Thoughts on Multiboxing (community discussion)

[Balls]

But only because on retail you actually have to pay for multiple accounts, like someone said before. I'm sure blizzard's stand would be different if they didn't pay for all accounts since it has so much downsides that it affects other people's enjoyment of the game as well as taking space in battlegrounds where the multiboxers takes up half the team when the spots could go for 4 people

[Eoe]

Multiboxers are not "bots" there seems to be a discrepancy between the two. I'm guessing not everyone understands what these two things are.

Botters, dumbed short for "robots" are programs that play your character for you. Commonly used on retail to level up character or to farm gold. They involve almost no human interaction expect for starting/fixing the bot.

Multiboxers are indeed humans. It is a player sitting there playing a character using a key-cloning program to send his key actions to all the other screens of WoW currently open making all the windows open of WoW mimic the actions of the main window. This is 100% legal in the Blizzard terms of use. Key cloning in no way modifies or reads any WoW data or does anything malicious therefore is not a "hack" or "exploit" the actions of using so on retail are perfectly available to do.

Bots, as in robots, is just an easier way of adressing the multiboxers. I couldnt care less of how much a dude had to make all his characters go /follow, I still think its cheating and an effective way of ruining pvp.

[Henhouse]

But only because on retail you actually have to pay for multiple accounts, like someone said before. I'm sure blizzard's stand would be different if they didn't pay for all accounts since it has so much downsides that it affects other people's enjoyment of the game as well as taking space in battlegrounds where the multiboxers takes up half the team when the spots could go for 4 people

Yeah that's a good reason why, and given the amount of people on a world server and queuing for battlegrounds, etc. the likelihood of running into multiple muliboxers is very slim.

I still think its cheating and an effective way of ruining pvp.

I was never disagreeing with you.

[Eoe]

But only because on retail you actually have to pay for multiple accounts, like someone said before. I'm sure blizzard's stand would be different if they didn't pay for all accounts since it has so much downsides that it affects other people's enjoyment of the game as well as taking space in battlegrounds where the multiboxers takes up half the team when the spots could go for 4 people

Yeah that's a good reason why, and given the amount of people on a world server and queuing for battlegrounds, etc. the likelihood of running into multiple muliboxers is very slim.

I still think its cheating and an effective way of ruining pvp.

I was never disagreeing with you.

You left me speechless. I was preparing for an argument of epic proportions. /aw

[Brotherhood]

I don't think the "they pay for their accounts so blizz allows it" argument is valid.
There are 11 million people paying each month for playing. How many freaks have lets say 4 accounts and pay for them montly? Maybe one guy per server? There are like 200 servers. Is such insignificant ammount of money worth the other 10,9 million people gets upset and they leave?
Nope.

Yeah that's a good reason why, and given the amount of people on a world server and queuing for battlegrounds, etc. the likelihood of running into multiple muliboxers is very slim.

Most like each battleground has a fixed number of players on each side. Have you played Smolderforge Wrath and faced 5 real players? Let's say they are ret/arms/destro/arcane/moonkin. If you are alone you will die in like 1,5 seconds after the arms charges. In fact the dying animation would be so fast you will automatically appear in the ground dead and the addon you have to show the incoming damage will not even show so much hits at once. Well, how is that much different than facing 5 players with the only difference that they are much more clumsy when moving and by the way they are played by a single player.

"Hey, the bg has become 15 vs 10, its unfair" No, that's not it.
"Hey, the bg remains the same 10 vs 10, I'm alone again, I'm NOT versus 1 character just because is only one player who is controlling them BUT versus 5 characters, just like before, and just like before I died in 1,5 seconds" Yes, that's it. Was it different from above? No. Was it unfair then? No.

The problem is, people take it like if they were facing just 1 character since they can only see a single player playing and just that, but if they stop negating such stupid thinking and they realize they are facing FIVE characters at once, let's get real, chances of surviving that are ZERO.
Yeah, with five different players mostly 4 of them would be either clickers/backpeddlers/keyboardturners/plain stupid and you could get away. The problem is when you know how to multibox chances of knowing NOTHING about WoW are slim, so even with the handicap of being so limited when controlling all of them, you have 5 characters which removes the posibility of 4 being complete noobs, and in WoW, at least controlling them decent like most multiboxers do, 1vs5 is impossible to survive, just like in the example I put above.

So no, they aren't overpowered or anything like that at all. YOU JUST CAN'T THINK YOU CAN FACE FIVE CHARACTERS ALL AT ONCE AND SURVIVE, otherwise then retail arena top 5vs5 could have had teams with just one member. C'mon...

Battlegrounds are played in fixed number of players. You are 10vs10 anyways. You can't think of taking half the opposite team on your own on at least decent controlled characters (unless you know the fact most players are crap), so why exactly you think multiboxing is OP?

Now with the fun stuff:

This is absolutely ridiculous. How multiboxers can not only get away with this, but not be punished. Ive just spent 1 hour getting ganked in Hyjal. Why didnt I leave? Because Im stubborn. And this is effectively ruining the pvp on this server.

Could you please tell me what would have changed if instead of being ganked by FIVE characters played by just one player you were being ganked by FIVE characters played by five different players? They would have become more efficient in killing you or chaining cc's to stop you from getting away maybe.

What you are demanding is not "multiboxers should be banned" but "you should make (on a pvp realm) ganking a bannable offense coz I was being farmed and I was intelligent enought to waste 1 hour of my time there ressing instead of going to play with another character or organize a group to kill them"
Ganking is what you are talking about in your post for my understanding.

Bots, as in robots, is just an easier way of adressing the multiboxers. I couldnt care less of how much a dude had to make all his characters go /follow, I still think its cheating and an effective way of ruining pvp.

Doing /follow is cheating for you? Using macros is cheating for you? lol, always "the skilled" are the ones who cry about these things.

I repeat, face a multiboxer 1vs1 and that's not unfair, its ONE character vs ONE character.
Face a multiboxer 1vs5 and that's just stupid, would you have done the same if instead of shammyx5 they were ret/arms/moonkin/arcane/destro? No right? Would you have cryed about being 1vs5 on a BG?
-"Yes" If you are the kind of person who has a macro to say "1vs5 noob" every time you die then LEAVE INMEDIATELY THE BG, then go to the duel zone and never join a BG again.
-"No" Then if you don't cry when ret/arms/mookin/arcane/destro kills you why you do it if they are all of the same class? Remember we are not in the case scenario in which multiboxing players get an advantage of being able to add to the bg an ammount of players the other team can't, but rather there's a fixed limit of characters wich can be added to a bg making both teams equal in terms of numer of ppl.

I mean, what's the difference of getting smashed by 5 characters played by five different players or getting smashed by 5 characters played by a single player?. Could somebody tell me? Because in that answer must be the only difference which could make multiboxing unfair, since as I have proven, five characters ingame can never have "an unfair advantage".

[Balls]

I don't think the "they pay for their accounts so blizz allows it" argument is valid.
There are 11 million people paying each month for playing. How many freaks have lets say 4 accounts and pay for them montly? Maybe one guy per server? There are like 200 servers. Is such insignificant ammount of money worth the other 10,9 million people gets upset and they leave?
Nope.

Yeah that's a good reason why, and given the amount of people on a world server and queuing for battlegrounds, etc. the likelihood of running into multiple muliboxers is very slim.

Most like each battleground has a fixed number of players on each side. Have you played Smolderforge Wrath and faced 5 real players? Let's say they are ret/arms/destro/arcane/moonkin. If you are alone you will die in like 1,5 seconds after the arms charges. In fact the dying animation would be so fast you will automatically appear in the ground dead and the addon you have to show the incoming damage will not even show so much hits at once. Well, how is that much different than facing 5 players with the only difference that they are much more clumsy when moving and by the way they are played by a single player.

"Hey, the bg has become 15 vs 10, its unfair" No, that's not it.
"Hey, the bg remains the same 10 vs 10, I'm alone again, I'm NOT versus 1 character just because is only one player who is controlling them BUT versus 5 characters, just like before, and just like before I died in 1,5 seconds" Yes, that's it. Was it different from above? No. Was it unfair then? No.

The problem is, people take it like if they were facing just 1 character since they can only see a single player playing and just that, but if they stop negating such stupid thinking and they realize they are facing FIVE characters at once, let's get real, chances of surviving that are ZERO.
Yeah, with five different players mostly 4 of them would be either clickers/backpeddlers/keyboardturners/plain stupid and you could get away. The problem is when you know how to multibox chances of knowing NOTHING about WoW are slim, so even with the handicap of being so limited when controlling all of them, you have 5 characters which removes the posibility of 4 being complete noobs, and in WoW, at least controlling them decent like most multiboxers do, 1vs5 is impossible to survive, just like in the example I put above.

So no, they aren't overpowered or anything like that at all. YOU JUST CAN'T THINK YOU CAN FACE FIVE CHARACTERS ALL AT ONCE AND SURVIVE, otherwise then retail arena top 5vs5 could have had teams with just one member. C'mon...

Battlegrounds are played in fixed number of players. You are 10vs10 anyways. You can't think of taking half the opposite team on your own on at least decent controlled characters (unless you know the fact most players are crap), so why exactly you think multiboxing is OP?

Now with the fun stuff:

This is absolutely ridiculous. How multiboxers can not only get away with this, but not be punished. Ive just spent 1 hour getting ganked in Hyjal. Why didnt I leave? Because Im stubborn. And this is effectively ruining the pvp on this server.

Could you please tell me what would have changed if instead of being ganked by FIVE characters played by just one player you were being ganked by FIVE characters played by five different players? They would have become more efficient in killing you or chaining cc's to stop you from getting away maybe.

What you are demanding is not "multiboxers should be banned" but "you should make (on a pvp realm) ganking a bannable offense coz I was being farmed and I was intelligent enought to waste 1 hour of my time there ressing instead of going to play with another character or organize a group to kill them"
Ganking is what you are talking about in your post for my understanding.

Bots, as in robots, is just an easier way of adressing the multiboxers. I couldnt care less of how much a dude had to make all his characters go /follow, I still think its cheating and an effective way of ruining pvp.

Doing /follow is cheating for you? Using macros is cheating for you? lol, always "the skilled" are the ones who cry about these things.

I repeat, face a multiboxer 1vs1 and that's not unfair, its ONE character vs ONE character.
Face a multiboxer 1vs5 and that's just stupid, would you have done the same if instead of shammyx5 they were ret/arms/moonkin/arcane/destro? No right? Would you have cryed about being 1vs5 on a BG?
-"Yes" If you are the kind of person who has a macro to say "1vs5 noob" every time you die then LEAVE INMEDIATELY THE BG, then go to the duel zone and never join a BG again.
-"No" Then if you don't cry when ret/arms/mookin/arcane/destro kills you why you do it if they are all of the same class? Remember we are not in the case scenario in which multiboxing players get an advantage of being able to add to the bg an ammount of players the other team can't, but rather there's a fixed limit of characters wich can be added to a bg making both teams equal in terms of numer of ppl.

I mean, what's the difference of getting smashed by 5 characters played by five different players or getting smashed by 5 characters played by a single player?. Could somebody tell me? Because in that answer must be the only difference which could make multiboxing unfair, since as I have proven, five characters ingame can never have "an unfair advantage".

tl;dr but more than one person per server pay for it actually

[Raven]

Aight, been killed enough by this Stina1-5 today, I disslike multiboxing now and I vote for making it illegal! :P

rageragerageragerage :P

[Victort]

Agreed with Raven. Please make this thing illegal.
I really don't know what to say about this... It's not botting or anything but it's extremely abusive anyway. It's stupid. And most importantly it takes up slots for *fair* players that could be playing.
Anyone with some common sense must figure this out.

[Smashedd]

I'm really surprised multiboxing hasn't been banned yet, Hen is normally really competent at these sort of things but to let something thats ruining numerous BGs go on for this long is just silly.

[Juniac]

Why should it be bannable?
As Brotherhood said above, pretend you don't know that they are the same person. Think of them as 5 different players (it doesn't affect you gameplay, does it?) and deal with it. They still require 5 (or whatever) number of spots in a bg team.
And as far as i know, you can only buy gear for one character at a time, so he must have paid for all of them.
I dont like it either when i am facing something like this, but i see no illegal or abusive behaviour in multiboxing.