WCRadio - Octale & Hordak vs the World - Antiboxer email

[Bigfish]

At the end of the day I still will have absolutely no clue who either of them are or if they have acheived anything of substance in WoW (and doubt it since I had never heard of them before this blowup at any decent site like FoH, Ej, etc) and I could give two fucks what they think about multiboxing or multiboxers in regards to it being legal or not. What I do care about is them going on their show and proceeding to disparage and insinuate that all multiboxers are cheats, then come here and pretend to apologize while calling us fools.

I just listened to the last show. Summed up in few words, that took him 20 minuts to say, he admits he was wrong about multiboxers selling accounts, not being skilled, or being socially distanced, against the ToS, etc etc. He then blasts the community for being uppity. Hey, look at that. I'm not going to disagree with him there. We are uppity. We love our soapbox. I'd say we're about as uppity as he is. Big deal. Agree to disagree and move on.

If the guy wants to continue ranting about what fools we are, just imagine him as the D&D guy at the games store, ranting about how Magic the Gathering is a horrible game, or Warhammer is lame, how this FPS is better than that FPS and everyone who plays that FPS is a noob, whatever. We came, we saw, we had our conflict, its over.

[Knytestorme]

I give credit where credit is due, and none where none is due.

Knyte might think he's better then everyone else tho ^^

oh and PS Knyte: I think Vyn said the first email had bounced, so I don't think it's a case of him making stuff up

Nope, I readily admit there are people out there better than me, and named them...I certainly am not a good multiboxer yet and wouldn't claim to be but I would say that I, and anyone else on this forum that do it seriously, are better players and take the game more seriously than 99% of the other WoW players out there and better than 100% of the muppets that qq on the forums

As for the emails, my understanding from Vyndree's comments were that she sent to both emails and one of them bounced. If she corrects me then I'll quite readily take back that comment.

[Ðeceased]

hehe was ofc only joking I know what you meant ^^

[Octale]

Here we go...one last shot at trying to sort of "put this to bed" in a manner of speaking. For those who don't want to listen to the show, here's the paraphrased version of the segment after listening to it ~6 or so times this morning.

First, Vyn sent us an email and it got lost somehow. I have no reason to lie about this, nor do I have reason to address the mboxing topic other than a long standing show standard to address feedback from people who believe we've "done them wrong". Vyn's email was very much that, and it was only through my own vanity in googling myself that I stumbled across it. At that point, I decided to make Vyn's email the "first blood" topic for the 4/27/08 episode of OnHVW.

Second, stating that mboxing was some sort of social or skill related issue was arrogant and ignorant on my part. I freely admit that. I can understand wanting to add a level of difficulty to the game. I derive that difficulty from attempting to complete group content. Some amount of the mboxing commmunity derives that difficulty from playing multiple chars at the same time. Whatever one wants to do to add replayability is a-okay by me.

Third, there's nothing in the EULA, ToS or Code of Conduct that makes multi-boxing "illegial" or against any rule. In that respect (and it's the only one that matters to me), the mboxing community is no different than any other member of the WoW Playerbase. Assuming mboxers don't violate any other rules in the course of their playing (such as the nebulous "Conduct unbecomming a WoW Player"), then they're entitled to the same protections any other member of the WoW Playerbase is. Further, noone should harrass nor chastize an mboxer simply for being an mboxer.

Fourth, I cannot provide validation for your choice to maintain more than one WoW account. Even if I could validate that choice, I wouldn't. I feel the same way about anyone who maintains more than one account. That said, I am not value judging the individual who makes that choice, nor am I saying that I haven't made 6.02*10^23 galacticly stupid choices myself. It's not about what I think about your choice that matters. What matters is, it is your choice. You've made that choice; I'll defend your right to make it with my dieing breath, but I won't give the choice validity...only you can do that.

Fifth, the mboxing communtiy ought to be left to their own devices. Their playstyle is as valid as anyone's.

So that's it. As to who we are....we're nobody. 2 guys who decided in spring '06 to start doing a podcast. We've been gamers all our lives, and have alot to say about gaming (including WoW). Neither one of us participates (to my knowledge) at EJ or any other website of note other than WoW Radio. Some folks have said we're the best show on the net; others have called us a steaming pile of poo. Listen, don't listen, that's another one of those choices only you can make and only you can validate. As to who's the better player...if it really matters that much, you win. I cannot deny the proficiency at which the macros y'all use are coded. I've never had the need for them, so I don't use them (other than silly ones, like yelling "Ha-do-ken" when I cast a fireball). However, credit where it is due, to be able to code a set of macros to do solo, 5-man, 10-man content is a feat indeed (that question was never asked of me, by the way).

I know "tl,dr;pihb", but I guess this is some attempt at full disclosure or something. I do think it's a little disingenuous to say I am two-faced, a liar, or a hypocrite, but I think I'll survive. Bigfish, Eteocles, and Deceased....thank you. You've been more than reasonable during this episode, and I appreciate that a great deal. ./salute

[Basilikos]

I do think it's a little disingenuous to say I am two-faced, a liar, or a hypocrite, but I think I'll survive.

Glad to hear it. As a very friendly reminder, you did post something that was at best perplexing regarding your intentions and the like. If this means your purposes here were simply good-natured, I'll take your word for it and retract any allegations of nefarious deeds regardless of your personal opinions (since they were never the issue here).

[Eteocles]

/me flips on the Sunshine and Farts switch "GROUP HUG!" lolz

[Basilikos]

You know, I think everyone just needs to stop getting their panties in a knot over this.

True, but I think people are missing what I was upset about. Octale, whether or not he intended too, posted a back-handed insult. His show was almost the exact same format (only with far more detail) as his first post here and in light of that, I was worried. As we've progressed discussion here, I'm come to realize his actual intent and will drop the accusations.

On a lighter note, I think what we learned from this is that although Vyndree's email was quite nice, we might do a better job of regulating our responses to these incidents (in reference to the first Octale & Hordak show mentioned here) since most of our reaction was more or less blowing off steam at the frequency of misunderstandings about MBing. All in all, Octale's statements about why we do what we do are pretty common. We were really just worried about the audience and wanted him to stop. Dedicating an entire segment to the corrections was, in hindsight, generous.

[Bigfish]

I think the big issue behind all this is that we DO put a lot of... thought power, I guess.... in to getting this sort of thing to work. Even more so, I think we like sharing what we've discovered about the game itself through boxing. As such, its no wonder we're all defensive on the matter. Its especially annoying when we have do deal with people who talk about things and get stuff WRONG. For that, someone ought to be giving Octale a damn hooker and a handshake for taking the time to at least read up and respond, amit he was wrong on some things, (even if he thinks we're all fools) and take some time (A large chunk, actually) out of the show to say "They just play WoW, like everyone else."

That said, you learn a lot from boxing. You learn a lot from playing solo too. I would conjecture that you can't determine whether one is better or a more valid playstyle than the other. Yeah, the WoW forums are filled with moronic idiots rambling about how they lost in PvP. While they're fun to poke at, don't give them too much credit. Some people you can throw every fact and reality of multiboxing at them, and they won't admit they were wrong. I would say we're quite fortunate in that we got someone reasonable enough to have an intelligent discussion with.

I do have to wonder though if Octale's opinion would change if we didn't pay extra for our accounts, and more so if we could dig up the number of people who keep multiple accounts but don't box. I know a lot of people keep a second one around for one reason or another, I'mjust not sure on the actual number.

[Vyndree]

Alrighty, I've actually gotten a chance to listen to the radio show (sorry about the lateness, I've been trying my best to catch up hehe).

We, in fact, are mouth breathing retards sometimes. We have nobody else to blame for mistakes by ourselves. Let me tell you, having Suvega "accidentally" pom+pyro one of the shackles on Moroes and wipe us at 5% on our first Karazhan.... Yeah....

I appreciate the clarity on your show about rules, harassment, and multiboxing. While I didn't expect to drastically change your opinion on multiboxing through my e-mail, I appreciate the added clarity made between opinion, fact, the rules, and anti-multiboxer harassment. In fact, you were quite right in that the majority of us just care to be left to our own multiboxing fun times. Which is all fun and good as long as we're not breaking the rules (which multiboxing in and of itself does not).

The reason that I sent my original e-mail was so that you could be more informed when multiboxing topics come up on your show, since a large amount of harassment we get is based on misinformation -- "you must be botting", "you must be account selling", "you must be hacking", "you must be bribing blizzard with shiny things", "you must be living in your mother's basement", "you must be a social misfit", and on and on and on. We've gotten every form of harassment known to man, and clarity from public figures goes a long way towards disambiguating between rumor and fact.

In any case, I appreciate you taking the time to go through my e-mail publicly. As you can see, many of the community have invested quite a bit of time, money, and effort into this hobby, and, like all hobbyists, we are very passionate about what we do and protecting our right to continue enjoying our hobby without being inhibited by the general public (they're sheep! sheep I tell you!). I'd imagine it would be much like you would be passionate about someone who publicly bashed on internet radiocasting. In the end, we're all just WoW players -- and all the multiboxing community is trying to do is minimize the number of foul-mouthed 13 year olds running around ruining their fun.

Congrats on venturing into the viper's nest to try and clarify things Stay light on your toes, I (among other multiboxers) have been rumored to bite when provoked. While you're welcome to your opinions (as is everyone) it's sometimes a wiser choice to choose your words carefully when running around in hostile territory.

[Basilikos]

... Whatever one wants to do to add replayability is a-okay by me. ... but I won't give the choice validity ...
... Further, noone should harrass nor chastize an mboxer simply for being an mboxer. ... Even if I could validate that choice, I wouldn't. ...

Particularly, the part about not acknowledging our reasons for MBing even if you were presented with rationale for such. Again, I'm not trying to pigeonhole Octale into some sort of anti-MBer stance, but one must admit that my cause for concern, which has been laid out, is at least somewhat grounded in reality. CONCERN, I say. And given my commitment to now trying to understand what is going on here, I would hope that no one blows that out of proportion.

Like I said, this is nothing more than my trying to understand at this point.

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On a related note, I understand that it is not pleasant to be labeled as 'two-faced,' 'hypocritical,' or any other such name. I'm trying to go off of a foundation that Octale did not intend any of his communications to be this way and comprehend his meaning from that point onward. I would hope that the community here at DB.com can see why I was worried in the first place, since some people weren't totally on the same page I was (at least in my perception).