I haven't 5-boxed WoW for a couple years now, and used to be a frequent regular on these forums. I quit 5-boxing because mechanics of the content I wanted to easily run was made more difficult by movement & positional fights.
However, after playing the D3 beta for awhile, I have a feeling that it will be relatively easy to multibox as long as you set it up properly. This means mouse broadcasting and using classes that are ranged. Ranged attacks from the wizard, witch doctor, and demon hunter play pretty well to fire-and-forget style of play that this system will favor.
For mouse broadcasting on one machine, you're going to want 4 equal sized windows. a 2560x1600 screen will make 4x 1280x800 windows - decent sizes. Two 24" screens (what I used to 5-box WoW) will make 4x 1200x860 windows if the screens are rotated vertically. This may be ideal.
Diablo 3 does not have /follow, but there is no player collision either, and the camera angle/view is always static. Basically, you'll want all 4 of your characters stacked at all times, and you'll mouse broadcast at a pixel relative to the top left of the window instead of using /target macros. This is not ideal, but it is possible. The problem really really relies in keeping your characters stacked, which may be difficult if there are a large amount of mobs that cause a knockback effect on an attack.
The goal of 4-boxing D3 is simply for farming. 4x MF wizards being able to cast indirect AoE at locations instead of on targets will do some major damage. 4x MF witch doctors will likely be very easy to play with their summoned creatures. 4x MF multishot demon hunters.. again - indirect AoE.
While the monk and barbarian CAN be multiboxed, it won't be ideal. Since they're melee, they're going to be subject to more knockback effects that will de-sync the stacked group of characters, which means your mouse broadcasting targeting areas won't be the same. It'll be more work to make them get back to the same spot. I'm not saying it can't be done - just that it's not ideal.
As for creating a multiboxing group for farming, it may be better to use 4 different b.net accounts than 4x copies of D3 on one account. Why? The shared stash. It hasn't been confirmed or denied by Blizzard if the stash is shared among all the characters on a D3 account or all characters on a b.net account. I believe it's only the 10 characters on the D3 account, but I haven't found concrete evidence of this yet.
Even if multiboxing doesn't turn out to be worthwhile, there is so little relative investment in 4x copies of D3 compared to WoW subscriptions, I'm definitely putting down the $200-240 for 4x copies to see how well it works.
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Originally Posted by -silencer-
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