play?

I can't speak to the first (although I would imagine that it would pay off). The second is trickier. Yes, I "unbalance" gameplay when I 5 box. But, I take up 5 character slots. I spend 5x as much gold. I need to equip 5 characters. Since much of what I do is instance based, I leave most players alone until I start PvPing - which is not what every 2+ boxer wants to do (PvP is HARD to 2 box).

So, perhaps Bliz or another game will officially support multiboxing someday. I fully expect games to eventually embrace gold selling, account transfers, multiple monitor support (hello to you SupCom) and other creative uses of the rapidly increasing and lower cost computer power. I just don't expect it to happen anytime soon.

[Runiat]

1 slight issue:
Right now, most people haven't even heard of dualboxing in WoW (I only found the word about a month ago). In some games it's almost standard, but as WoW was designed to attract the not so.. erh.. "specialised" gamers (lvl 1-60 taking as little as 5 days /played) I suppose ppl just don't think of it.

If Blizzard wanted those who might be interested in doing it to know, they'd also have to tell those who didn't know if it (and there's a lot of those as far as I've been able to tell), and at the same time tell them that anyone willing to pay would be able to double their damage. If they make it so easy that a single camera is enough, most dualboxers would instantly jump to quadboxing - Xzin would probably move up to 20 chars blasting their way through BGs - simply because we'd all have the hardware to it.

What this'd mean is that.. lets say 10% of the playerbase wouldn't have money to buy another account (or time to get another char to 70) and so they'd be chanceless against those who did. If I was 1 of them, I'd quit. And mind you, these are the casual gamers who aren't using too much bandwidth, and the players who can't play any of the new games due to poor hardware and will thus stay at WoW for years.
Even breaking even would be a challenge, which is why I'm doubtful as to wether Blizzard will do this.

[Xzin]

well, you have to consider how rampart alts are I don't have any but some people have 2, 3 level 60+ alts. More than you would think.

But that is a separate issue. I don't think multiboxing will be common in WoW - it is too fringe. To 5 box costs $3-5k+ easily. Most people barely want to spend $15 a month for WoW. Very few are willing to pay $3k or more for a game. And $75 a month? It just doesn't happen.

Hence where we are now. Bliz loving multiboxers and not willing to cut us off - but also not embracing us with open arms either. They know people can and do dual box. In 99.9999% of the time, that is all people do. Very, very, very few people 5 box. I would put it at under 100 players in all of WoW. Perhaps under 50. Out of their "8 million or so" accounts. That is 0.0000125 percent, roughly - and clearly not where the money is.

You are right, in theory it would be an amazing way to increase revenue - heck even double it (if everybody did it). But it just is not going to happen for all sorts of reasons.

[Kyosakana]

I don't see it happening. Really, developers would have to develop new UI and AI to accomodate it, and increasing the number of characters an individual would control would simply lead to developers to make more 25 man instances instead of 5 mans, and 125 man instances instead of 25 mans, etc. There would have to be difficulty adjustments, class adjustments, probably even graphical adjustments.

However, I do think there is currently an untapped market out there for a good party based game. Haven't seen one of those in years.