I wanted to drop in here and say a couple of things.
People are constantly relating Multiboxers (using broadcasting software) to Botting when the two things are absolutely and completely different. Most of the people in the Multibox community hate Botters just as much as everyone else. the software used to Multibox is not botting software, acts nothing like botting software and has 0 functionality that would be useful to bots. Bots have their own software to automate gameplay. Multibox software simply sends the same key press to multiple windows.
There seems to be this idea that movement with a multibox team is easy and that life is easy for them. Stop and consider how they have to move for a second. There is a leader (driver) and the rest follow that leader (using the in game follow command which places them a few steps behind the leader). It is possible to send movement keys to all windows but nobody in their right mind does this for more than a second because when you move in game you move in the direction your camera is pointed and it is impossible to ever have them all facing/standing in exactly the same place/direction (even the difference in lag affects them) Turn this on and you have toons running in all separate directions in a few seconds. You remeber scrubbing your friend off on a fence post because he put you on follow to go grab a slice real quiick?? imagine that x however many toons you have to keep track of.
People crying about Multiboxers in World PvP (retail) have no idea what they are dealing with. Unless the Boxer gets the drop on you and fires all toons at you with basically a 1 shot (in that case…sure complain) but after that all bets are off. Remember how they have to move (see #2) yeah…Blizzard disables the follow function the second you are flagged for PvP which makes it impossible to have your team do anything but stand there looking stupid in a world PvP situation (Arena and BG as well but because of this no Multiboxer in their right mind would step foot into those environments). As a side note I absolutely 100% support this feature for a couple of reasons: a. I think it is a clear advantage to control multiple characters in PvP and completely unfair (they should have done this in Classic as well as it would not have altered the spirit of the original game in any way). b. It all but killed the Bot trains in BG’s which were completely out of control. (Bots don’t use the same software but they used to use the follow function in BG’s as it was easier to follow real players to combat areas of the map than to try to build some sort of logic into them).
I’m assuming the thing that escalated the situation to the point that Blizzard acted on it is a few things (just my speculation).
a. The huge teams of Boomkins sitting in a hyper spawn location and just grinding it 24/7 without ever moving. While these teams are formed using Multiboxing tools they are also taking advantage of a couple of other things that are the actual problem here: in game targeting and attack macros and a key repeater function on their mouse or keyboard which allows them to repeat the in game macros and get up and go about their business while their “not a Bot” bit churns out gold… Oh yeah and the final piece that allows the whole thing to work in the first place provided by Blizzard themselves…The Lootarang because there is no way to make them loot or work otherwise without actually being a Bot.
b. The mass resource farmers crashing the AH economy. Once again we have Blizzard to thank for this, not the Multibox community. Remeber when nodes were not shared and had a respawn timer? when that went away it opened the door for exploiters. put a CD on the nodes (even if it is like 5 seconds or something) and this problem goes away overnight.
Flame away…
p.s. the ironic part to this is that those acts carried out by the exploiters that really annoyed people and set Blizzard on this course are still going to be there doing the exact same thing because those farmers just build the loss of accounts into the price of doing business and expect to loose them in a matter of weeks. They give 0 cares about the policies, the same as real life criminals have 0 respect for the laws. The only people that this hurts/affects are Hobbyists like me that do it (did it, now retired) for fun and the challenge of setting the thing up and making it work.
No, you’re supposed to play like everybody else, or face the consequences that comes with your play style, I fail to see why you think you’re better than others and deserve the extra rewards multiboxing was providing you with, while having no drawbacks for those rewards.
There are several threads and youtube videos with the title 'multiboxing banned" or something similar.
People simply didn’t read blizzard’s post, or they didn’t understand it. Maybe they should be posting something to clarify the rule to the masses, because there are a ton of people who don’t understand how multiboxing works.
Wow this post is unbelievably disgusting. It boils down to, because I didn’t get a mount I wanted, I resorted to using a third party program. But somehow, in the eyes of the WoW community this is seen as okay? Nice you farmed all the mounts you could have ever wanted because you were borderline botting. But its justified and fair, because you put in the hard work(having things be accelerated for you by an ridiculous amount) Not mention casually stating yeah I obtained millions of gold, but I could have gotten more if I wasn’t inefficient. I’m going back to League of Legends, at least they give a sht about their own game and the community doesn’t condone cheating. WoW is clearly not for me, its apparently just full of old people who borderline bot all day to ruin the integrity of the game because blizzard said it was ok 16 years ago before softwaring was a thing.
It’s kind of amazing how unsophisticated people who are opposed to multiboxing are, thinking that tabbing in and out with all your apps full screen is somehow not a year 2k thing to do.
did you read the thread? op was reported over and over again for using software he wasn’t using and now people are going to slam blizz with tons of false reports of things they cannot prove and waste the time of GMs that could be banning bots.
As if I needed more proof of my point, the OP has now been “flagged by the community” as offensive content. Apparently some are even determined to attack my freedom of speech.
Let me reiterate: I do not attest that all multiboxers are angels, nor that the impact on the game is entirely benign. There are legitimate complaints as to the effect on materials prices, but even within this discussion those gripes are being conflated with common in-game woes that have nothing to do with multiboxers. Case in point, @Azhurea complaining about her raid group being able to find no herbs because of multibox gatherers. If you can’t find any herbs, it’s because you are herbing during a high-traffic time. A multibox gatherer is moving at perhaps 80% of the speed of a typical player gathering–we just can’t make sure all of our toons got the node as quickly as if we only had one toon to manage. But in that sense a multiboxer is taking fewer herbs, and getting much more proceeds out of the ones we do find, than a single player cruising all over the place. Herb prices go down because of multiboxing? Undoubtedly, although, the effect is probably more in the range of 10-15% at most given what a small percentage of the community we are. The effect on meats may be more substantial, because a broadcasting multiboxer is able to kill mobs much more effectively, increasing respawn rates while still getting 5-8x the loot. But, I haven’t seen anyone complaining about the prices of Stringy Loins or Rubbery Flanks. It seems to be more a matter of “gee, I’m having a hard time gathering just before my raid. I’m sure it’s because there’s a multiboxer here somewhere.” No, it’s because everyone is trying to do that.
The other thing that multiboxers are being conflated with is bots. While I don’t doubt that a botter could use broadcasting software to his or her advantage, I doubt that it’s the same programs multiboxers were using. If your character is an actual bot, in fact, it’s perfectly possible to run multiple processes of the bot in different zones, which would mean multiboxer techniques are getting banned but actual bots aren’t. That said, I have seen the druid farms in a couple of spots in Nazmir and northern Zuldazar that never reply to you. It’s inconvenient when you’re trying to do a world quest there, but otherwise I didn’t sweat having to spend an extra 30 seconds to get the quest done. I’d support banning them, but it doesn’t have to be because they’re using keystroke broadcasting, there’s clearly no human being driving the thing.
Back to my original point, though: Blizz is now handing a cudgel to people who complain vociferously about multiboxers. While those complaints have a grain of truth, they are wildly overstated, and this will generate a wave of grief reporting that will lead to legitimate players getting banned. It will not have much of an effect on the actual bots. On another line, this software ban will have the effect of forcing legitimate multiboxers back into hum-drum farming activities as it takes away our ability to run current dungeon content or previous raid tiers with our teams, things that the community seldom, if ever, complains about.
This thread, like many others, is just people screeching about people playing in a way they don’t like.
The posts about “legit” zulian tiger are a great example of that.
Yeah I’m sure you worked real hard soloing that during WotLK and that makes you better than someone using the BMAH…
All this screeching from jealous people is getting old, and I pity their next target once the anti-MB rhetoric slows down.
How can you just casually state this ban wont affect many of the botters? I get you are trying to play the victim or whatever but, Blizzard banning the program itself argues against this. Unless of course, this ban is also targeted at a certain suspicious player base. If you expect sympathy while casually gloating about things you’ve earned by potentially suspicious gameplay that is now a bannable offense in the eyes of Blizzard(I am referring to multiple keycloning) you are quite off your rocker. If you are a legitimate multiboxer, its best to just live with the burden of false reports and keep quiet or stop doing it. This ban by Blizzard openly enforces false reporting and the like because of how vague it was. Not everyone reads into the forums, they see their favorite streamer say multiboxing is now banned, and will report it. Nothing you can really do about it, to many this player base has a natural negative stigma attached to it. People want to report them.
I would not be surprised if hardware transmission also generates the same warnings from Blizzard as software ones.
As they will have 2 methods of detection
Warden for known programs (this wont flag hardware boxing)
Logging of server requests for individuals and groups on the same IP (will see hardware boxing and unknown software boxing as the same behaviour model, 1 IP generating multiple requests simultaneously to multiple characters).
And I was hardware boxing is unlikely to get your warning/suspension overturned, so I would strongly recommend against anything that looks like software transmission
If you are innocent you will not get banned. Or are you talking about the small lockout that happens if too many reports are done at once? Because that isn’t a ban.