Is Multiboxing cheating?

[Deleted]

Whether its cheating depends on which GM you are talking to, which contradictory piece of blue text you look at, whether any one can be bothered to do anything or whether a low-level employee needs to do something, anything, to justify a pointless existence. Welcome to the Blizzardverse where logic and illogic collide in a pool of incomprehension.

[MoanaLisa]

Blizzard considers multi-boxing an unsupported play style. Other than that it's OK by them. They've answered the question numerous times. Their opinion matters. Yours doesn't basically.

[Chaelexi]

No. Remember, if you die to a multi boxer, you didn't lose a 1v1 fight, you lost a 5v1 fight, or 10v1, or more. Did you really expect to win?

It is easy, play rogue, spot the lead player, kill him, vanish, repeat.

[Socialhealer]

It is easy, play rogue, spot the lead player, kill him, vanish, repeat.

assuming it's a caster multiboxer? i see a lot of hunter multiboxers, you hit the leader, 20 pets tear you to shit so fast you can't even find vanish.

[Nyel]

No. There are games where multiboxing is forbidden (Guild Wars 2) and there are games where it is "allowed" (WoW).

[Ticj]

Yes and no. I think having a few accounts following you around is fine.

What fucking pisses me off is when out of nowhere 40+ characters almost crash the server and just gank a quest area for an hour.

[ComputerNerd]

Cheating as in against blizzard's terms - no.
Having an unfair advantage over other players, that despite the insistence of some isn't feasible to overcome - yes.
in PvP they have an incomparable ability to single out one player, something no other group can do.

[Sansnom]

So in my thought process the person using all these characters are in fact farming for items on a large scale, however wihout having to do things at x1 the normal pace having all these characters they are farming gold/boes/rep at a way higher rate than what should be normal, to me personally that seems to break to code of conduct as this is giving a single person the ability to automate their farming on a large scale.

So what's your take on multiboxing in this day and age, is it cheating? Do you think it's fine?

Let's discuss,

How is this considered cheating? What is cheating?

If instead rather than one person controlling 5 toons via a multi box, it is a group of 5 players sticking together, what is the difference? You can see the difference, sure. But to the server, it is still 5 characters doing almost the same action and looting the same items.

[Moozart]

Don't a lot of botters use stolen CCs and compromised accounts that don't actually result in Blizzard getting money?

no... you may have some that do but your average botters are people just trying to level and get gold while not being at the computer.

More so in the last few years they have been people using rotation bots for dps/healing. You would be surprised how many of the top 100 guilds have people using rotation bots because they are that good.

[Enunciation]

I've multiboxed on wow before but it was only to do raf. For me it was such a pain in the ass getting everything setup that I stopped after I did the one character

[docterfreeze]

Blizz says it isn't but thankfully they have made changes to deter it in places where it gives a massive advantage.

[A dot Ham]

Technically speaking it isn't cheating.

But personally anything that destroys the spirit of the game should not be allowed.

That kind of precision could not be replicated among the same number of individual players and as such should not be allowed.

[Servasus]

Condoned form of cheating... it's like having a single [hacked] character cast the same spell numerous times at the same time to one shot people one after the other.

Condoned, because it's someone paying for all them accounts to multibox with.

I honestly don't have an issue of it in PvE, as it affects no one... but it should be 100% against the rules for PvP.

Not really true. They use it to multi box herb and ore which severely drops the prices over time on a realm because the ore and herb becomes 5x or more more plentiful when you have all these toons taking advantage of the 15 second loot window.

I think if you're a morally grey person, then sure, you could probably swing this in a way where you consider it not cheating. It's 100% cheating in my opinion, though.

[Mollox]

How is this considered cheating? What is cheating?

If instead rather than one person controlling 5 toons via a multi box, it is a group of 5 players sticking together, what is the difference? You can see the difference, sure. But to the server, it is still 5 characters doing almost the same action and looting the same items.

Because you are ONE person using ONE keystroke to do TEN actions at the same time, that and besides the amount of gold/rep/boes a large-scale multiboxer can farm gives them definitely an advantage over one player, be it PvP or PvE which is against the Code of Conduct that Blizzard posts publicly.

And for those who thinks this does not effect PvE in a way, just think about this prospect, someone gave a rough number of getting 12k from doing Argus WQ's that's Argus alone, add the broken isles as well as the 2500g Garrison-esque gold missions as well as twink BOEs that can drop from random and multiply that gold gain as well as drop chances by 10, the boxer could have more 110 characters (Ie a second group of 10 level 110s) and continues this farming process to make gold to flood the market, or even sell the gold if their profits exceed what a WoW token costs, which I am sure does cover it.

Does this seem right?

[RobertoCarlos]

It is cheating and bad for the server economy/the game but blizzard don't care because its more paying accounts on their tab.

Thankfully its rare enough to not be a big problem but its still annoying when you see 10 shadow priests all called the same name but one letter slightly different.

[Razion]

You have available to you more tools and power than is available as standard to other players because you paid more. It's not only cheating, it's pay to win.

That said, it generally doesn't ever really matter in group or competitive content because no one wants to play with multiboxers, and multiboxers aren't winning any high rankings on anything. It's a rare example where it benefits Blizzard and the only real persistent negative is to the solo player on PvP realms getting ganked.

[Wild]

Do you know how stupid you sound? If this were even REMOTELY true Blizzard would allow the botters to go ape shit. Hundreds of thousands of PAYING botting accounts have been banned over the years.

Well what do you think do the non-playing multiboxer chars do? They act like bots! So you Control exactly one single char, the rest is bot-shit. Of Course blizz must ban bots, cos they are not controlled by a human. So when using multibox, its like a gray area, that one char is controlled by a human and the others just follow, controlled by a program 3rd Party.
For me this is cheating bullshit. Dont matter if pvp or pve.
If you played this game honestly, you would Control one char just like all of us do.

[Schattenlied]

No. Still requires one person to control them, sending all the inputs.
If he's botting multiple accounts though, then that is.

Not sending all the inputs, using passthrough software to mirror commands to other clients/systems. That is cheating as far as I'm concerned.

If it's something they would not be able to do without third party software, which is exactly what it is, it should be labeled as cheating.

[Mosotti]

Nothing that is allowed by Blizzard is cheating. Of course each person has his own definition of "cheating". Some call cheating a rogue that uses Ambush, I mean why the fuck isn't that coward coming out of the shadows before hitting you in the back?

I think people are jealous of multiboxers because they have enough money to do that shit in the first place. I don't see no other reason, because why would you care if someone can do some content alone, or fuck you up in PvP? What is the difference between being fucked up in PvP by a multiboxers or being fucked up by a better geared / skilled player? No difference.

[HuxNeva]

Cheating? Blizzard says no.
Anti-social? Depends on the player, but often yes.