So I returned to multiboxing about 3 months ago after a 2+ year hiatus, and so far it has been going really well. As I’m sitting here on a 12-hour flight back to the states, I figured I would write out some thoughts/observations/goals regarding my return to WoW and multiboxing. Bear with me if this is information that has been posted before or if I seem to ramble on.

First a little background. I’ve been playing since Vanilla, but did not start boxing until right after the release of Lich King. Absolutely loved it right from the start, and wondered why I didn’t start it sooner! For the most part, I’ve been mostly a PvE guy. Running instances and old raids was always my favorite way to spend a day. Back in Lich King, especially after they introduced the Dungeon Finder, I could sit and grind out random dungeons for hours collecting loot, grinding honor points along the way. Now most of us came to realize that the Lich King-era heroic dungeons were probably too easy, however the drastic change to Cataclysm-era dungeons was a HUGE turn-off for me. As a primarily PvE guy, it was quite a system shock from going to plowing through Lich King heroics to not even being able to finish some of the non-heroic Cataclysm dungeons. This was one of the reasons that I eventually quit the game. However I stuck it out through a couple content patches and was eventually able to clear 3-4 Cataclysm Heroics, but after realizing that “outgearing” Heroics was still not going to allow me to finish them all and play the way I did in the Lich King days, I decided to hang it up, quitting soon after the Firelands patch, and never looking back until 5.3. All that being said, I know most people are pretty down on Cataclysm as a whole, HOWEVER, I will credit that expansion with making me a MUCH better player and Multiboxer overall. Before Cataclysm, I never did crowd control, spell interrupts, etc. Hell, I didn’t even use healing click bars or anything like that because I never had to worry about the rest of my team taking damage at all. The difficulty curve of Cataclysm forced me to use every utility I could in order to just survive and kill Heroic bosses. So I credit them for making me, and probably most people, better players overall.

As I sit here today, I cant even think of why I suddenly got the urge to play again. My wife did not quit playing when I did. She stuck it out and I watched her play through some MoP content, and it still wasn’t enough to entice me back. I think I was in such an anti-WoW, anti-MMO phase at that point that I just really wanted none of it. Plus, our kids have gotten older and need a lot more hands-on time, and I didn’t realize until I quit how much time I actually put into it every day (a bad habit that I am getting back into that I am actively try to curb again). Something though, just gave me the desire to get back into it. I think it was because my other hobbies were starting to dry up and lose my interest.

The first thing I noticed upon my return was that the multiboxing community here has shrunk significantly since the days of old. I assumed it was a reflection of the shrinking WoW community overall. I am still happy to see a couple of old faces still posting on here and some new ones as well. Hopefully I can start making more posts and being a more active member in the community.

I was able to jump right into the fray with my Cataclysm team (which to this day is still my ‘main’ team) which consists of a Blood Death Knight, Holy Paladin, Arcane Mage, 2x Elemental Shaman. I came to these boards and took the macros from the main macro page and use the priority-based macros. It seems to work pretty well and seems like such an improvement over the days of the two-step macros. My only worry is that Blizzard will eventually nerf these types of macros, but with the dwindling numbers, they may be hesitant to do anything to potentially drive more players away.

One thing about the macros that I’m noticing is that the Elemental Shamen don’t seem to be getting anywhere close to their potential max DPS. Right now my Mage and Shamen item levels are around 525. The Mage is pulling roughly 110K DPS on average where the Elementals only pull around 60-70K DPS on average. So I’m not quite sure how I can maximize their DPS at this point. The Holy Paladin is still a fine single-target healer. I had hoped they had improved the AoE healing ability of Paladins but that does not appear to be the case. For that, I have Healing stream totems and chain heal macros, as well as click bars that change the target of Beacon of Light.

In addition to my main team, I have also leveled two other teams to 90 as well, and am currently working on a 4th team who are in their low 80s, and a 5th that are in their 60s. My goal before the end of the calendar year is to have them both to 90!

As far as dungeons go, there still seems to be a degree of difficulty, especially for the multiboxer, but are much more forgiving than the Cataclysm dungeons, and seem to be able to be outgeared as my guys are all now in Timeless Isle gear and are taking down Heroics fairly easily (the few that I have tried, more on that later). Overall I have not been doing much in the way of dungeons because not long after I came back, Timeless Isle was released, and oh man! As a multiboxer, Timeless Isle is a PERFECT place to gear up! It is fun, there are tons of mining nodes and monsters to skin, gear to loot, rares to kill, and overall fun to be had! The best part is going out there with a fresh team of 90s and opening all the chests throughout the island and immediately gear up to 496+ gear! Absolutely love it! I’ve spent so much time in Timeless with all 3 teams that I had to make FOUR bank alts just to hold all of the extra Timeless gear that has been dropping! I’m also to the point where I’m pretty much done with everything with my Team A because Burdens of Eternity don’t even give them any more gear upgrades. However I do still do the daily and weekly quests with them and my other teams as well.

Another thing that is keeping me away from 5-man content is Scenarios! Heroic Scenarios have been surprisingly fun and I can clear all of them, some easier than others. I do several random scenarios a day, mostly for the valor points, but sometimes the cache drops can be upgrades as well.

Speaking of Valor points, I now have a system of getting valor-capped with my main team within the first day or two of the cap reset, so that each other team gets the 50% valor bonus for all Timeless Daily/Weekly quests as well as their own Heroic Scenarios! I’ll finish the quest to get 50 Epoch stones on day 1 and then run several random Heroic Scenarios until I am capped, THEN I will do the Timeless quests with the other teams. It has been a great way to maximize valor points for everyone.

Anyone who might remember me from posting on these forums years ago, may recall that I am quite the mount enthusiast. In fact, my primary goal in all of WoW is to collect as many mounts as I can. When I returned and saw that mounts were b.net account bound, I was ecstatic, but also mad because I did all the old rep grinds, rare mount farming, etc with ALL 5 CHARACTERS back in the day. I was the first multiboxer to get the 100 Mount Achievement on all 5 toons in his team BEFORE Cataclysm came out. Upon my return a few months ago, I saw that I roughly 130 mounts, so my immediate goal was to get to 200 mounts and get the new achievement, which I have since done (I’ll post pictures soon). However I am not stopping there! I want to have 250 mounts by the time they introduce the NEXT achievements, whenever that may be, probably with WoD. I’m currently sitting at 203 but there are still a ton of mounts that I don’t have, especially some of the more rare ones like Invincible!

Which brings me to my last immediate goal. It is now my primary focus to kill the Lich King in 25-man heroic mode. I know he can be solo-d now, but my attempts to this point have not ended well. I even tried it with my team and about 4 family members helping as well, and we failed miserably. The biggest problem is the Valkyries. They have such a high amount of HP that we cant burn them down fast enough to save the folks that are getting taken off 2-at-a-time. So with that, my focus is to try to solo it with my Blood DK. Blood DKs are BY FAR my favorite tanking class! I have a Prot Paladin, Warrior and Druid tanks, but none of them hold up to DKs in my opinion. My DK is now item level 531, and I’m considering trying out the Raid Finder with him to get him even more gear and prepare for a solo run at Lich King 25H! I will let you guys know how it goes if I can ever kill him.

Lastly, I am disappointed in my ability to make gold. I will find something that seems to be a good money-maker, but then the market quickly dies soon after. Initially, I was running Naxx with each team, getting decent gold drops from bosses, but selling the Frostweave Cloth and Infinite Dust from green items for a pretty decent chunk of change. Not long after I started doing that, the market tanked on both items. Then, I started farming battle pets in old raids, and that was also short-lived. Initially I could sell pets for 1K-5K each, but again, that quickly died out when everyone and their brother started doing the same thing, and now everyone undercuts everyone else and I cant seem to sell anything anymore. So my question for you guys is, is there a decent way to farm gold that is NOT dependent on Auction House supply/demand?

Thanks for listening. As I stated before, I plan on being a much more active member in the MB community again, and I’m looking forward to helping each other out during the initial months of WoD! Soon I am hoping to try to make some of my own in-game videos as well. Here’s hoping! Cheers!