I read some blue posts on this matter and I am still confused by claims that multi-boxing is not automation and is not harmful for the game.
Automation
Lets’ establish the base here: user having and playing multiple accounts can only manually control one character at a time. That’s a physical limitation of human body.
All other characters are controlled by a software that creates and sends a string of actions to multiple clients based on a key press. This is literally a definition of automation — you can’t do those 10 things yourself in the same time as a human so you set up a machine to create a sequence of actions and execute it for you.
Technically it IS an automation. You want to allow it — fine. Now to the impact though.
Impact
I read an argument that it’s fine because 40 multi-boxing characters are not a match for 40 human controlled characters (see an irony here? “human controlled”). And it may be true on a battle ground where the number of people you can have is limited.
What about open world pvp?
What about people farming raids while multi-boxing and selling loot?
What about farming money while multi-boxing?
Rant part
Do you see it as a way to pay to win? I.e. “Sure, a person-multi boxing will have an advantage on the person who doesn’t but he is paying for 40 accounts”. What is your message here? — Should i also get 2-3-4 accounts to farm gold or raids faster on them…
… and i mean of course that i will be controlling one character, and 3rd party software will be controlling the rest based on the fancy rules i create.
Buuut! It will LOOK like i am playing all those characters, so must be fine. It’s just a “lever” that i pull that makes them do things and help me get ahead of most other people in the game.
Or let’s say i want to level few toons – is it fine to just level them together? 40 toons levelled by one person in 7 days. Surely no automation is involved in this, that’s just normal playing.
But, for the argument sake…
Let’s not call it “automation”. Let’s just say you are paying 5x the money to progress 5x faster than anyone else by farming faster. Is this ok?
It is simple. It is counted as automation, or a bot, if an action is performed when no one presses a key to perform that action. Even with the software in place if the player controlling the multiboxer presses nothing on their keyboard then none of the characters will do anything. All the software is doing is replicating that keystroke to more than one account.
Edit: as far as farming goes, this isn’t retail where more than one person can loot a node. It is one node per person/character only.
Face it boxers were around in Vanilla, although it took some ungodly rigs or multiple computers linked, in order to do it and so are actually part of the Vanilla experience.
For what it is worth I don’t like them much more than you do but it isn’t a bannable action.
It is not automation. This topic has been brought a million times in the past and time after time it ends up with people bringing clear arguments which get disregarded by short sighted people who got killed by a multiboxer this one time and thus they are all human trash.
Multiboxing in classic is a pain. 60% of quests are gathering quests which means multiboxers have to farm these items x amount of times where x = amount of multiple characters.
Furthermore, I haven’t seen a single multiboxer in classic to date.
Is false. Please read up on what a multibox is and does because you do not know how it functions. 1 keypress = 1 action per character. Not ‘a string of actions’.
So following your logic if i create a smart home script that allows me to press a button to turn off my lights, then turn on the TV and get up the curtains all in one button press i am not automating those actions? Cmon, man.
As stated, if a key isn’t pressed none of the characters do anything. A key on the players keyboard/mouse must be pressed in order for an action to be performed.
// Is false. Please read up on what a multibox is and does because you do not know how it functions. 1 keypress = 1 action per character. Not ‘a string of actions’. //
This is how it appears in your head. Computer however does things in sequence, not in parallel. So it is a sequence of actions based on a button press. That is why multiboxing characters may lag behind the main character.
No it’s because multiboxers use a follow command and there’s is a thing called latency. Each and every instance of the game is affected by latency and thus it is not synchronised.
Regardless. You believe that a multiboxer can make his characters do more than 1 action with 1 keypress. You are thus in the wrong and need to educate yourself about the concept of multiboxing lest you look like a fool to everyone who actually knows what multiboxing is.
What you describe is scripting not key duplication.
Miraine, the ability to do multiple things with 1 key press is literally a definition of automation. I am not sure what are you arguing about.
While it may LOOK like 40 characters are controlled by a person only 1 in fact is and the rest are controlled by a tool which can be set up quite extensively depending on your preferences. For example some tools allow you to do things like “while you press W on your main character for 5 seconds it will press W on your other characters for 6 seconds” to make sure they are not lagging behind.
Not to mention in game customisation like “3” on your main character can be a frost shock, earth shock on your second character and fire shock on your 3rd thus adding 3 debuffs to the target in one key press. Sure, you pressed 1 button but 3 different things actually happened and were done by 3 different characters.
Multi-boxing has always annoyed me, but through the years, Blizz has stated several times that it’s not an offense.
This, is probably the reason.
Personally the only reason I could imagine people would do multiboxing is to sell their accounts once it’s full of capped toons. Unless you think it’s fun, and you have more money than you can spend.
I saw someone that looked like they were multiboxing in goldshire the other day, I felt sorry for them, specially doing the collection quests. Kill quests it would be good, but the drop rate on some collection quests is pretty tough for just one character, let alone multiples.
lol this discussion is more about what your definition of automisation is then why multiboxing is bad.
I don’t really think it’s much of an advantage besides some negligible cases. It’s not as if more mobs spawn or more items drop in a raid (which I doubt is easy to multibox on your own anyway).
I’m more annoyed by the layering crafting material exploits at the moment.
EDIT: Meant to reply to the thread, still getting used to this forum.
You do realise you can farm gold WAY faster like this?
It literally makes sense to buy few accounts to farm and then just boost your main with consumables.
I also have suspicions that with certain gear levels you’ll be able to clear raids with that on your own. It may not matter on retail since retail is an instanced experience but here, it surely will matter.
I’m leaving this topic. OP knows not what automisation means.
The very core of the ‘multiboxing is bad’ is because people who know nothing and probably just got killed by a multiboxer(in the same way they’d have died to a party of equal size) and they want to say it is automisation. Automisation implies actions are being undertaken without human interference which is not true in the case of multiboxing.
This is hilarious, you are worried about this multiboxers, getting few gold, from looting every single mob with 5 characters, but your not bothered by people layer farming mines and herbs?
Lets get one thing straight it sure is automotion,but the simple fact it earns them money from some people they keep it up.
You might look at the incressed respawn on some mobs that is affected by number of players in the zone,dynamic respawn system in WoW Classic that is pressent for the remainder of layers and the launch period to smooth things out that some multiboxers abused.Also the dynamic respawn is my number one killer on Classic so far.
Dungeon abuse is also something multiboxers also abuse,i juste remember those potion of tresure the Cata and MoP versions and countless multiboxers farming GrimBatol (one of so many)
You can single handedly clear tons of elites in dungeons and get all that loot for yourself. Reset and repeat. Probably hundreds of gold per hour as 1 person.
