5-box leveling, balancing efficiency and "safety" ?

[Jabberie]

Ok so,
If I'm 5-boxing Classic from 1-60, I will undoubtedly be reported multiple times because:
A - Most non-boxers can't tell the difference between boxing and botting, and
B - Most players are already under the impression that boxing is against the ToS




But if I am using nothing but ISboxer and the ISboxer addon.....can I assume that GM's will be able to see this and not ban me erroneously??

No, you cannot because it's not only what you're using but what you're doing that gets you in trouble.


If you look or act like a bot or someone up to no good then you'll get in trouble.
If all you're doing it playing the game properly, you'll be fine.


Like JohnGabriel, I have been playing and multiboxing WoW for a long time, June 2007. The longest I've ever not played the game was 2 weeks once. I went to Blizcon and had a vacation. Other than that, I play 3-7 nights a week for 2-5 hrs. I have never been suspended from the game.

If you used to cheat on other games, have trainers etc, (before you plan to play wow), may i suggest that you reformat your harddrive and reinstall the OS before you start boxing (warden, the "anti cheat software" gets installed when you install wow, it could detect your "old sins" hehe), if you happen to have some running accidently etc). Also try be vary of the content on any other harddrives connected to this pc. If it has a bunch of old "trainers" etc, remove those aswell.

Warden only cares about Blizzard based games and cheats that interact with those games.

Also, stay away from using "vpn", seems they dont like those and you can get flagged for a ban (though these seems to be easily "overriden" and you can get your accounts back). But probably safest to not have one when you play wow.

VPNs get you banned because they also are used by people that go cheat/bot/hack. Unless you're paying for your VPN, the likelyhood it's terrible is high.

Be super critical of everything you install after this, like "software for keyboards" etc, as they can contain automation features, worst case scenario.

smh...

You can get some nasty whispers, but dont reply, just ignore them. They usually dont believe anything you will say anyway (and 99% will report you), so its a waste of time and effort.

You're a dick if you don't reply and make multiboxers look bad. If you're a dick when you do reply, you make multiboxers look bad. If they are a dick to you, report them as if you were playing solo. Don't be the dick and report them on all your accounts, you make multiboxers look bad.

Though if they complain that you are tagging all the mobs in the area, and they cant complete their quest, let them get what they need, so they can be on their way (if not, gamemasters dont like it when/if you distrupt other players gameplay, could be a bannable offence if it goes too far for a longer periode of time).

Don't be a dick and stop players playing, simple enough logic.

Moral is: if you have to cheat in other games, do it on a different computer. And make sure it has never ever had any battlenet / wow installed on it before.

Don't be a cheating f..k, full stop.

[UFTA]

Thanks guys, that's helpful. I'm legit not trying to bot or automate anything. I won't even be doing any semi-afk wireless keyboard while I watch netflix type stuff. I'll be sitting at the monitor playing the game 100% of the time, so I'll take the word of the vets that I should be fine.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Grinding/instance grinding used to be a thing, but Blizzard has steadily made that less and less useful over time. As of now, there really isn't much point in it unless you like grinding more than you like questing.

Thanks guys, that's helpful. I'm legit not trying to bot or automate anything. I won't even be doing any semi-afk wireless keyboard while I watch netflix type stuff. I'll be sitting at the monitor playing the game 100% of the time, so I'll take the word of the vets that I should be fine.

Just to add another data point, I too have been playing/multiboxing WoW off and on since beta and I cheat my ass off in single-player games and have been since well before WoW was invented. The worst I've ever gotten from a GM was "Hey, you boxing?" "Yep." "Cool. Happy hunting!" It's seriously as easy as actually playing the game (quests, dungeons, raids, PVP, gathering, etc.) and not abusing mechanics that were very obviously not intended.

Side note: if it sounds like someone is giving you advice on how to make sure there is no evidence of cheating so you can behave badly and probably not get banned, you would do well to consider that a poor source of advice.

Best of luck in your adventures.

[Tin]

If you used to cheat on other games, have trainers etc, (before you plan to play wow), may i suggest that you reformat your harddrive and reinstall the OS before you start boxing (warden, the "anti cheat software" gets installed when you install wow, it could detect your "old sins" hehe), if you happen to have some running accidently etc). Also try be vary of the content on any other harddrives connected to this pc. If it has a bunch of old "trainers" etc, remove those aswell.

To a certain level, I would like to endorse the opinion - as most of this is comming from non trustworthy pages online and you never know what is comming with thouse programs and if they keep something running in computer memory. (my paranoia)

- I have a autoclicker that I use for minecraft fishing farm on a privat server - but would never dare to have it runnig when playing wow - nerver got a warning to have it on my computer. Warden will only tjek what interacting with wow.

- If you get nasty whispers, and you will - just reply with "nice day to you too" - be the nice guy.

[Apatheist]

From reading many many leveling guides, it appears to be generally accepted that the fastest way to level is some combination of questing+grinding.

Keep in mind that most (all) leveling guides are written by people playing a single character. Many of the quests those guides suggest can take you hours to complete while boxing. Collection quests are a nightmare for us in classic. The quest items have low drop rates, you need a lot of them and you can only loot on one character at a time.

I prefer to use dungeons to level. I run around and collect all the quests then grind a dungeon until I have all of the gear I want and I'm an appropriate level for the next dungeon I want to do. Then I go turn in all of those quests and collect the next lot. Faster than questing in my experience and it allows me to stay geared so that by the time I hit 60 I'm in full blues and ready to start farming tribute runs and other 55+ dungeons.

As a point of reference, an average level 20 quest rewards around 1200XP. An average level 20 elite in a party of 5 rewards around 81XP.
XP = (Char Level * 5) + 45 (elite) * 2 = 290
PartyXP = 290 / 5 * (party modifier) * 1.4 = 81.2 rounded down to 81.

To achieve the same amount of XP as the average quest takes 15 kills in an equal level dungeon. A conservative 90 seconds per pack of 3 equates to 7.5 minutes of dungeon grinding to equal one quest. There's no way you can consistently complete a quest every 7.5 minutes. There's also no travel time in dungeons and the return only gets better as you level up and gain better mana efficiency, gear and AE skills so can start pulling more packs at once.

What might be helpful to the community is for somebody to put together a multiboxing specific quest guide that focuses on kill quests and single item collection quests with high respawn rates or that are group-lootable.

As for being banned, I boxed 5 from classic all the way to the start of MoP and was never banned on any of my accounts despite being reported many hundreds of times no doubt.

[Tin]

Joana is preparing to get back on a new speed running 1-60 in WoW (world record), and starting to make a new leveling guide, maybe some of this you can use

https://www.joanasworld.com/

[Ughmahedhurtz]

There's no way you can consistently complete a quest every 7.5 minutes.

Is it different leveling 1-100 versus 100-120? I'm pretty sure I turn in 2-4 quests every 10 minutes at least while leveling my recent 100+ teams in BoA.

[edit] Derp. Got my threads crossed. Unless they change classic quests notably, then yeah, I tend to agree with Apatheist.

[MiRai]

Is it different leveling 1-100 versus 100-120? I'm pretty sure I turn in 2-4 quests every 10 minutes at least while leveling my recent 100+ teams in BoA.

The OP was interested in leveling in Classic, which Apatheist was referring to.

[JohnGabriel]

The OP was actually talking about classic. Questing took hours, dungeons took hours, everything took hours. The casual player is going to take 2 to 3 months to hit level cap, about 6 to 10 days /played time. Thinking back to the demo, 7.5 minutes per quest sounds tough to keep up.

[Apatheist]

Joana is preparing to get back on a new speed running 1-60 in WoW (world record), and starting to make a new leveling guide, maybe some of this you can use

https://www.joanasworld.com/

Problem with all of these guides is that they're designed for single players. Just looking at the first page (1-12 Horde) I see 4 collection quests in the 1-6 section alone. That will take you at least an hour to complete on 5 characters even without competition from other players. You can grind to level 6 in 20 minutes and you'll earn more silver to train with while grinding.

That being said, my comments are all based on how actual classic servers played. Since they're already making changes it's possible they will increase respawn times/drop rates on quest items to be more like modern WoW or maybe even make quest items group-lootable. Though I watched MiRai's demo videos and that wasn't the case while he was doing the Red Leather Bandanas quest in Westfall. It took him a fair while to complete.