Other Multiboxable games discussion for those leaving WoW

[Lyonheart]

I have not boxed ffxiv since before the first expansion. It was fun for some open world stuff.. but difficult in dungons.

[akourbat]

I have not boxed ffxiv since before the first expansion. It was fun for some open world stuff.. but difficult in dungons.

Yeah, I would use caution before investing too much in boxing FFXIV, as dungeons got progressively more difficult to box with each expansion due to mechanics on boss fights (there is good thread here with videos/walkthroughs if you wanna have a look what it looks like in dungeons https://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=41111#p41111). Besides, the game now has a "Trust" dungeon system where you can complete most of latest expansion's dungeons with a party of game's main character NPCs and some beginner dungeons too (up to lvl 60) with a squad system (also NPCs).

[RedSorc]

A thought that didn't initially occur to me about FFXIV: There are several moments, particularly as you get into the expansions, where there are some 8-man trials that are compulsory in the story, roughly four of them each expansion.

These are going to be incredibly awkward moments. Whilst they aren't hard content casually, if you are queuing a 4-box into them and you're going in blind, there's likely to be mechanical challenges that, to put it mildly, could cause friction with the poor group you end up chucked in.

As a mitigation to this, it is possible to enter these as an "undersized party". When you do this, the game doesn't sync you to the encounter's level. Levelling in FFXIV is not a problem: there is MORE than enough xp to go around, so you will absolutely be able to clear 8-man trials with a 4-box if you go into them with gear that's about 10 character levels ahead of the trial. This provides a viable route for clearing these trials for everything but the most recent expansion, where you might be forced to do each of the four trials four times, once with each character, if you want to avoid potential embarrassment.

There's also a chain of 3 24-man raids that's now compulsory, but they're insanely easy zerg fests nowadays, I'm not sure I'd even notice if someone else was multi-boxing during them.

...Come to think of it, clearing the extreme trials and savage raids from the previous expansion with a 4-box might actually be a really interesting challenge.

[Andreauk]

I thought FF14 was the same as WoW is now - no software can be used to box? They don't even allow addons.

I'd ask support before you drop any money on it.

[RedSorc]

I thought FF14 was the same as WoW is now - no software can be used to box? They don't even allow addons.

I'd ask support before you drop any money on it.

Explicitly? No. Here is the list of behaviours that are banned in FFXIV. There is no specific reference to multiboxing, or using multiple clients (other than a prohibition against using multiple accounts for rank manipulation).

If Square Enix didn't like what they see and wanted to? Yes. There is a prohibition against "Creating, distributing, using, or promoting utilities that interact with the game". It's worth mentioning, however, that there has been similar language in the Blizzard EULA for WoW since forever, all the time we have been playing it, so the existence of such a clause is not necessarily a de facto ban on multi-boxing using ISBoxer or whatever.

It's also worth mentioning that this clause is often invoked in the FFXIV community when discussing ACT and other combat log parsers. ACT is used by a pretty significant portion of the community, and the only time I can remember that anyone has ever been actioned for using it was when a bunch of Japanese world-first raiders used ACT data to bully and harass other players. (This incident is literally what brought about the game's current anti-harassment policy).

Under this precedent, particularly as multi-boxing is just not a thing you ever really see in FFXIV, I would assume the principle of "if you aren't being a jerk to anyone or impeding anybody's play, we'll keep taking your money" will hold.

As Andreauk says, though, you may want to exercise caution pushing your money onto the table.

[nodoze]

RedSorc motivated me...

I boxed SWTOR for years and really liked it but quit about a year after all my friends stopped playing (maybe was when ArcheAge launched but my memory is vague). In SWTOR you can 4 box but I actually recommend 2 boxing with a ranged tank (Trooper?) and ranged healer (gunslinger?) and 2 Mercenaries for DPS. It has a fun story to go though with lots of video and story content that changes based on your class and choices (light/neutral/dark and love interests) and is frankly worth it from the story alone. This probably would be the one I would mutlibox if I hadn't already.

I played DDO at least weekly for many many years with a static group until my old D&D friends started getting tired of it (we did for over 5 years). It has an infinite progression system with past-lives and huge option of races/classes and Epic Destinies and tons of great content dungeons (many you can solo with the right classes/builds) and is worth doing for that alone. You can have a few alts that you leave at the entrance or use in king of the hill type fights but otherwise it isn't really multiboxable. That being said I really enjoyed it and if you join a fun guild you could have years of fun.

Legacy ArcheAge (AA) does not outlaw multiboxing as far as I know but multiple AA clients never worked very well under ISboxer. I typically ran between 20-30 AA accounts (2-4 Patron with the rest Free to Play) and for many years had the best weapon on the servers (I crafted one of the first Mythic Obsidian hybrid weapons in AA). While ISboxer didn't work well for multiboxing AA I did however play my main Archeage client "solo" under ISboxer for many years until that broke so now I just use Logitech G buttons on my keyboard/mouse. I have dropped down to just 2 Patrons to hold my primary land and still do dailies and events and sometime world boss fights (my gear is still competitive) and it is OK sometimes but not that much fun to me anymore. Most of my friends quit AA or went to ArcheAge Unchained so I have to help former enemies or asshats if I want to PVP so I am not really enthusiastic or active these days. I don't recommend boxing it nor really playing it as it is a lot to catch up on gearwise unless you P2W which I don't recommend...

Archeage Unchained (AU) also does not outlaw multiboxing as far as I know but you are officially limited to 3 accounts (and I have 3 but many people I know have many more with no issues). Since AA didn't ever multibox well under ISboxer and then even 1 AA client stopped working in ISboxer I never tried AU in ISboxer. Some of my friends are still active there and like it but I just couldn't get my motivated enough to start over in AU so stopped playing... I don't recommend boxing it but it is fun to play 1 client for awhile and AU seems easier to catch up to end game than AA so joining a good guild and playing a single client (with some extra clients to help make gold) could be worth it.

NeverWinter: I don't recommend boxing it though maybe I would play it if I found a good consistent group (my friends quit after a year or so). I found it too P2W and boxing too tedious.

I did EQ way back and really liked it but never really got back into EQ2...

I tried GW2 and wanted to like it but my time was split with multiple games and Classic was announced and I just couldn't dedicate time to it...

Never tried FF14 nor ESO nor Rift... Did tons of research and they were just inferior options based on my goals and what info I could find... When doing my research before Classic was announced GW2 was theoretically better than FF14/ESO/Rift for my goals (no P2W, no forever gear treadmill just to play, best community, Trinity-classes instead of all self-sufficient-DPS).

Those are the ones that come to mind... There are multiple worth playing solo with some alts as part of a fun and active guild but few that I would truly multi-box to try to do things like clearing dungeons and what not.

[akourbat]

I am 3-boxing Lotro now (used to do 6-box a while ago but then took a long break), since many dungeons in Lotro had been reworked to have an option to do them in small fellowship (3x) in addition to regular 6x mode. The game does not have a macro system, and its combat abilities key-press system is very clunky, as 1 key-press will start (queue) an ability, but second key-press will cancel it if you hit it while it is still queued and not committed. That said, there is an awesome plugin called "Sequence Bars" ("SB") https://www.lotrointerface.com/downl...uenceBars.html, that takes away most of the multiboxer's pains on slave characters. The game is allowing plugins to use fairly large API surface, so in building you rotations with SB you can use build-in constructs like "if then", or "if else" with checks for certain game events or states like debuffs, your or target hp, hunter focus, block response, whether the skill is off cooldown and many others, all from within the plugin UI from selectable drop-downs (or even use direct LUA scripts if you are so inclined). So you can craft fairly advanced rotations with nested "if elses". SB also alleviates the above mentioned deficiency of double clicking a skill and cancelling it. It requires mouse clicking one of the slots on the bar to advance it, which is not key-bindable, but with IsBoxer or AHK it is easy to do for slaves, but still awkward for my main character (which I prefer to play mostly normally anyway). SB has user events built-in, which are key-bindable - and can be used to control which bar is active. It also has a feature of snapping under the mouse when a configurable event(s) occur - like user event or change of target, start of combat etc. - so as I said it works really great for slaves, however many you have.

World content and story is what most play Lotro for, and there's tons of it. Many quests have "click x objects", but those objects are targetable and interact-able via keybind. Follow/Assist etc - all work well too. You can also configure in-game options like movement assist, where character with turn to face target if combat skill is pressed or run up to target if melee skill is being used and the distance is wrong, or skill forwarding which makes your toon to use his harmful skills on target's target (like your main's target), so those features are quite boxer-friendly. Lotro is pretty expensive though if you want to go past free content, each expansion is like $40, and some dlcs are not free either. You can earn some of the currency you can buy stuff with in-game while competing achievements (deeds), but still something to be aware of. On the positive side - once you own a piece of content, you have it for life, no need for sub or anything, so you can take a break at any time and then come back and resume where you left off, this works great for my play style. Like in battle-net, you can have one account with sub-accounts for all your characters.

My 2 cents.

[Apatheist]

LOTRO is pretty boxable and has a reasonably large community.

The main issue I have with investing in it is the amount of money it costs. It's supposedly "F2P" but everything is locked behind a pay wall. If you don't unlock the expansions the quest and dungeon content is extremely limited and to unlock everything will cost like $150 per account. If you want a full fellowship (party) that's a pretty significant investment.

[akourbat]

Yes, this is true. There was a summer give-away event in Lotro (covid related) where you could get most quest packs for free and some expansions for nearly free, but it is gone now. Still you can get away with slow progression and doing most if not all deeds in the zone before leaving it, which gives you almost enough LPs (currency) to unlock next zone and so on. Besides, deeds also give you virtue XP, which boost your virtue traits (read combat stats) - so it is something you'd need to do anyway if you want a well-rounded character. But yeah, the money grab is there, and a lot of players complain about it. My main is life-time VIP (cost me $99 at a time and was my best game investment lol), so that helps my team some, as VIP gets monthly free LP allocation that paid for all expansions on that sub-account. I still need to spend money on my other 2 sub-accounts when I want to go to new expansion zones etc. This is also one of the reasons I cut-down my fellowship from 6 to 3.

Most people would buy some content to allow progression to say lvl 60 or 70 - like Moria expac, and then spend LPs they accumulate from deeds on additional content when it is on sale.

[Yurd]

Hi,

Since the nerf to WOW multiboxing I have been multiboxing Everquest 1 on my own private server. I can do 54 boxes on a single computer. Not sure if self promotion is against the rules or not, I only casually follow the forums. I have posted many youtube videos for most of my stuff. This is my intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUbxvZjyAmo, and this a video on how to setup a server: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HsoVkokoI0. My channel is here: https://youtube.com/c/hammackj. I found this a lot more enjoyable than mutliboxing World of Warcraft. I hope this might help someone. If you have any questions please let me know.

-Yurd