Game-Breaking, but still completely legal BULLSHIT

[Arkusunn]

Wow that's a lot of characters. now what if he starts camping the portal panda?

[Gimlion]

Blizz hasn't any issues with multiboxer, probably because, heck, they're payin for multiple accounts. I really don't mind 'em, myself and knew one of the first well-known ones (I believe WoW Insider did an interview with him once long ago.) He had 5 Orc shamans in a guild called Twenty Totems.

Multi-boxers can be a big pain in BG's, but often they're pretty easy to disable. Granted, usually you only see a 3 or 5-boxer. With those, you can figure out which is the command and control character and focus on it. It's usually always the same character in the group, too, so if you see 'em again in another bg you know which one to go after. I've never seen a 40-boxer and can see how it'd be way more of a challenge, especially when you're in a PUG AV and the whole mentality is "zerg and kill boss for fast honor."

Ivus and Lok'holar (however his name is spelled) tend to come as a shock to players when they're spawned. Most people in AV don't seem to even know they exist. There's a group of Horde on Argent Dawn that'll occasionally form up an AV premade and even we haven't summoned Lok'holar since, like, WotLK. I remember one match way back when, when we got him, wolf riders, the wyverns and the Reavers up and managed to get Lok and the Reavers to reach the Ally base at the same time. Man, that was fun to watch.

I didn't know about them until someone in this thread mentioned them. They're neat.

Also, I don't mind Multi-boxers, and find the idea very neat. However, 50 accounts is over the top, and I just don't understand what would drive him to waste all that money.

[Sukurachi]

1) he's not cheating.
2) he's "spending" that money, it's his. he's not "wasting" it.

who knows, maybe he's very wealthy, maybe he's terminally ill and this is his passion, maybe.. who knows.

but it's NO one's place here to judge him (or her).

where do you "draw the line"? 2 accounts is OK? 3? 5? 10? 10 but not 11?

you see, I hope, where this leads.

[Chimera]

It may be leagal, but its still extremely uncalled for, unstable for the battleground group that his server is in, and extremely aggravating. Having multiple accounts is one thing, to use them all at once in one big sync is a totally different thing. And its not fair to take pity on him either if we dont know his story. Theres no reason to judge or pity him as a person unless you know him as a person and not randomly guess at his reasoning.

And besides, most often cases when it comes to multi-boxers, they are extremely rude in the game. That doesnt mean they are in RL so im not going to judge him as a person, but i am judging him as a player. The struggle of alliance vs. horde causes extreme aggravation in people of opposite factions and people will go out of their way to screw someone up thats of the opposite faction and treat their own faction like sugary candy.

The mentality is completely different. As a player, your mentality is different because all you see is other 'characters'. As a person, your mentality is different because you see 'real people'.

[cowmuflage]

I've never seen a non rude multi-boxer. Ever.

[Novikova]

I can still think it's silly to spend 600+ dollars a month on WoW. It seems odd, considering you .... can't really raid by yourself. All that would leave is just smishing people in pvp.

It's not my thing and I respect his right to, but I can still think it's silly. Much as someone else might think my love of keeping pet shrimps is silly or odd. I'm still going to take care of my lil guys.

[Gimlion]

1) he's not cheating.
2) he's "spending" that money, it's his. he's not "wasting" it.

who knows, maybe he's very wealthy, maybe he's terminally ill and this is his passion, maybe.. who knows.

but it's NO one's place here to judge him (or her).

where do you "draw the line"? 2 accounts is OK? 3? 5? 10? 10 but not 11?

you see, I hope, where this leads.

Personally, I must disagree. While not technically breaking any ToS, I'd call this cheating flat out. It ruins the game for others who have to play against him, and by most standards certainly "breaks" the game itself, in that it's fairly impossible to do anything against this guy except attempt to take out the main screen, which will almost guarantee failure, because he does too much damage to one target for anything progressive to get done.

Also, IMO, anyone who can sit around and do this for fun is sadistic. Sure, maybe they're some sweet innocent guy IRL. Maybe they're terminally ill, that doesn't mean squat, my grandmother has lung cancer and a bad heart, I don't see her sitting around tormenting other people through the internet for shits and giggles.

The justification for ANYONE doing this much is because they enjoy it. And the enjoyment of another's suffering is the definition of being sadistic.

And yes, I do believe there is a solid limit for multi-boxing. I honestly believe anything over 5 is just too much. You can't group up and still quest to level, you can't do much of anything except do shit like this to people in BGs

[Agravaine]

I wouldn't be surprised if it were a GM testing the limits of the game. But they're usually out in the open about that sort of thing. And I'd be utterly horrified if it were someone like Chris Metzen or Samwise Didier...

[Nachtwulf]

Yeah, the point where it passes the 5-person-group line is where I call shenanigans. And like the person above said, this is 'sadistic' behavior; taking gleeful enjoyment in ruining the game experience for up to 40 other people. AND burning over 7k a year in order to do it.

Douchebag is, as douchebag does. And that's as far as I'm gonna go.

[Andine]

1) he's not cheating.
2) he's "spending" that money, it's his. he's not "wasting" it.

who knows, maybe he's very wealthy, maybe he's terminally ill and this is his passion, maybe.. who knows.

but it's NO one's place here to judge him (or her).

where do you "draw the line"? 2 accounts is OK? 3? 5? 10? 10 but not 11?

you see, I hope, where this leads.

One person's freedom ends where another gets hurt. And this kind of playstyle is certainly harming other players. Furthermore, I believe he is doing stuff against ToS - after all, with that much multiboxing, it's virtually impossibly for him to control all of them manually - he's doing some kind of botting to make all the characters follow the same (or organised) instructions. That's third party programs to get advantage over other players - thus bannable.

[AdamSavage]

How does his computer even handle 40 different game clients running at the same time ? He must have several different computers going at once.

[Ana]

It´s a hobby and i guess some hobbies can cost more then 40 accounts a month.. guess it all come down to how you prioritize your money. If its someone choise to have 40 accounts i can´t see the problem tbh. All i know that its not for me - i cant even handle in my head to dual box 2 accounts.

[Sukurachi]

It's kind of funny reading these comments.
the rudest, most cruel people I've met in the game were most definitely NOT multi-boxers. they were single-boxers elitists who felt no qualms about tearing into other people.


As for the mega-multi-boxer: if you're smart you can take him right out of the game. Multiboxing that many accounts means you must control from a single character. Take out that single character and the whole group falls apart. Kill whichever character starts moving first once the main is killed and you are taking out his secondary controller character. his whole group falls apart. you can then kill all forty of them with a few well placed AoE attacks.

For those who insist that there is some form of "botting" going on, I can assure you there isn't. There is a direct link, approved by Blizzard, that allows a single keyboard to repeat the same actions across multiple accounts on a single computer (or across multiple linked computers). key words being "the same actions".

His characters are not all acting independently. They are, for all intents and purposes, doing the exact same thing. They are VERY limited in their actions. If he has different classes, then he probably has single macros for entire groups of toons. One macro for all his mages, one for all his hunters, etc...

Don't forget he also needs one macro for "come together" and one for "move apart". He has to sacrifice a lot of playability just for all of his movement macros and his group-control macros.

This type of play style does not "harm others", other than stopping people from entering a BG if he is already taking up all available slots.

If anything the mega-multi-boxer is a far easier opponent to get rid of than forty independently controlled enemies.

And repeatedly saying that all multi-boxers are rude?
Well, that's just rude of YOU, and an unfair generalization.

[Boven]

How does his computer even handle 40 different game clients running at the same time ? He must have several different computers going at once.

If I recall correctly then Boom, the 5-boxer I knew on Argent Dawn, ran on three machines. One for his 'control' character and the other two each controlling two accounts. That was back in 2007 or so. I should think that nowadays, depending on the machine specs, you could probably run 4 or 5 clients on a single box without too much difficulty. There's special software to control all the accounts via one keyboard and mouse and to display the various accounts.

[Andine]

This type of play style does not "harm others", other than stopping people from entering a BG if he is already taking up all available slots.

Not everyone has the knowledge how to deal with this kind of situation. Furthermore, I'll hazard a guess most people don't and will just panic once they see one person focusing fire of fourty characters. Even if they don't panic, they will try to do something against him, and utterly fail, because they don't know the exact strategy to deal with this rare situation. Thus, most players' game will be severely hampered.

I'm still convinced there's botting going on. Even if Blizzard considers one botting program "legal" (which is WTF news for me), that's far too big scale to ignore what he must be doing to keep it up.

"Live and let live" is a nice philosophy to have, it's just that in some situations you meet people who don't "let live" and if you don't take action against them, they will do more harm than you'd do by taking action.

[Sukurachi]

"botting": software that automates actions within the game.

there is no "automation" when someone multi-boxes.

what there is is replication of the exact same keystrokes across either multiple accounts, or across multiple computers.

in other words, the "main" account hits "key bind x", and ALL linked accounts react to whatever is programmed on that key binding.

for "botting" to be present, complete actions would have to be undertaken by a program without any input from the user.

So be convinced there is botting all you want, but there isn't.

************

The rhetoric going on in this thread is shockingly aggressive and violent. For a bunch of generally mild-mannered people, it's sad to see so much hatred demonstrated by so many, and in such personal attacks.

if everyone in your BG doesn't know how to handle a multi-boxer, then simply add a target marker to the multi-boxer's main toon, and tell everyone in the BG that THAT is the ONLY target that matters. Multi-boxers almost ALWAYS have naming sequences that allow you to easily recognize which is the "main". Only multi-boxers like me don't use that sort of naming scheme, and that is because I don't use any form of multi-box software. I physically control multiple computers using multiple keyboards, multiple mice, multiple num-pads.

in no way does this "break the game. It might be unpleasant in a BG if you don't know how to go about handling it. but once you know, there's no issue. And the REST of the game is entirely unaffected by this.

[Nachtwulf]

That's because most of us (including myself) believe what this person is doing is reprehensible and wrong, and counter to the intentions of the game. I always get angry when I see someone gaming the system with technicalities to their personal advantage while crushing others around them, and this is another case of that happening.

To be honest, if I saw this asshole in a BG, I'd just leave, and let him honor farm someone else. But the fact that I'd have to is a sad state of affairs. It indicates someone who's only joy is apparently warping the intentions of a game system so he can shamelessly abuse and misuse it in order to 'get ahead'. That instead of playing the game as it's intended to be played, he has to fix it and make himself fundamentally unbeatable. Yes, you claim you can focus fire the 'head', but do you really think that given the fact he can one-shot anyone trying (one hit from 40 geared PVP characters at once WILL one shot any toon in the game, I don't care how good you are), that he can totally blow off any attempts to do so?

Just because someone 'can' do something doesn't mean that they should. It's still an exploit, even if it isn't technically an illegal one. Exploiting means taking advantage of loopholes that were not intended by the game designers, and I can assure you, no one at Blizzard designed battlegrounds thinking 'hey, wow, it'd be BADASS if someone could totally r@pe this with 40 accounts all linked together!'

[Chimera]

People like this guy frankly is another factor that leads to people quitting because they dont want to deal with the bullcrap of trying to do something they enjoy only to end up with this guy over and over. The fact that its not illegal to blizz is a shock and the fact they havent reconsidered it is equally a shock because they try their best to make this game enjoyable for everyone and milti-boxers do the complete opposite. Sure its not literally making people quit left and right but it is certainly a concern that blizz is turning a blind eye to for whatever reason.

He is the minority and we are the majority. If blizz listens to the majority when it comes to topics such as this particular problem, they can improve the social gaming experience for everyone in my opinion.

[Lupis]

Eh. Honestly, it'd make me mad, I'd leave that BG, and I'd move on. This is one person in an entire game. It's annoying, it's aggrivating, but he's not ruining the game experience, he's just one annoyance.

I don't agree with 40-person multi-boxing, but if he's willing to spend thousands of dollars a year on it, clearly he enjoys it.

[GormanGhaste]

You can focus fire the 'head', but do you really think that given the fact he can one-shot anyone trying (one hit from 40 geared PVP characters at once WILL one shot any toon in the game, I don't care how good you are), that he can totally blow off any attempts to do so?

If you work together, then yes, you can kill the 'head'. The multi-boxer may be able to one-shot any single player, but won't be able to one-shot a coordinated group.