Is it allowed and not against TOS to play 2 instances on a PC simultainisly?
I just saw a Youtube Video where someone get it to work with process explorer.
There’s been lots of posts about it, no clear direction from Blizzard, so mostly just arguing about the tidbits people can find online that may or may not be specific to D2R vs. other Blizzard games.
Some claim people have been banned over it, others claim those people were also doing something else (botting, map-hack, etc.)
Technically Process Explorer is not a 3rd party tool, since it’s made by Microsoft, who is the OS manufacturer, and therefore not a 3rd party 
I’m not an expert, but closing a specific process that checks for other game instances doesn’t seem to be on the same level of “reading game data” like map hack or botting, which is where Blizzard tends to draw the line.
Additionally they are usually pretty clear on not supporting (as in helping you get it working) mulitboxing, but also not disallowing it, so long as you don’t use any sort of automation. So if you are alt-tabbing between D2R instances and manually controlling each character, this tends to be something they aren’t concerned about, whereas if you had macros or scripting that would have one or more of the instances moving without manual “1 button, 1 action” type playing, then they’d have a problem with it.
Unfortunately it remains firmly in the grey area, so use at your own risk, I suppose.
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Every single ToS is written to cover pretty much any and everything possible, so if there is a gamebreaking abuse that comes of it then they can justify your ban. But beyond that, they can ban you at anytime and there really isn’t any thing you can do about it. Your whole account belongs to them.
On your technicality, when Microsoft officially purchases Activision which has purchased Blizzard, which owns the Diablo Franchise, which made D2r, I’m not even sure process explorer could be considered a 3rd party tool lmfao.
As for the OP’s subject. Multiboxing is a gray area that for sure falls within the ToS and they could justify a ban. They could also ban you for hostiling someone or accidently typing a swear word in chat. Yes those all could happen and fall within the scope of the ToS, but it is unlikely. Onto the subject of people claiming to have been banned for just multi-boxing, it simply hasn’t happened. Perhaps they were automating some of the screens, perhaps someone logged into one of their accounts an botted or maphacked with it, but not a single one of them was just multi-boxing. I used that feature a lot on LOD, and I know plenty who do it in D2R, and nobody has ever been banned from the group for doing just that.
Blizzard has stated previously on the D2 LoD forum that it is perfectly acceptable to multibox. You can have players 8, you just have to pay for it.
yes you can do that, i run 5 instances at once since season 1. never had any bans.
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Been using practically since day one with 3 accounts. I don’t multibox, but for killing Dclone I keep my Pally handy. Also for muling between accounts. Sometimes I am in the game for days with both.
if i get the technicality right, the process explorer shouldn’t even be necessary. If you can create 2nd local account on your PC, and run Bnet and D2 on both users simultaneously (and NOT as admin, shift + right click → run as different user), it should not be able to detect the other copies running. Non-elevated processes on windows just aren’t allowed to see or in any other way interact with any processes of other users. You can even create a shortcut for this so you can just 1-click start it.
This is all in theory, I haven’t tried it.
Personally I see so many people multi box. So many HC players have a 2nd account for their BO barb… I personally kinda find it to defeat the purpose. But if you’re just using it for more character slots and muling then i don’t see why not
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This was a common method with the legacy game, not sure if it works with D2R but as you said it seems feasible. Possibly more of a pain to switch users vs. the process explorer method.
Look up the runas command.
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