I have been mining a lot recently in the Forbidden reach since it’s the most lucrative spot to mine materials due to the predictability of where the best nodes are and I am seeing way too many people multiboxing or using bots. It’s my understanding that both are against the rules now. There is a possibility that the multiboxers are alt/tabbing over to their second account and just using dragonflying to fly in tandem but that’s still an exploit that banning multiboxing was attempting to stop. They are still using one account to fly two accounts around and simply alt/tab shifting over to mine the node with a second character and hopping back on the tandem mount to have one account fly them both around again. This seems like a totally intentional exploit that goes against the spirit of what the rules are intended for. Having to alt/tab over to a second account to mine and hop back onto the mount again takes less than 5 seconds. This is still the behavior that needs to be banned especially with how nodes work these days. I see these people constantly and they are easy to spot. They are almost always guildless and almost always evoker due to the short leveling process or druid do to the fact they don’t have to put points into mining to not be dismounted. Something really needs to be done by this.
Ya, I’ve been seeing them A LOT recently. Can’t say if they’re using automation or key broadcasters, but if there not they’re inhumanly good at controlling 4 or 5 toons in the exact same manner.
Repeat after me please.
Mulitboxing is not automatically against the rules, it is certain types of software that is also used in botting that is.
“Multiboxing, or playing multiple World of Warcraft accounts at once, is not a violation of our End User License Agreement. Please note, however, that use of all software or hardware mechanisms used to mirror commands to multiple World of Warcraft accounts at the same time, or to automate or streamline multiboxing in any way may result in account penalties.”
As long as they’re multiboxing manually, it’s not an exploit. It’s totally acceptable. If you suspect they are violating the actual rules, right click and report them. Bliz will investigate, and take action if they determine rules have been broken. But someone manually alt-tabbing and controlling 2 accounts is not against any rules. Even if they’re using the same mount.
Here’s the thing…
Breaking that rule is what makes it obvious they are multiboxing.
We’re not noticing one account waiting for a rare to spawn, one at the AH and couple more off somewhere else doing something, we’re noticing conga lines of accounts all doing the same thing in the same way when hitting up resource nodes.
It’s almost like I covered that when I said “exploit that goes against the spirit of what the rules are intended for.” Thanks for addressing what I already addressed. It still needs to be made against the rules and banned if that’s what they are doing. It’s still an exploit against intended gameplay now that they have banned certain types of hardware and software with the obvious intention of banning multiboxing due to the unfair advantages it provides in many aspects of gameplay. I literally looked up the rules on multiboxing before this post and that’s why I phrased what I said the way I did. Try to pay attention to everything somebody says in the full context next time.
I have a friend that runs several characters at one time and does it with a setting in Windows. You resize the game windows so you can set them side by side, then you enable a windows features that makes any window you mouse over the active window for input and presto!
Then all you do is put the alts on auto follow, play your “main” and when you need to do something on the “alts” you just mouse over that window and it takes over keyboard/mouse control command.
Now to be clear, I am not saying that there aren’t bots out there. What I am saying it is possible to multibox without breaking the rules.
They aren’t multiboxers. They are bots and some “legitimate” players as an attempt to legitimize the activity.
Just report 'em all for botting and be on your way. Oh and for anyone who says the whole “Why won’t Blizzard do anything?!” that is so common with these threads to pop up, have two precautionary videos of Thor explaining it:
I understood something like that might be going on and this post is about multiboxers and bots needing to be banned, and behavior like you described needing to be also made against the rules too because it accomplishes the exact same thing as multiboxing while farming.
I doubt it will be long before botters figure out how to look more random, so as to be undetectable to the casual viewer. In fact there’s many who probably are already, and obvious groups all following the same route are just amateurish beginners.
I understand the threads with the whole “why won’t you Blizzard do anything?” are common and can be annoying, but closed mouths also don’t get fed. This behavior needs to be brought to light and m
Bots are so obvious, it’s a wonder they are struggling.
i found the problem. your understanding is incorrect! multiboxing is not prohibited.
it’s not a difficult problem to solve, really. they just don’t bother because there’s no need. action against bots is taken so infrequently and results in negligible loss to the botters, so there’s no point in spending tons of time on it.
What’s the solution?
implement some randomized timing delays. add some random “noise” to the pathing. have one of the bot “clients” sit out a node here and there so they’re not all hitting the same nodes every time.
Leave my cheap crafting mats alone.
actually code software to detect this crap and constantly update it like antivirus software gets updated when new viruses are created. I would be okay if an expansion was delayed a month or so if they delayed it for the sole purpose of putting a massive team on the task of stopping this permanently. It’s been almost two decades and they just haven’t done enough to their technology to block this type of stuff from happening. Real solutions for permanent fixes need to happen. Not a blue post about how they banned a bunch of accounts found to be using bots every 3 years. They should have an active team monitoring for bots and multiboxers, or people using multiple accounts to break the spirit of the multiboxing rule as I described above and immediate action needs to be taken.
just like to leave this here, some more talk on a very similar subject.
Ok, sorry, I misread. I thought you said getting rid of bots wasn’t difficult. 