Other Multiboxable games discussion for those leaving WoW

[RedSorc]

There was this awkward period of time where they decided to turn leveling dungeons into 3-man content, whilst keeping end-game dungeons as 5-man content. Mercifully, this has been reversed: you can now experience each of the dungeons as you level up. The levelling dungeons are a reasonably appropriate challenge, that will test your abilities (unless you outgear them).

End-game content is tough, as it involves a lot of twitch-y action-y dodging. There used to be compositions and builds that could get around some of this, but a lot of that has been nerfed in recent updates. The end-game has a decent stable of content available: there's still a constant trickle of a new dungeon or so every update, and there's a scaling system such that all content remains sort of valid forever, so you actually have quite a bit of content to clear at max-level. There is no infinite difficulty scaling though, so once you've cleared it, you've cleared it.

I've had a lot of fun in Neverwinter over the years, but it's worth mentioning a third time that there's no way I'll pick it up again unless someone figures out how to make follow a single key press again.

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Final Fantasy XIV - https://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/

*NOTE: Whilst it has a free trial, FFXIV is the only game on this list that uses a paid subscription model with no F2P aspect*

My Experience: Very limited experience multiboxing, but hundreds of hours sunk into playing the game casually.
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Easy. (You have macros and a follow command. Note that using macros for DPS rotations is incredibly suboptimal, so you'll want to try and find another way to do rotations)

FFXIV is a very fine MMO, with the most recent expansion having perhaps the best story/plot that I've experienced in recent memory of any game, nevermind MMOs. It's very WoW-esque, which makes it a reasonably easy game to box, and all of this sounds pretty good until I ask the question: "Yeah, but why would you actually box it?"

Here's the problem: FFXIV just does not do challenging small group "dungeon" content. In FFXIV, dungeons are 4-man and raids are 8-man. All dungeons are pieces of easy content that you do either as a part of the story, or once per day for a daily reward. They are intended to be done by four random guys thrown into a room together, many of whom may be playing on the PS4 and have limited ability to communicate with the rest of the party. They're easy, and there isn't really a "harder" version of them. Some dungeons have a "hard" mode, but this just means that they're scaled to a higher intended level/item level with completely new enemies and bosses, not that they are actually harder content. The challenging aspect of the game is confined to the raids. Whilst I haven't attempted it, I can tell you right now that clearing some of those with an expensive 8-box is going to be incredibly challenging because of the nature of the majority of the mechanics.

So, what is there to sink your teeth into? There's one or two features that might be interesting to do in a multibox. Palace of the Dead and Heaven-on-High are so-called "Deep Dungeons" with 200 and 80 levels respectively. Whilst the early levels are cake walks generally used for levelling alt classes, the deeper levels are genuinely challenging content for 4-man groups. Again, a problem here is that once they are done, they are done, and in spite of their layouts being randomized, I cannot see myself wanting to farm them for months on end as my only real piece of challenging 4-man content. Palace of the Dead is now 100% playable all the way through on the free trial, so that might be worth your time to have a go at if you're interested in sinking a month into the game and then dropping it.

So, yeah: my advice here is that it's a fantastic game that will make a poor multi-box game.

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Lord of the Rings Online - https://www.lotro.com/en?

My Experience: A couple of dozen hours
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Medium. (Some reading and a few hours will be necessary to get basic functionality set up; but everything will work reasonably smoothly once set up)

This is probably the game on this list I've spent the least amount of time with that I might have the most potential fun to eke out of it. One thing that should be mentioned that is difficult to overlook is that the F2P model is incredibly unfriendly to multi-boxers. Whilst it is technically possible to grind the currency to unlock content, that is a big, big ask, and a relatively small portion of the game is available in pure F2P. Buying access to all of the expansions on three or six or twelve accounts is a big ask for a game I suspect is not going to even be all that special in the long run.

Something I feel I have to point out here in my experiments with the game: it feels very "clunky" to multi-box. Perhaps I needed more time and effort with the game, but the follow range is frustratingly short and has a tendency to randomly break. Interacting with the world on multiple accounts felt clumsy. In the end, one of the reasons I haven't spent all that much time with LOTRO is that the game felt like a bit of a chore to play.

Of particular note in terms of potential content to engage with is the "skirmish" system, which is a small selection of dungeon-like content that can be scaled to be ran in a variety of group sizes, at a variety of difficulties, and might well provide a solid piece of content to sink our teeth into. Two of these skirmishes are ready to go out of the box for F2P players.

I'm by no means an expert here but the game suffers from the same problem a lot of the MMOs on this list with "dwindling" player-bases suffer from: A lack of end-game content. The most recent expansion has a grand total of one dungeon that has 3 difficulty levels, and there isn't a system for incorporating old content into the end-game.

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Guild Wars 2 - https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/

My Experience: 60+ hours 2-boxing, clearing the first couple of dungeons and a few easy fractals.
Initial Set-up Difficulty: Very, very hard (No follow command, and some very strict rules on multiboxing)

So this is a bit of a weird one. Contrary to popular belief inside the game, GW2 does allow multiboxing: they're actually the only MMO I know of that has a clear policy on it. The policy is pretty strict and is a tough nut to crack: no using macros, all characters must be operated "independently", and one keystroke must correspond to one action on one character.

That's a tough one... but you can do it! I've had some limited success playing two characters simultaneously using what I call a "dual-wielding" setup. Effectively what I do is I play one character with the keyboard, and I play one character using a 16-button MMO mouse. There's no real trick to this set up: you are literally playing both characters simultaneously, working like a fighter-pilot to try and keep one eye on each of your screens to try and maintain situational awareness on both of them. The mechanics are no different to me "dual-wielding" two completely independent laptops in front of me.

There's quite a fun little game here in trying to figure out which classes and build work best with this playstyle: obviously, you do not want anything that has even a remotely complicated rotation to manage, as you will have to manage both rotations simultaneously with no short cuts!

Ultimately, whilst this has a steep learning curve that's pretty cool to try and overcome, there's not all that many obvious challenges that can be conquered using this playstyle. Dungeons are balanced around 5-man parties. Whilst they aren't impossible to 2-man (particularly once you have appropriately geared and built max-level characters), many of the encounters are very much built around the idea that you have a full party, with lots of situations where you need to split the party to cover multiple objectives, while also having to defend an NPC.

It's certainly an experience to be had, but frankly I think I just enjoy playing the game casually in the long-term.