I posted earlier about my views on what the broadcasting ban will mean for my impact on the economy. TLDR, farming is now about the only thing I can do effectively as a multiboxer, so I will be pushed to doing more of that now that I can no longer (legally) use broadcasting software to make moderate difficulty 5-man content or earlier raid tiers feasible.
But the ban is already having another negative effect. I realize the risks of playing with War Mode on, but I figured the inconvenience of going back to Stormwind was unnecessary to get some more parts for the Gorilla Bot pet from the Vol’dun Assault tonight. BAM! Out of the sky come a hunter, a lock, and a monk, obliterating my toons. Then they camp my corpses, and I eventually wait them out to juice up the spider so it can defeat the gorilla. While I’m getting my parts, the hunter comes back and starts knocking my toons around with this explosive traps.
Had I been using key broadcasting, I would have been in and out, but without that the operations on the ground take quite a bit longer. After I do finally get my parts on each of my toons, I do try to attack back but an i100 DH is no match for an i120 seasoned PvP hunter. He finishes me off and his friends are camping me again before long.
So, I make a toon on his server to say hello, also try to make light of it, and he’s like “enjoy your vacation.” I tell him I am not broadcasting. “Yes your are,” he stammers. “We are all reporting all your toons. We saw you broadcasting to attack the boss.” The Gorilla? That’s not attackable. But regardless, there was nothing I could do to convince this guy I was playing by the rules. At bottom, he insisted, multiboxing is dead without key broadcasting so therefore I MUST have been using broadcasting. “Enjoy your ban.”
The effect here throws into light a fundamental bias in the community. Regardless of whether multiboxers are good or bad for the game, the people who hate them the most are typically the people who suffer them the least, and probably benefit from things like the bushels of herbs they gather. I think that, while there are genuine complaints to be lodged against some multiboxers, or even any of them at one time or another, everyone should think a little harder about these posts to the effect “With multiboxing gone, has Blizzard finally saved Shadowlands?” Really? Was your raid that bad because, as you were doing it with a flask you got slightly cheaper, some guy was in Nazmir farming Riverbud? Was your arena experience a mess because someone beat you out for Reins of the Cobalt Primordial Direhorn on the BMAH last night, and you’re just certain that person (whose name you never saw) was a multiboxer?
TBH, I think the people most entitled to complain are the old geezers who enjoy passing their time picking herbs and collecting things from the auction houses. Otherwise, multiboxed farming is only bad in principle because it has an effect on the price of materials, and to some extent the abundance of gold in circulation (all those cloth farms making pants and vendoring them). But, even then, from the standpoint of a player who wants to spend his extra gold on tokens, the effects are probably minor.
On the other hand, Blizzard has just handed multibox haters a cudgel, and at the same time made multiboxing a crime ipso facto–there is nothing I can do to convince anyone who accuses me of key broadcasting that I am not doing so. This will generate a lot of accusations from players salivating to get rid of those multiboxers they blame for ruining the game. Some of those accusations may get innocent people banned. So, I repeat from my earlier post: Blizzard had better have a way to track key broadcasting and verify for themselves when it is happening. Otherwise, they have merely created a scapegoat for any real problems with the game.