200 WOWs...

[sputnik]

This is my census mining operation that logs on to realms and gathers data about online players. Everything is fully automated, including logging into realms and creating characters.

Each machine is running between 20 and 40 instances of WOW.

The rack is an old picture, we have 2 racks x 7 machines each, plus a shelf with 5.

Rack machine specs:
AMD 64x2 4400 dual cores, 4GB - 8GB RAM, Geforce 7300 - 8500 cards, Windows XP 64, SATA 8MB buffer drives.

[Shogun]

O.o

why?

[Xzin]

I call bs. No machine runs 20-40 WoWs at once.

[daemonic666]

It's possible.He is doing this with Innerspace as you can see...prolly he was banned in the 2 banwaves this month! Lol

[Heenan]

I don't think data mining is within the spirit of dual-boxing.com.

Are you the level 1 female Orc named Yrgglhaszrr that spams me with WoWGold information?

[sputnik]

Are you the level 1 female Orc named Yrgglhaszrr that spams me with WoWGold information?

yes our characters have random names, but they sound human-ish, we use a name generator that isn't just gibberish chars. no, they don't spam, they quietly sit there doing /whos, then aggregate the data into a database. we then provide server population data to third parties who are interested in that data. Some websites publish that data for free (ad revenue model), then again there is probably at least 1 spammer out there who uses that data to figure out which realms to spam hardest... I can't really prevent that And yes, the machines run 40, we have one machine with 8GB ram that runs 50... each instance is set to the lowest graphics settings, and we have the machines totally stripped down, all windows services disabled, etc. Instances don't use very much CPU when minimized (I guess because no precalculations for rendering are taking place?), if you have 3 open and 15 minimized, you can be at 90% cpu, when you minimize the 3, it drops to like 50%...

I don't think data mining is within the spirit of dual-boxing.com.

you have to kill mobs to be "within the spirit"? I felt like sharing my setup, since it's near the edge of the envelope in terms of wows per machine. if anything, we're doing something MORE useful with our WoWs... instead of just killing mindless hours grinding

[Shogun]

if anything, we're doing something MORE useful with our WoWs... instead of just killing mindless hours grinding

Yeah, providing gold farming companies and spammers with our character names is really useful, thanks for that.

I realise that you don't control where that information ends up, and that it can be acquired elsewhere quite easily, it doesn't stop the fact that it's what you're doing and you contribute. So while it may seem useful to certain people, I'm pretty sure most players can do without it

[sputnik]

i don't provide names, just general statistics, like how many average players there are online at a given time of day on a certain realm, and what the horde/alliance mix is on each server, etc. There are a lot of nice websites out there that provide this information for people who are trying to decide which server to join for starting their first horde char or whatever. Also for raiding minded folks, we know which servers have the most level 70s on at the same time (easiest to get raids put together). I know thottbot gathers this data from in-game plugins like Cosmos, but not everyone runs cosmos, especially new players, so the statistics that are gathered by cosmos thottbot plugin are highly skewed.

[Shogun]

i don't provide names, just general statistics, like how many average players there are online at a given time of day on a certain realm, and what the horde/alliance mix is on each server, etc. There are a lot of nice websites out there that provide this information for people who are trying to decide which server to join for starting their first horde char or whatever. Also for raiding minded folks, we know which servers have the most level 70s on at the same time (easiest to get raids put together).

Fair enough, I guess the spirit of Dual-Boxing as mentioned above though is more meant as the multi-tasking playing experience though

[sputnik]

i don't provide names, just general statistics, like how many average players there are online at a given time of day on a certain realm, and what the horde/alliance mix is on each server, etc. There are a lot of nice websites out there that provide this information for people who are trying to decide which server to join for starting their first horde char or whatever. Also for raiding minded folks, we know which servers have the most level 70s on at the same time (easiest to get raids put together).

Fair enough, I guess the spirit of Dual-Boxing as mentioned above though is more meant as the multi-tasking playing experience though

Before I had this fully automated, I had 2 shifts of 4 guys each working 4 pcs all day logging in and making chars and starting the census script They had to multitask like crazy to keep all those bots running... heh