I was thinking about leveling a warrior and having a priest follow him around to heal him after combat. While looking up the multi-boxing policy, I noticed there have been quite a few additions to it.
So what’s the verdict on dual-boxing these days? Is it allowed? I don’t want to do anything to risk my account.
Yes, just not running automation to have button clicks happen simultaneously on all boxes. Alt tab is just fine.
Dual boxing where you physically control all of the clients was always allowed. Automation and key cloning was not and still isn’t.
The rule is 1 button press equals 1 game input. Alt/tabbing between clients is fine. The potential ban comes from using hardware/software to mimic key presses to multiple clients.
This is why I see boxing as Pay-to-Win. You are literally paying $15 extra to have abilities not native to your character.
Bbbbut, what’s the difference between having a second real person and just doing both myself? - it’s that you “the individual” have a far more powerful warrior than those paying less.
Press 1 = Warrior MS and Priest penance? Bad
Doing your warrior thing, start autoing, tab over to the priest, do a heal, tab back to the thing doing the killing = Good.
I don’t think I’ll be affecting anyone by just trying to make leveling a bit smoother.
I think he’s imagining someone multiboxing five elemental shamans in the exact same spot(to make it harder to tell how many are there), popping Elemental Mastery, and casting five Chain Lightnings all at once to attempt to destroy five people at once.
…And now I’m imagining that, but someone with five monitors and five keyboards controlling that, and it’s a pretty hilarious image.
Yeah I ran accounts, sometimes 4 like this. But without the software, I could only get the hang of 3. Had a broomie, lock ranged dps dotting everything and a pally healer. It worked well up to about lvl 30. Then the ganking got so bad wasn’t worth it.
as long as you don’t cast spells from both char with one key stroke. You are fine
If you go into the tech support section of the forums and ask about this in greater detail, you’ll find wildly inconsistent answers from the blue posts on the forums regarding “gray areas” in the 1 button press, 1 action category.
For example, you cannot use any “3rd party” software to make dual boxing easier - but if you have an OS configured to consistently send different key strokes to different PIDs. IE if I press the 1 key - windows sends the 1 key to the active process, but the “2” key always searches for a specific process ID (this would allow you to play your warrior on 1 screen but everytime you press ‘7’ for example, the warrior’s client gets no command and the priest casts penance on the warrior without changing the active process (alt-tabbing)
There’s no language in the ToS which would prevent you from doing this at an operating system level except the vague “any software or hardware that makes multiboxing easier is prohibited”, but having multiple monitors clearly is a hardware implementation that makes it “easier” and that is very clearly allowed.
So if you decide to get “cute” and play in the gray area - understand that the technical clarity on the rules on both the forums, and I imagine in your potential ban-appeal is going to be vague and you’ll realize the exact line is fairly arbitrary.
But purely alt-tabbing between 2 accounts is allowed, and blizzard has set a precedent over several years that having multiple monitors is not “making dual boxing easier through hardware” even though it rather clearly is.
I’m dual-boxing right now on an Orc Hunter and Dwarf Hunter that have pet boars with suspiciously similar (identical) names
It technically is but since most in game moderation is just done by automated bans from reports good luck!!
Key cloning/Broadcasting was allowed until BFA.
I remember it quite vividly since I slowly got into multi boxing over a month level the characters to max level while learning how it works and techniques then was announced it was banned and no longer allowed. My characters were only max for like a week didn’t even start farming on them yet xD
Using software to clone keystrokes was okay until like 4-5 years ago. Ex pressing 1 makes multiple characters use their 1 skill.
The rule change happened early ish in classic. I know because a month before the change I got banned and I thought it was because of this software, but it was only on 1 character
When I talked to a GM in the chat app, I explained everything and said basically “if it’s because of this tool shouldn’t all my boxes be banned?”
GM said it was actually a false positive, a bunch of people were impacted. Ban got reversed later that day.
3 months later though they did change the rules.
PS - my wife was calling me a criminal all day.
Yes, you are 100% allowed to own more than 1 account and play both at the same time while alt+tabbing. just dont use any software that mimics keystrokes across both clients.
I have a guildie running 3 accounts at the same time for warlock summoning purposes. Since she controls 1 box at a time, no automation, she never got actioned for it. That type of multi boxing is allowed.