Heya Sam, know you from the old FoH days and was going to reply to your latest dps thread there but will keep the flow of this forum and be nice

Basically, with your setup I'd look at:

  • Adding 4 more monitors and run 5 instances of WoW per box (one main instance on one monitor, 4 others on the second monitor per box)
  • Have each box run it's own 5 man group such as you currently do for EQ
  • Use keyclone on each box and then use a wireless keyboard + receivers (or vetra) to split a single keyboard to control all 5 boxes.

This would allow you to level up 5 groups of 5 at the same time through gridning without having to to join them as a raid....might even be possible once you reach high enough levels to have each group enter their own instance of the same instance and run 5 instances at the same time since initial mob spawns and bosses would all be the same.

The main difference between this and EQ is, as pointed out earlier, the xp grind in EQ was easier to do and WoW was designed around quests actually giving good xp for hand-ins.

Perhaps the best solution for you would be the following initially

  • Start a group of 5 paladins and play it like you were dual-boxing with playing the main, use one for heals and just ignore the other 3 with them on follow - This will let you get a feel for the game and zones, etc
  • Level this group to 70, respec them all to prot and make sure for all quest rewards in outlands to grab tanking gear...ignore instances for now
  • Create the other 20 characters you want and divide them into groups of 4 to join with 1 paladin each
  • Look at the boosting posts here and the flow people take (eg deadmines -> stocks -> SM -> ST) and then go boost each group in the same instances at the same time (again, mob spawns in these instances will pretty much be the same the entire time so you should be able to run all 5 like you are running one)

If this works you will then have 20 characters at level 60 after about 2 days played + the 5 paladins and will have all of outlands opened up to you as well as a knowledge of the basics of topography and mechanics of the game.