Should multiboxing be allowed?

[Thereturn]

Never understood the appeal of paying 500 bucks a month to play a game with 50 accounts, nevermind the fact you have to purchase each expansion seperately.

There you are, running around, 1 shotting everything, nothing poses a threat anymore, you cant raid, instance pvp or pve. Seems kinda boring actually.

[Drusin]

I'm running 8 accounts on a 8700k and it's barely going above 60 percent usage.

I'm on 3 characters right now on an I5-3570k (a 2012 processor) at 40%, though full disclosure I have an RX580 GPU.
You can box on a walmart computer.

[Razion]

In terms of the open world PvP problem, they could handle it similarly to Twinks where they just put only multiboxers all together in their own shards or phases - that way, normal players just running around with one character don't ever have to see or interact with them.

[Drusin]

Never understood the appeal of paying 500 bucks a month to play a game with 50 accounts, nevermind the fact you have to purchase each expansion seperately.

There you are, running around, 1 shotting everything, nothing poses a threat anymore, you cant raid, instance pvp or pve. Seems kinda boring actually.

50 accounts would be $750 :P unless you bought 6 month sub then it's $650. I don't know why someone would 50box either unless they are doing city raids on classic. But as someone who enjoys the development process of many things I can see the appeal in that. Playing 1 character is legit boring now. Despite what people might think you are in full control of all your characters and besides combat you have to do everything x number of times. Quest: Loot 10 poops from off the ground, oh you're 5 boxing? Loot 50 poops then, have fucking fun buddy. Then people come and /spit on you for being a multiboxxer and playing ezmoad as they loot their 10 poops and leave but you have 40 more poops to loot lol. And don't try to box melee, you ever wonder why more often than not you see teams of casters? Because boxxing melee is awful lol, it's the worst ever and I dread every time I have to box melee. If you can't tolerate micromanaging x number of characters at once you'll hate boxxing.

It's like working a job that you hate but gives you random bonuses.

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In terms of the open world PvP problem, they could handle it similarly to Twinks where they just put only multiboxers all together in their own shards or phases - that way, normal players just running around with one character don't ever have to see or interact with them.

That sounds wonderful <3 So you're telling me I'll be in shards that are more dead than the normal game? So 99% of the time there won't be anyone getting in my way doing WQs or killing rares? So 99% of the time I'll have the old world bosses all to myself for mount attempts? This sounds like a damn good idea, where do I sign?

[Kaver]

Personally I don’t think Blizzard should allow it. Just like they don’t allow account sharing.

But I think another interesting question is: should a multiboxer be allow to join dungeons, bgs or lfr with multiple characters and cripple the group?

[Hellobolis]

it's fine if it's allowed, but it should never be the best or easiest way to play. there should be enough hassle to it so only the enthusiast do it.

[Oxna]

Yes but there should be multibox only realms/servers

[Drusin]

Personally I don’t think Blizzard should allow it. Just like they don’t allow account sharing.

But I think another interesting question is: should a multiboxer be allow to join dungeons, bgs or lfr with multiple characters

Sure why not!

and cripple the group?

Nah, keep those trash players out *thumbs down*

I don't know about BGs, I don't pvp a lot so I'll never do that in the first place and it seems like it would be a recipe for a bad time, if it's a small scale BG like WSG, doing an epic BG like IoC or AV I see less of a problem with it. But dungeons or LFR? A skilled multiboxxer can do anything individual players can do.

[Volatilis]

I think its pretty dumb that blizzard allows it.

I understand why, it makes them more money. But still, it always has seemed like a form of cheating.

[Drusin]

I think you guys should read this, a lot of the comments you make are addressed in this thread. https://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/...and-semantics/

[Monkiy]

Multi-boxing has far more negatives to it, than positives. And the negatives all revolve around making a worse experience for others. It just doesn't seem worth it from a business perspective, even if they are paying additional subs, etc.

I'm not even an herbalist, but man do I feel for anyone who is. I just sigh for the whole profession every time I see a group of 10 multi-boxing Druids flying around. It just all around fucks with the economy in a way that was never intended.

But I think the biggest base issue with multi-boxing is fairly straight forward: it nets the player an advantage for a real money price tag. And if someone is will to pay for enough accounts, they buy themselves very significant advantages. I have to fundamentally disagree that that should be allowed at any point.

[Tziva]

But I think another interesting question is: should a multiboxer be allow to join dungeons, bgs or lfr with multiple characters and cripple the group?

I think first you've have to sufficiently prove they actually do cripple the group. I think that's a very debatable statement. In BGs I can see a legitimate issue there; I don't think multiboxing can adequately deal with all the complexities and fluidity needed both in spell choice and movement in a pvp environment. In LFR and LFD I'm not so sure, though. I'll bet they can perform reasonably well in that kind of context where everything can be planned and very little is especially lethal anyway. It's hard to envision any hypothetical scenario where a regular dungeon run could be crippled by anything, much less some rigidity because some of the party members are essentially clones. And I mean, just from a practical standpoint, it doesn't exactly benefit the multiboxer if their presence means groups can't complete content since presumably they are also there because they want to complete that content too.

I haven't seen multiboxers in BGs in many many years. They were popular for awhile but people figured out pretty quickly how to easily deal with them and I think the popularity dropped significantly. I don't recall encountering multiboxers in LFR -- although I'm sure I have at least a few times and just couldn't tell -- but I have in dungeons and it was never a problem if they were doing the actual key press replication thing. The only time I've ever found myself irritated by it was when by "multiboxing" I mean "running two accounts with one noncontributing and just on /follow." As long as all the characters are doing their abilities and pulling their weight, I don't really think it's going to matter much if they are controlled by one player or several. I could really only see an issue if you filled up nearly every slot so that there weren't enough people to perform necessary mechanics simultaneously, but there aren't that many fights out there that require that on those low difficulty levels.

In short, I don't know that this is a problem that needs solving.

[[KJ]]

i multibox and i used 5 druids to farm for materials to get the ah mount and some boosts. The farming is the easy bit. It speeds things up, who wants to do laps of of naz? Selling is the real challenge. You need to sit there on AH refreshing your addon to see if you have been undercut. So regardless of the amount you have from farming, your still gonna have this challenge.

PvP isn't really something you can do as multiboxing relies on being able to follow and you can't follow a target currently engaged in pvp combat so that really limits what you can do, all the enemy needs to do is out range you and if you want follow. you can only follow with one.

But for those who are upset, how often do you see a multiboxer? i have a feeling that blizz has something in place where you get put in a phase with other multiboxers/farmers however i could be wrong as i aint been bothered to check it out fully. It seems an easy fix to group certain type of play styles. those who actively engage in pvp for example? i say this because after i've done pvp, i tend to notice more pvp action going on in the world, i've noticed less farmers when i've used and old account i didn't use for farming. take that with a pinch of salt as it could be nonsense ^^

With regards to hardware required. you can manage multiple accounts quite easily on one system. I have a large master window and 4 smaller windows below this allowing me to see all 5 characters at once. I set these smaller windows to the bare minimum graphical settings and cut their resolution by 50%. this uses up about 30gb of ram

if your wondering why it isn't classed as cheating. Your always in control, there isn't any automation so the characters are not going to do anything unless i tell them to. all its doing is cloning keys to other windows

Doing this really did benefit me because i don't wanna farm forever. I was able to buy a boost to get gear/curve so i now don't have to wait around forever to find groups for raids or m+. I aint in a guild which pushes content but friendships have been created and i ain't gonna leave when i can achieve my goal in a way which is different.

Gotta say the novelty of multiboxing has had its day at the moment for me. it really helped me get my foot in the door but if i need it again to stay relevant and be accepted (ahead of the curve) yeah 100% i would do it again because farming sucks

[Irian]

No, it's a whole can of worms that should have never been opened. With personal loot it's effectively 5x the open world drops, which makes anything worth farming for in the open world a matter of brute forcing it with multiple accounts. Moonkin mount farms etc.

THere's nothing gameplay-wise unbalanced really about multiboxing other than safety in numbers, but it's just not very good for the game. I feel like it's become way too common to see people doing it, and more than once they've actually ruined a gameplay experience of some sort (stealing farming spots, mass nuking in pvp, etc). It's almost kind of silly that the WoW community is so willing to overlook something so ridiculous to begin with.

[Kaver]

In short, I don't know that this is a problem that needs solving.

Agree to disagree

[socialmaker]

multiboxing should be allowed, what shouldn't: multiple herb/mining node gathering, 2x4 farms and in general multiple mob tagging

[Drusin]

I feel like it's become way too common to see people doing it, and more than once they've actually ruined a gameplay experience of some sort (stealing farming spots, mass nuking in pvp, etc). It's almost kind of silly that the WoW community is so willing to overlook something so ridiculous to begin with.

I would be willing to bet my entire left arm that my gameplay experience has been ruined more often by a single player on 1 character than by multiboxxers. If a max level ganks me while leveling I constitute that as ruined gameplay experience and over the course of my time playing since BC I've encountered maybe 5 MBox gankers. And I'm sure the same is true for everyone else reading this who has leveled alts.

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and in general multiple mob tagging

Even if I didn't multibox I'd throw this idea straight into the incinerator lol. You want to go back to classic wow where only one player can tag a mob unless they are grouped? I wouldn't even do open world content at that point, I'd just keep my ass in an instance.

[lappee]

They can't. The CRZ system is why this is the way it is. They spin up servers on the fly, sometimes you get lucky and no-one is farming, sometimes you don't. Neutering multi-boxers isn't going to do a damn thing about this. There isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do about key replication either. This is simply going to boil down to a if you can't beat em, join em. Your lack of funds is not everyone else's problem. It's yours. I'm personally paying cash for 7 wow accounts right at the moment. $91/month .. it's not even enough to care about.

Limiting nodes to one per character would completely remove the point of multiboxing herbs. So yeah there isn't a lot you can do about them, but there is one single thing that will render them utterly useless for that.
CRZ system doesn't change that fact, you can still get a fresh server with no1 farming but you couldn't multibox if you can't mine the same node with multiple characters.

It is simple, it is effective and if node respawn rate is higher it actually makes it easier for non-multiboxers to farm. The only reason why you don't want it to happen is that your own multiboxing would get hurt in the process - which is the whole point.

If you like to play the game by multiboxing, you could still do it. You just wouldn't ruin the market. Just like you don't get multiple loots if you run the same raid ID on all those multiboxers - however if you run different ID's (each in their own instance) you get more loots, but you actually have to play all of them.

[Revamp Man]

Yes it should be allowed

[Morae]

I voted no.

It will never be "no", though. Not at this point.

What I would like is that blizz adds "traps" to resource nodes that are TRIVIAL to any normal person playing the game. Like... pick a herb and then you get entangled by some roots. You can simply click it away. It shouldn't hinder player more than a second or so. Multiboxer? Now find which one(s) of your characters got stuck and manually click each of them free. For multiboxer it starts to become a tedious problem that they cant automate. Want to use multibox? Sure, go for it, but expect to have logistic problems.

That was just an example, could be anything as long as it is trivial to a person, but not automated multibox.