G'afternoon Haagnus,

the reason people use follow is due to the inability to properly set the facing ... or heading... of each character. you could pass the movement keys, but if the heading was off by just a little, your characters would soon get off course. also, in combat, there are many things that could change your facing direction. suffice it to say, /follow is about the only solution you have.

as for the number of toons to play at once... well, i'd say there is a limit due to the game dynamics. 5 is a typical max for a group... you could, and people have, run 10 characters at once. of course, you would need the accounts (you could use test accounts to try it)... as well as the hardware to support all the wow clients.

in shadowbane, my normal configuration was 10 characters across 3 machines (i max'd out at 24 .. which included a couple from a friends machine across the net.. but it was just unwieldy.. wow might be better as it's follow model would be more conducive to our needs... )