5-boxing wow rocks

[Santtu]

I've tested it briefly with all the classes, at least to level 5-10, or 1 hour

Now I got 5 x lvl 52 hunters with recruit-a-friend bonus for all. I've played them 5 full days, mostly 8 hours a day when i worked part time, and more recently, 1-2 hours a day now that I've worked 2 shifts in a day. It's just pretty awesome.

Could've done it in 2 days, but there was lot of learning to do, plus I've spent time in auction house and the BGs. I'll get these to level 60 first, grant levels to make one lvl 60 character instantly, and raise one character from 1 to 30, or 30 to 60.

Some ENFP did a convincing job to persuade me into this with one post. A month ago, I was illegally botting my chars .. this seems more fun, just as he/she predicted I forgot if it was a guy or a gal. Anyway, cheers to ENFP

This is fun

[Jeffster]

Every time I think I've seen the most confusing post on this forum, someone comes along and tops it. I have no idea what any of that means. Congratulations.

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by Jeffster

Every time I think I've seen the most confusing post on this forum, someone comes along and tops it. I have no idea what any of that means. Congratulations.

Haha, as someone who thinks he's a capable person to explain stuff, I'll go ahead. Tell me how I did it

WoW, or World of Warcraft, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It means that a great number of people play the same game world on the internet, each of them playing a "role" or a character that develops over time, gaining abilities and enjoying a lot of different kinds of interaction with other characters, some goal-orientated, some social.

5-boxing is a way to play more than one character at a time, which is the default. Usually people control one character at a time with a computer, mouse and a keyboard. With some technical arrangements, planning, setting up, skill and additional purchased accounts, this number can be increased to practically anything possible. 2,3,4 and 5 are the most common. Technical arrangements include multiple computers, software to control multiple keyboards/mice from one keyboard/mice, and hardware to use one computer display to show the graphics from multiple game instances at once.

Refer-a-friend bonus is an arrangement made by the game developer, where a player may invite "another" player to the game, increasing the in-game rewards for both the players. These increased rewards may be achieved even if the one doing the invitation is the same as the one receiving it, as long as they are done from different game accounts. So, one person may enjoy these greatly increased rewards from gameplay just by inviting their own accounts to the game.

So, did I explain well?

p.s.
this is outside the game, but I've worked 60hrs a week (2 shifts) as a telephone interviewer to pay some sudden bills I've got. It's been a heavy job

[ptgatsby]

How did you manage the multi-boxing? I mean, I've done 2 before, and found that pretty difficult (druid/hunter too, which I round relatively easy - although priest/rogue was probably the easiest).

I can't imagine doing 5 boxing!

[Jeffster]

Yes, Santtu, that makes sense. I was trying to figure out if you were talking about a boxing video game or what.

[Santtu]

I've tested all the one-class groups (all warlock, all mage, all rogue, etc) and it's relatively easy. At the easiest level there's one leader who sets up targets, with tab, or by clicking manually. Other accounts are set up to target whatever the leader is targeting. So, they have a lot of macros set up like ..

/target party1target
/cast fireball

and such.

They also have a macro

/follow party1

Which makes them follow the leader.

All of this requires a software to duplicate keypresses to all the accounts. I use keyclone, which is set up on all the computers with WoW game instances I run. For example, when I press 1, everyone attacks the monster my leader is targeting with their best spell.

At a much more advanced level, I use a home-made script running on Windows to distribute key bindings and macros to multiple computers on my small network. I can use even 5 different classes on a same party. I just assign certain kinds of spells to the same keypress, and make them all do the action at once. For example, if key 2 is a damage spell button, I make the priest do shadow word:pain, the shaman do lightning bolt, etc. If the key 3 is the heal, I make each of the healer classes do their heal.

Sometimes I have to make the different classes do their thing on a rotating basis. Then a spellsequence macro comes handy; I make my 2 healers do a sequence of 2 of heals, one of them doing a sequence of (nothing, healing wave) and another do a sequence of (flash heal, nothing). This has to be set up in both the key duplicating software and the macros of the individual characters.

[ptgatsby]

Originally Posted by Santtu

Sometimes I have to make the different classes do their thing on a rotating basis. Then a spellsequence macro comes handy; I make my 2 healers do a sequence of 2 of heals, one of them doing a sequence of (nothing, healing wave) and another do a sequence of (flash heal, nothing). This has to be set up in both the key duplicating software and the macros of the individual characters.

That makes a lot of sense. Pretty hardcore!

The only question I have - I'm assuming this doesn't pull information at all from the game (game state). So healing, etc, isn't smart (ie: at (x%) heal), as it did with multi-botting.

If not, then that's a pretty awesome system to do. I'd probably enjoy setting up the system more than playing it o_O

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by ptgatsby

That makes a lot of sense. Pretty hardcore!

The only question I have - I'm assuming this doesn't pull information at all from the game (game state). So healing, etc, isn't smart (ie: at (x%) heal), as it did with multi-botting.

If not, then that's a pretty awesome system to do. I'd probably enjoy setting up the system more than playing it o_O

Haha, I know you would. I like the setting-up phase awesomely, too! The Blizzard WoW API prevents from initiating or modifying any spells by any variables, including the game state.

It's more interesting to alter them by the game state (botting) but masking them as something else. Ya'know, you can program your own custom bots in at least one popular botting software

[ptgatsby]

Originally Posted by Santtu

Haha, I know you would. I like the setting-up phase awesomely, too! The Blizzard WoW API prevents from initiating or modifying any spells by any variables, including the game state.

It's more interesting to alter them by the game state (botting) but masking them as something else. Ya'know, you can program your own custom bots in at least one popular botting software

Botting I've done a fair bit of, but multi-boxing always seemed... boring... to me. But I've never thought of doing 5! Holy crap

I've been out of it for a long time now though, and from what I last heard, Warden was getting very difficult to overcome... ah well

[Santtu]

Uhh I said spells can't be modified by anything in the game state. that's oversimplification. THe game defines some methods; for example, you can do a spell on a target, and check whether it's friendly or hostile, and do an appropriate spell. For example,

/cast [harm] lightning bolt [help] healing wave

but you can only use the built-in features. It's been made impossible to cast a different size of heal based on how much healing the target needs, for example. Altho, there are methods to bypass those preventions..