You're not even close to first even in EQ. And I doubt you were alone on Sullon.
You realize EQ went live in early 1999 right? And there were multiboxers on day 1. I can say this because I and my brother boxed and we were far from the only ones. Back then people who boxed were mostly tech geeks and it wasn't an "identity" we had to shout or publicize, just another tool we used in the game. Most boxers didn't log on and immediately start spamming with their characters like asshats with no friends/lives. Sullon ruleset came very late to EQ... but there were definitely boxers on RZ, where I had characters. What in the world makes you think you were alone on SZ in 2001? because no one answered your spam in /general chat?
2001 is super late in EQ's development... by 2001 the player base of EQ had turned over at least twice from when EQ launched... most guilds had cleared TOV and many of the good players had already been poached for DAOC beta (and yes people were boxing during DAOC beta).
Boxing goes back a million years because MUDs were largely played in the 80s and 90s on UNIX machines in colleges and research labs where additional boxes were basically free. Smart guys quickly found out that the path of least resistance in a social game is to basically add another character for free. No offense to this board but as long as MMOs have existed a subculture of boxers has existed as well. The only difference is that in the past guys who boxed were very experienced guys who had "maxed out" their game. For example, in EQ most boxers were guild leaders who needed an extra healer for their raids... the MT from the guild that had all their gear from Nafagen and wanted to twink out an alt etc... in WOW a lot of people seem to start the game as boxers... largely inspired by videos and screenshots... they might have not have even seen the inside of SSC let alone BT but they're already boxing. This is undoubtably due to how macro-friendly wow is (boxing in other games definitely was harder than playing 1 char, which is reverse to wow) and how much cheaper the hardware is versus in 1999 or 2001
There are other factors in EQ (from which all modern MMOs are descended) which farther encouraged boxing... such as the predominance of gear/ease of twinking... and the lack of a true 3d combat engine which allowed you to play multiple characters without moving any of them once they were positioned... but those are secondary factors. Bottom line: you are on crack if you think you were somehow the first multi boxer in EQ lol
Connect With Us