Is Multiboxing cheating?

[Swalload]

if i remember correctly, blizz stated that they are fine with multiboxers as long as they are controled by a player and dont use any bot programs, i personaly have no issues with them, except they can be annoying in world pvp but i see them very rarely there

Of course they're fine with it, it's one guy who pays 5-10 times more money than other players, why would they not be fine with it?

[Eurhetemec]

Of course they're fine with it, it's one guy who pays 5-10 times more money than other players, why would they not be fine with it?

They'd not be fine with it if it negatively impacted the game experience for enough other players to work out to less subs overall.

We saw this a lot with older MMOs. Back in those days, multi-boxing was far more common than WoW. In general it was tolerated by games, because yes more subs = good. However, if it got to the point where people felt like either multiboxers were dominating content or causing people to quit because they were so problematic, or because they felt they too had to multiboxer (but obviously didn't have the hardware etc. to do so), they would take action, either by making multiboxing less convenient, or even close to impossible, or by making some aspect of multi-boxing against TOS and enforcing on that.

Right now, it's rare in WoW.

People do over-react to it - I was in a PvP brawl recently and one guy on the other side had 5 hunters moving as a stacked pack and shooting people, and idiots were freaking out in chat about how it was so unfair blah blah blah. Of course, people like me just laughed - if you played DAoC, you saw this all the time, and multi-boxers are free kills. Sure, they'll nail a few people with focused DPS (nothing a 2-4 good players couldn't manage), but if you break up the stack, they're fucked. Death Grip one, he's dead because the guy is pressing the same button on all of them. Knock them back with something like Typhoon? They likely scatter. Slap them with AEs and AE CC, they're pretty fucked, because they can't scatter and healing on them will be done by someone not multi-boxing, so will be inconsistent.

So yeah, just chill out and kill them. They're meat for the grinder. Three half-decent players are far more threat overall than one guy multi-boxing. Indeed that one guy can totally fuck his own team in something AB or WSG. He can only hold one location in AB, and not well - killing half his dude totally fucks him, and you keep ganking them as he tries to get them back the location. In WSG, he's great at GY farming and not much else. Just go around him.

[Wild]

Multiboxing IS cheating.
However for Blizzards it's not, cos the multiboxer pay for every account they multibox. So as Long as u pay, Blizz dont give a fuck.

[Ponji]

Now before we begin let's just quote Blizzard's official code of conduct regarding cheating:



That being said I have recently started seeing a huge increase in multiboxers in-game, especially when it comes to Argus content. Now I'm not talking about multiboxing with 1 or 2 extra characters, I see huge groups of 10+ characters running together doing the same actions as well as looting the same stuff, this generally wouldn't be a problem for me, however many of the tag and kill X quests have grayed out mobs because of these multiboxers.

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,

There's nothing to discuss, nitwit. Blizzard has routinely said that it's within the completely in line with the ToS and EULA, and they dont have any issue with people controlling multiple characters at a time.

I really wish those of you who dislike MB's would stop making posts like this, or that mods would start locking them as soon as they're up. There's no point in having a semantic, irrelevant discussion about something Blizzard openly approves of.

[Moozart]

Now before we begin let's just quote Blizzard's official code of conduct regarding cheating:



That being said I have recently started seeing a huge increase in multiboxers in-game, especially when it comes to Argus content. Now I'm not talking about multiboxing with 1 or 2 extra characters, I see huge groups of 10+ characters running together doing the same actions as well as looting the same stuff, this generally wouldn't be a problem for me, however many of the tag and kill X quests have grayed out mobs because of these multiboxers.

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,

Blizzard has OPENLY stated that they are OK with multiboxing, Its a moot point beyond that.

[Swalload]

They'd not be fine with it if it negatively impacted the game experience for enough other players to work out to less subs overall.

We saw this a lot with older MMOs. Back in those days, multi-boxing was far more common than WoW. In general it was tolerated by games, because yes more subs = good. However, if it got to the point where people felt like either multiboxers were dominating content or causing people to quit because they were so problematic, or because they felt they too had to multiboxer (but obviously didn't have the hardware etc. to do so), they would take action, either by making multiboxing less convenient, or even close to impossible, or by making some aspect of multi-boxing against TOS and enforcing on that.

Right now, it's rare in WoW.

People do over-react to it - I was in a PvP brawl recently and one guy on the other side had 5 hunters moving as a stacked pack and shooting people, and idiots were freaking out in chat about how it was so unfair blah blah blah. Of course, people like me just laughed - if you played DAoC, you saw this all the time, and multi-boxers are free kills. Sure, they'll nail a few people with focused DPS (nothing a 2-4 good players couldn't manage), but if you break up the stack, they're fucked. Death Grip one, he's dead because the guy is pressing the same button on all of them. Knock them back with something like Typhoon? They likely scatter. Slap them with AEs and AE CC, they're pretty fucked, because they can't scatter and healing on them will be done by someone not multi-boxing, so will be inconsistent.

So yeah, just chill out and kill them. They're meat for the grinder. Three half-decent players are far more threat overall than one guy multi-boxing. Indeed that one guy can totally fuck his own team in something AB or WSG. He can only hold one location in AB, and not well - killing half his dude totally fucks him, and you keep ganking them as he tries to get them back the location. In WSG, he's great at GY farming and not much else. Just go around him.

That's basically what I was saying, they'll go with what brings more cash.

[Moozart]

Multiboxing IS cheating.
However for Blizzards it's not, cos the multiboxer pay for every account they multibox. So as Long as u pay, Blizz dont give a fuck.

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.

[Eurhetemec]

That's basically what I was saying, they'll go with what brings more cash.

Yeah, just clearing up that they will likely dump multi-boxing like a hot potato if it becomes an issue the causes a widespread fuss.

[Julmara]

no blizzard loves thos guys they pay a shit ton of money, they will never ever bann them nor the software used for that

[Kathranis]

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.

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

[Talvindius]

No it's not cheating, confirmed by the TOS.

Your personal opinion on the matter doesn't make it cheating.

[Lollis]

A 5 person multiboxer is essentially a shitty version of a half decent 5 man team that can use voip and/or assist macros. If you are getting wrecked by a boxer, you are just bad.

To defeat a boxer you need to disrupt him; split him up if you can, and since many multiboxers tend to have a 'main' in the group, getting that one down tends to cripple him. Use deathknights to grip, use fears, blinds, stuns.

If you are going in solo or just chain running in and dying one after another and expecting to kill him when it is 5 'People' you should stop playing.

[Gimlix]

Those who think they cheat, Obvious have no clue how to deal against a multiboxer. They are quite easy to kill if you find the main.
Next to that. he pays for all his accounts, so he deserves to do w/e he wants to do. It's lovely to see little kids rage over it though.

[Alvito]

Blizzard says no, but I think they are a bit wallet biased here. The ones that are often in pvp aren't just copying the keystrokes of the main character either. The best way to see this is when some die and they are meet up together. Now that you can buy pretty much anything with gold courtesy of the token, at the start of an expansion with new mats these things are a gold mine. They all tap nodes for new mats and on a busy server in a few days you cover the cost of running 5 accounts.

[Ribesal]

I saw a multiboxer only once, in a BG, and someone stated that we lost it just because we had 4 less players.. And I personally agree with him. In situations like BG, having a multiboxer is a huge penalty to the rest of the team.
But luckily enough, I never playied with one again after that day, so it's ok. As long as it keep a rare situation

Depends on the situation.
Once had a multiboxing DK in alterac valley. Wherever he went, he destroyed everything. Grip -> Obliterate x5, dead. And his rampaging ghoul army (45 ghouls)...
Just imagine: You defend an attacked tower with 4 other players. See 5 red health bars appear at the door. See that all of them start to raise an undead army. And then have the ghouls jumping everywhere.
He alone controlled the outcome of the battle ground. But this was somewhere at the start of cataclysm, where you couldn't just throw a AoE stun and cleave them down. Maybe this can't be done anymore, but at this time... these 5 DKs were horryfing =D

This was the only multiboxer i ever saw.
-------------------------

But is multiboxing cheating...? No.
What do you have from it? You can't run high lvl dungeons or raids with that. (except when you have outgeared said dungeon/raid)
Rated BG? Nope.
World Content? Who cares?
Low lvl Dungeon, again, who cares?^^
Only in random BGs in specific situation you could have an advantage.

And you have to play multiple times to do it. If there were some serious advantages to it, i would call it pay to win. But there are none. So it is pay to... pay?

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Nope, fully supported.

[Queen of Hamsters]

No.

And Blizzard agrees. How it is done however, can cross the line into cheating. I take no issue with it, I've literally had zero bad experiences with multiboxers, and I've done it myself at times for leveling characters.

[Alvito]

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

If the money came from stole credit cards they wouldn't get to keep it. It might take awhile, but eventually the bank or cc company would take the money back. If that were happening often enough Blizzard would fight botting so they don't keep losing money they already made.

[KrotosTheTank]

Blizzard might say whatever they want, but they will never really ban multiboxers, since it generates revenue on a larger scale.
You play and pay for 1 full game, 1 expansion and your monthly sub. Multiboxer pays X times of that, since each account has to be set up separately, so let's say he plays with 10 chars, then he pays 10 times what you pay.

You may whine, but his whining is 10 times more loud.

lmao, that logic doesn't work, because there's well over 10x the number of people whining about the multi-boxers than multi-boxer characters themselves.

All of you people crying about revenue...banning multi-boxing won't kill their revenue anywhere near on a scale you think it will. It would catch less than the people who bot. They don't ban it because that would be selectively targeting players playing their game within the ToS in a way that others do not like. What's next, you want bans on all players camping low level people? Will your excuse be that blizzard likes them because it keeps wpvp around?

Ahem.

It's not a violation of the ToS/ToU, confirmed by Blizzard themselves: https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...lues-on-Boxing

If you have a problem getting run over by a multiboxer... Perhaps consider not rolling on a pvp server?

I think their issue is that they can't get the tank skin, much less 20 of them :P


Side note: if people play correctly, it isn't hard to kill a boxer in wpvp, you just have to separate the characters apart and start to pick them off, and target heals, just like in bgs... (though 20 tanks is just a waste of time, dont bother trying to kill tanks in wpvp, even 1v5 we wreck). I ran into preparedwow in Tanaan towards the end of WoD, i thought it was pretty impressive and fun to go against him. Just have to make of it what you want.

Blizzard says no, but I think they are a bit wallet biased here. The ones that are often in pvp aren't just copying the keystrokes of the main character either. The best way to see this is when some die and they are meet up together. Now that you can buy pretty much anything with gold courtesy of the token, at the start of an expansion with new mats these things are a gold mine. They all tap nodes for new mats and on a busy server in a few days you cover the cost of running 5 accounts.

Someone is still paying for the accounts though, it's just shifted wallets. People complain about this more than wowtokens where there's a straight 25% cut directly to blizz. Personally, i dont mind, it legitimizes buying gold for people who wish to do so, and does it in a way where they won't risk identity/credit theft, which is a much bigger problem for blizz to handle.

[Socialhealer]

think of the gold quests on argus, 300-600g 3 up? that's like 1200 gold*10 accounts 12k gold easy.

BUT 10 accounts means you're paying £100 a month to play, or 10 wow tokens which is 2.67m gold a month to play! good luck farming that is it worth your time?