Multi-box

[Cr0wL0ck]

I would like to suggest making some clear, easy to find rules for multiboxer's and that no-one by default can multibox except if they daily vote, each point then works as a token for being able to multibox in pve for that day.

considering that blizzard did allow multiboxers but only at the cost of extra accounts i would consider it fair to say vote/donate can be used as a way to pay for multiboxing.

for example, every 24 hours you can vote and each point allows you to use 1 extra account for a day which you can make a plan for that keeps using a coin automatically until you disable it or use each single coin 1 by 1.


note: [CR]this thread is over, it has been de-railed and there already exists other threads with the same topic so please delete this thread.[/CR] The Thread has been purged from de-railed content and is now open again, remember everyone has their opinion and no-one is forced to accept another's opinion, this thread exists for the purpose of discussing opinions so keep it clean :wink:

 

[yorukami]

Its good idea!

 

[Hiltz]

How do you even plan to make something like that work, Its not like mult-boxers log in the same account, they own several of them. You could try IP based blocking, but anyone whos decent enought to work his way around a multi-box program, probibly knows how to use a dynamic IP. Not to mention, ur just making more of a problem for 2 people that might be playing in the same house.

We know for a fact that the leveling raits are going to be low, so I wouldent worry to much about seeing 7-8 mages all running at you anytime soon, even if you leveled them in grps of 2 it would still take weeks of time to do, and if you did them all at once ur exp would be nerfed into the ground.

Not to shoot yea down, just saying. I wouldent worry bout it to much tho.

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

you could "lock ip address" to account, similar to how you lock the email address, this would make it safe from being hacked and it would make the controlled multi-boxing possible.

yes it is possible to use a proxy in order to enter through another ip address but it would case lag or similar unless you pay for it and even then there would be a difference in latency which could cause problems for you so even if they wanted to it wouldnt be usefull.

friend/family playing from the same house/connection: this could indeed be tricky but it is not impossible, you could register each machine with "mac-address" instead of "ip-address" to achieve this altough the player could then just run virtual machines to multibox. the solution would be to write a simple background software that communicates with the server confirming that no virtual machine software is running at the same time as wow.

note: i am not worrying about seing 4-8 mages running at me since no-matter the private server it is commonly known that any pvp during multibox is bannable, a rule copied from blizzard. what i worry about is the in-balance it causes such as farming materials easier than anyone else, or creating bank alts that are online most of the time taking up a slot even at peak hour's. or soloing dungeons or raids. and since private servers cost nothing and multibox software is improving more and more would use it. the idea in multi-box was for blizz to earn more cash for the few who would use it but on private server there is no cash limit so there needs to be vote/donation cap on it ☺

tip: this needs to be done, no-matter what since otherwise GM's will have to read through a stream of mails where people report seing multi-boxers entering battleground altough it is bannable and then play detective but if they add a minor piece of software that could be part of a launcher then they could sort everything and reduce multi-box and detective issues long before they would appear.

 

[Aieris]

Multiboxing is allowed on all Twinstar servers and Kronos devs just can't make their own rules. The token fo voting is interesting idea, but you must have someone, who will write SW to check it on the server side, account manager and so on. And as mentioned above, a lot of people have shared IP and changing MAC adres is not so hard thing.

To sum it up, it's nearly impossible to forbid it. And imagine those, who have 4 accs, 2 for each faction with alts and each day, they must decide, which faction or which character they want to play. Nonsence.

And in the end, I, personaly, never seen much multiboxers, so it would be a lot of efort to forbid something for few players.

 

[Psojed]

My question is, why should we limit multiboxing at all?

Rules clearly state that multiboxer has to control his characters on his own. For example, you can bind a warrior's hotkeys to ASDF QWER ZXCV and bind a priest's hotkeys to TYUI GHJK VBNM. But you still have to press those keys to control them.

Soloing dungeons? Good luck controlling 5 characters at once simultaneously this way. Keycloning and macros can surely make it easier, but they wont make it easier for the multiboxer to get to level 60, grab a decent gear, learn all his spells and setup his keybindings five times.

PvP? Same thing. You are controlling 5 characters, to me it's the same when a 5man group ganks you on their way to Stratholme. Except that only one person controls it. In 5v5, I'd say 5 people with 5 brains and 10 hands prevail.

 

[Lharts]

I think the question is, is it allowed to use a 3rd party tool to copy your imput to 5 different instances of the game.
Such as playing 1 mage yourself and 4 other mages will perform the same action at the same time.
You still play yourself then, right? Is that allowed?

 

[Aieris]

Someone already copyed here this part of rules - it is forbiden to use third party software for ......

 

[Psojed]

In the server FAQ theres a link to the list of violations.

Using automated software for unmanned playing on the server
- It is forbidden to use any third-side applications and/or programs which can perform actions such as fishing, levelling up a character, mining, collecting herbs etc. without having to be controlled by a player. Multibox is allowed since it does not fit this definition.
- Violating this rule might result in banning the player’s IP address.

In other words,
You can control two or more characters at once.
You can use Keyclone to send keystrokes to other WoW clients for your characters to move simultaneously.

Example: you have 2 mages, you press "2" and both mages start casting frostbolt at the same time. This is allowed.
// Even though your keypress was sent to two windows simultaneously, it was YOU who pressed the key and your character responded with a single action/macro.

But you cannot queue multiple actions to a single keypress.

Example: You have a warrior and a priest. You press E, your warrior charges his target and keeps casting Sunder Armor every 2 seconds. Your priest casts Renew on the Warrior and recasts it automatically when Renew ends.
// Since your characters are using abilities repeatedly, without any keypresses on your side = automation = not allowed.

Simple as that.

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

My question is, why should we limit multiboxing at all?

1:
1 player uses 5 characters means that you can have less unique players online at the same time on the server, lets say your server limit is 5, 1 decides to multibox 5 accounts. 4 others 5 minutes later want to enter the server but it is full, it means that less unique players can be online at the same time if too many multibox. no-matter the limit there will be times when the cap is reached and i cannot see how it should be justified that 1 player reserves 2-40 spots or for himself just to have an unfair advantage rather than allowing a unique new player to join. it also affects the server's resources the more that are online so alone that reason should be enough.

2:
multiboxer's can host their own battlegrounds late at night at win feed his accounts, thereby messing with the pvp system. and nomatter how much you watch them at night they will find days months after the release when you have better to do than constantly whatch it and that is when some either uses this a lot or from time to time does it to make it seem smooth, and for every character it reserves a spot on the standing that other honest players should have had. they can even have alliance + horde accounts and find secluded areas of the world where they once a week kill eachother 10-20 times each, next week they pick other accounts to do this with... it gets much worse when 2 multiboxers become friends...

3:
multiboxers farm faster and safer than single player's so earning gold will go many times faster for them especially once they hit 60, so all who want to compete in progress are forced to join the multibox train.

4:
camping: you can place your accounts on every black-lotus or other value-able spawn and camp it knowing you get all the gold or control on that item on the auction as long as you are awake and therefore can decide the price you want the longer you stay awake.

5:
you can ignore bank cost since you can just make limitless amount of alt's that you can trade it to or from and get more bank slots than if you paid for extra. you can even ignore travel cost with a mage and warlock, have a warlock in every city with 2 low levels and summon you to where you want to be or portal from capitals without needing another mages assistance.

6:
you can kill a low lvl and plant 1 of your accounts to watch, he wont resurrect seeing you there even if you arent even watching that account but just afk on it to annoy and mess with him... this is likely to make a new player leave the server for good, he wont be using forum or such since he is new and even old players leave rather than trying to proove what happened.

7:
blizzard had a cost on each account without discount for multiboxers for another good reason: free multi-box easily get's out of hand. it starts with being invissible but later on more and more pick it and more decide to find the limit before a GM is involved.

8:
trolling, if you multibox you can act as if you where multiple random people when whispering someone or debating and turn the masses in your favor making them think others think the same

note: i know you can fear a multiboxer and he will only have 1 to control at a time, but if you have 1 lvl 60 vs 5 you can only kill 1-2 at a time and he can without care swap to another upon death untill you die and use 1 of the last to ressurect... if you want it to be "blizzlike" then there needs to be some sort of restriction on it since it no-longer has a high cost.

Emerald Dream's only counter is that they ban any pvp activity on multi-boxers but only some multi-boxers listen to that and others just try their luck since only few would record the evidence... on ED multiboxers have exploited every single exploit there was and some only multiboxers could use such as the repeatable quest "Avenging the Fallen" in hinterlands that alone gave 1.77 gold but all in group could loot so multiboxers grouped up and earned almost free gold since the "stuck" command could be used every 5 min as hearthstone... that bug was first fixed 2 weeks ago and look how old the server is, many worse exploit and bugs exist for multiboxers so allowing free multibox without any restraints brings chaos.

 

[Lharts]

You make assumptions. Just wait and see. I honestly don't believe it will ever be a problem and if it really was to be one staff will handle it.
Kronos staff takes care that you can abuse as less as possible so I wouldn't worry about that either.

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

Multiboxing is allowed on all Twinstar servers and Kronos devs just can't make their own rules. The token for voting is interesting idea, but you must have someone, who will write SW to check it on the server side, account manager and so on. And as mentioned above, a lot of people have shared IP and changing MAC adres is not so hard thing.

changing IP and MAC address is not so common, 1 out of 100 know's how to and 1 in 10 of those would even consider using this for bad, i can see the trouble with making the software but consider that if the launcher also included patch notes and so on when fixing stuff or warning players beforehand if the server has a scheduled shutdown or latency trouble. there are many things that could be included in it and you could even delay it until after release. the fact is just that as long as there is an obvious exploit visible to all it will be used.

Emerald Dream is so far the only who even care about them so much as to ban them when going pvp, other servers who have completely ignored them haven't really grown old before the auction or similar started to be ruled by the multibox exploiters. this is the type that works like a leech and slowly drains the vanilla feel and makes it seem like a regular random private server

You make assumptions. Just wait and see. I honestly don't believe it will ever be a problem and if it really was to be one staff will handle it.
Kronos staff takes care that you can abuse as less as possible so I wouldn't worry about that either.

i am not doubting that at all but i know the danger of multiboxing and i have played since the beta of retail and many years on private server's and some things are hard if not impossible to manage later on especially if those that are the cause hide from plain sight and arent making it too obvious.

 

[Psojed]

1:
1 player uses 5 characters means that you can have less unique players online at the same time on the server, lets say your limit is 5, 1 decides to multibox 5 accounts. 4 others 5 minutes later want to enter the server but it is full, it means that less unique players can be online at the same time if too many multibox. no-matter the limit there will be times when the cap is reached and i cannot see how it should be justified that 1 player reserves 2-40 spots or for himself just to have an unfair advantage rather than allowing a unique new player to join.

There is no player limit at the moment. Twinstar's wotlk servers can support up to 3000 players (from what I've seen). No reason to limit online alts.

2:
multiboxer's can host their own battlegrounds late at night at win feed his accounts, thereby messing with the pvp system. and nomatter how much you watch them at night they will find days months after the release when you have better to do than constantly whatch it and that is when some either uses this a lot or from time to time does it to make it seem smooth, and for every character it reserves a spot on the standing that other honest players should have had.

You said yourself that multiboxing in pvp is banned, mainly as a rule copied from blizzard. If multiboxers can't pvp while multiboxing, this is out of the question. Not to mention that honor trading is part of the List of Violations too, so you only need to catch him once.

3:
multiboxers farm faster and safer than single player's so earning gold will go many times faster for them especially once they hit 60, so all who want to compete in progress are forced to join the multibox train.

I am not convinced about that.

4:
camping: you can place your accounts on every black-lotus or other value-able spawn and camp it knowing you get all the gold or control on that item on the auction as long as you are awake and therefore can decide the price you want the longer you stay awake.

You cannot camp black lotuses, because they spawn somewhere else on every respawn.

Even if they did spawn on the same place, you can camp them with your alts too, you don't need to be multiboxing. Hell, you don't even need another account, you can simply relog at the right time. It's your time you spend being awake, I see no problem.

5:
you can ignore bank cost since you can just make limitless amount of alt's that you can trade it to or from and get more bank slots than if you paid for extra. you can even ignore travel cost with a mage and warlock, have a warlock in every city with 2 low levels and summon you to where you want to be or portal from capitals without needing another mages assistance.

"Normal" player surely can't do the same thing, right?
If you don't like alts, then don't level them and deal with it! I never had any high level alts and It worked fairly well for me.

6:
you can kill a low lvl and plant 1 of your accounts to watch, he wont resurrect seeing you there even if you arent even watching that account but just afk on it to annoy and mess with him... this is likely to make a new player leave the server for good, he wont be using forum or such since he is new and even old players leave rather than trying to proove what happened.

Again, "normal" player surely can't do the same thing, right?

7:
blizzard had a cost on each account without discount for multiboxers for another good reason: free multi-box easily get's out of hand. it starts with being invissible but later on more and more pick it and more decide to find the limit before a GM is involved.

If I understand correctly, just because some huge gaming company has paid to play accounts, we should limit/ban people from playing multiple characters?
That's as if you said that Pokemon battles are one on one and that's why you can't shoot two wands at once.

8:
trolling, if you multibox you can act as if you where multiple random people when whispering someone or debating and turn the masses in your favor making them think others think the same

Again, "normal" player surely can't do the same thing, right?

note: i know you can fear a multiboxer and he will only have 1 to control at a time, but if you have 1 lvl 60 vs 5 you can only kill 1-2 at a time and he can without care swap to another upon death untill you die and use 1 of the last to ressurect... if you want it to be "blizzlike" then there needs to be some sort of restriction on it since it no-longer has a high cost.

I killed 4 different people with my paladin back on Kronos and they were all attacking at the same time :wink:
"Blizzlike" has nothing to do with or against people wanting to play more characters. This sounds more like a paranoia without any real base for your fears.

Emerald Dream's

Sorry, I definitely won't be looking to the worst failure of a server out there for an example.

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

There is no player limit at the moment. Twinstar's wotlk servers can support up to 3000 players (from what I've seen). No reason to limit online alts.

well if the server truly can handle "limitless" then i wont say much but if it is anywhere below then that's a point to be concerned about since it will affect latency directly and the server will lagg, freeze and bug if it gets anywhere close to its limit. and the more players there are the more vulnerable it gets to ddos, and nomatter the protection there is no 100% cure against ddos. so i am just saying this could realy hurt and the limit would have to be set if the server became popular which i believe it will.

If I understand correctly, just because some huge gaming company has paid to play accounts, we should limit/ban people from playing multiple characters?

no, what i am saying is: becourse it was limited back then due to cost and therefore only few did and you couldnt afford limitless accounts either back then and that the goal for "kronos" is to get as close to the original feeling as possible they should consider this since it has the same importance as experience/loot rate in the end.

so you only need to catch him once.

please try... fact is even blizzard has failed to for 13 seasons if you look at the rating exploit so i kinda have my doubts there that you will catch the skilled exploiters but mainly the new wannabe exploiters. if the system wont detect then the chance of finding those is close to zero

"normal" player surely can't do the same thing, right?

not really no since a normal player wouldnt have an application to auto-login and with good control on it so it would take much more time to bank that way while a multiboxer it would hardly be a change from regular control.

and the camping... not entirely since a multiboxer can ave almost infinite characters that he can speed level at a much faster rate than others once he gets some up he can simply plant them as a threat or to wait on a location where he then swaps around between all to see if the enemy is there or if the herb is there. a normal player would have to have his account stationed there being unable to play or progress, the mutltiboxer can plant 1 and farm with the remaining 1-4 characters.

Sorry, I definitely won't be looking to the worst failure of a server out there for an example.

no offense but if you consider that "the worst" then you havent been around private servers for long yet, there is a good reason why it is the current leading 1.12.1 server but i wouldnt say its extremely good but rather average.

 

[Psojed]

well if the server truly can handle "limitless" then i wont say much but if it is anywhere below then that's a point to be concerned about since it will affect latency directly and the server will lagg, freeze and bug if it gets anywhere close to its limit. and the more players there are the more vulnerable it gets to ddos, and nomatter the protection there is no 100% cure against ddos. so i am just saying this could realy hurt and the limit would have to be set if the server became popular which i believe it will.

Point taken. If the need arises, I'm sure that the administration will set a solution.

no, what i am saying is: becourse it was limited back then due to cost and therefore only few did and you couldnt afford limitless accounts either back then and that the goal for "kronos" is to get as close to the original feeling as possible they should consider this since it has the same importance as experience/loot rate in the end.

Point taken. However in my opinion, it will not affect the "blizzlikeness" at all.

please try... fact is even blizzard has failed to for 13 seasons if you look at the rating exploit so i kinda have my doubts there that you will catch the skilled exploiters but mainly the new wannabe exploiters. if the system wont detect then the chance of finding those is close to zero

Arena != battlegrounds. We have no rating here. What blizzard failed at about arenas doesn't concern us.
Battlegrounds? Simple. Export server time at the end, list of players at the end in that BG and the result of every BG into a battlegrounds.log. Ultra hard, huh.

not really no since a normal player wouldnt have an application to auto-login and with good control on it so it would take much more time to bank that way while a multiboxer it would hardly be a change from regular control.

Autologin application?

I'll let you on to a pro tip. Your mailbox is a 30 day bank for 30 copper, sending multiple items to your alt can be handled via addons, the mail sent to your own alts (on the same account) is instant and it will return to your own mailbox if you forget about it. Talk about unlimited storage, mon!

and the camping... not entirely since a multiboxer can ave almost infinite characters that he can speed level at a much faster rate than others once he gets some up he can simply plant them as a threat or to wait on a location where he then swaps around between all to see if the enemy is there or if the herb is there. a normal player would have to have his account stationed there being unable to play or progress, the mutltiboxer can plant 1 and farm with the remaining 1-4 characters.

Paranoia indeed.
Here's a question. What /played time will the multiboxer have on his char, if he decides to levelup another one?

no offense but if you consider that "the worst" then you havent been around private servers for long yet, there is a good reason why it is the current leading 1.12.1 server but i wouldnt say its extremely good but rather average.

I played there even at the time when feenix.nl was the main website and there was only one server. And I played on privates even before that. We killed meleeing Ragnaros on patch 1.6.0 WoWEmu with 2 warriors damaging each other for infinite rage and healing themselves with Major Healing Potions with bypassed cooldowns. We levelled as 20lvl characters in the plaguelands on patch 1.3.0 WoWEmu on the Drakkaa server with pings permanently over 10000. No offense, but I've seen much more than you did

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

No offense, but I've seen much more than you did

if you did you wouldn't have used "worst" as a way of describing, also i already knew of the mailbox system and storage ages ago but it has a limit and when you have too many mails the new ones get trashed or people cant send to you, but the core problem in it is that it cost's little by little but in the end more than it is worth and if you consider how easy you can just trade and store in a normal bank on a multibox account that solution seems kinda weak.

you might call it paranoid but i wouldn't ever consider accepting something that can jeopardize everything if it all went wrong, even if it is unlikely you still need to prepare for such.

it is like leaving the key under the doormat believing no-one gets close with the dog and fence + cameras you have. but leaving the key would make it a legal entry. which is similar to multiboxing, you can monitor all you want but if the means of how it was accessed is legal then it becomes a question that has a chance of being answered with no punishment since there is no rule or that it becomes a warning.

to leave multi-boxing without rules or restrictions would be "naive" to say the least altough i know what i say is paranoid and only the worst situations in the worst circumstances but.

The best solution is the one that is used before it becomes a need, or a fix that is applied before it goes wrong, taking action before it becomes an issue is the best course of action and worst situations should always be considered otherwise you could ignore "hacking" since only few would use it in the end but the core of the issue here is to take action against something that has potential to go wrong although it might sound paranoid it is better than being naive believing all will act like kind little sheep

 

[Psojed]

if you did you wouldn't have used "worst" as a way of describing

The term "worst" is the most proper description of what was accomplished by the leadership of that server in the 7 years they function. But that's an offtopic.

You didn't answer my question about the projected played time of a multiboxer's new char. I meant what /played time it would take him to get from 1 to 60. An estimate.

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

The term "worst" is the most proper description of what was accomplished by the leadership of that server in the 7 years they function. But that's an offtopic.

You didn't answer my question about the projected played time of a multiboxer's new char. I meant what /played time it would take him to get from 1 to 60. An estimate.

well it is hard to say but it would roughly take that same amount of time to get one to level 60. if you play a full party then it would take 60 hour's max in total in the end if you where doing quests. but since you would have 5 instead of 1 at that time you could divide that time by 5 and end up having a much shorter leveling time looking at each individual character.

ofc if you type /played then all will show the same and you would get the wrong picture if you additioned all of their time considering you played them all as where they 1.

this also makes it powerfull yet weak in pvp for that matter since if you as said played 5x mage's then you could almost finish of your foe in 1 blast, if you played rogues in stealth then every single ambush or backstab would be a guaranteed kill.

if you went with arcane blast/blizzard or such aoe's then you could farm massive amounts with less drinking time since your damage would be 5 times as great and if 1 dies the mobs wont reset so you have 5x the health, and players wont go world pvp vs you since as stated before you are a threat equal to a group but with the best timing since all are syncronized.

note: i work as a technician normally so my natural paranoia about launch is rather high so i prefer looking at all risk and loose end's hoping to make a difference so what could go wrong wont go wrong, call it paranoid but i just realy care about this server and wish for the best, i even play on ED just to test addons altough i know it has bugs i also know it is the current closest vanilla thats out there untill kronos start's which i hope is somewhere in september or oktober

 

[Psojed]

well it is hard to say but it would roughly take that same amount of time to get one to level 60. if you play a full party then it would take 60 hour's max in total in the end if you where doing quests. but since you would have 5 instead of 1 at that time you could divide that time by 5 and end up having a much shorter leveling time looking at each individual character.

Thanks for the reply. You can sleep easy, because multiboxers will have it much much harder than what you are thinking at the moment.

My record at powerlevelling (a lvl 1 paladin boosted from scratch by a lvl 60 hunter - both controlled by me) is little over 3 days played.
The world's fastest retail solo player has a record of 4 days and 20 hours with a hunter.
Regular skilled and knowledgeable player will have around 5-7 days played.
Others, who aren't exactly walking tomes of knowledge, or people who play in a party, will have even longer times.

Multiboxers have it harder aswell. It's quite simple - while quest xp remains the same, xp you gain from the mobs is divided by 5, meaning your 5 chars have to kill 5 times more mobs.
You also have to skip (or endure) collecting quests, because most locations have only so much objects to loot or there is a respawn. Some quests require even a solo player to wait for respawn. Imagine you have to wait for this respawn 5 times.
With doing killquests, there comes the issue of money, because as a regular player you have to kill mobs once, you loot them, sell the loot and you have enough money plus some extra. As a multiboxer doing the same quests with 5 chars, you only need to kill these mobs once aswell (kill credit is shared among the party), so the loot divides between them. You won't have enough money for spells, let alone equipment, even at a 1x rate server.
And unless you multibox a ressurection char, when one of your chars is ganked or dies by accident, your whole party has to wait for him.

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

well as long as they cannot go into battlegrounds or world pvp without getting a ban to disturb the balance of the pvp standings then i gues there is nothing else left to say

but those are old vanilla rules so ofc they would apply here as well ☺

 

[Hiltz]

well as long as they cannot go into battlegrounds or world pvp without getting a ban to disturb the balance of the pvp standings then i gues there is nothing else left to say

but those are old vanilla rules so ofc they would apply here as well ☺

I'm not sure about World pvp 100% but Muli-boxing BG's is a bannable offence.

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

world pvp is in the same category, blizzard bans you if you are online with more than 1 account in same zone and pvp'ing. and so does the pricate server Emerald Dream since they copied the rule list from blizz.

so i gues kronos should use that as well

 

[Cr0wL0ck]

i just read through the List of Violations. and Server Rules. but i barely found any trace of multibox rules except the third party software

so it is allowed to enter wsg with a 5 man group of lets say shaman's ?

in short you could just use fire-blast or similar all on a single target which would result in more or less an instant kill and if that wouldnt be enough use another spell or simply totem spam or heal spam a single target. it would be close to impossible cc'ing 5 player's that synchronize as one, their only weakness would be area-cc but that would affect anyone :/

players wouldn't be able to engage the group alone so until the enemy team becomes coordinated and better organized the multibox group would win on ED they made multibox strictly pve and if they attempt pvp and especially bg with more than 1 account at a time they get banned

 

[Aieris]

As i know, it was forbiden to log in to the BG with more than one character.

 

[krutopatkin]

As i know, it was forbiden to log in to the BG with more than one character.

I don't know about TBC but during wotlk the top spots of some 5v5 battlgroups were occupied by 4 multiboxer + 1 healer.