Culling of Stratholme

I was running around dalaran on my pally just having a gander at everything and noticed these big stairs. I run up them have a look around and run up some more stairs and there's a portal to the Caverns of Time WOO HOO!! I loved those instances and hadn't been back because the journey took so long. Remember this is a box team created with RAF so they didn't have any rep to use the portal in world's end tavern in Shattrath, only my lock has that. So I think GREAT! and grab the team and off we go to CoS. Bad move, really really bad move.

my WoW rules
Rule number one: leave hubris at the door
Rule number two: read about the instance
New Rule number three: read what Arthas is saying to you, READ IT you DUMBASS

So completely ignoring my rule set I enter CoS, I do not listen to Arthas and stand there at the entrance with him for 10 minutes, why? Er wasn't this an escort quest? I /tap my toes he doesn't move, I /poke him he doesn't move. So I decide to run around and kill stuff all the while seeing there is some text displayed on my screen but can't really read it because I have xperl unit frames and have a frame right where the text is, but hey it's not important right? >.< Then there's messages in chat saying saying something about something at somewhere but I have no idea where that is. I get bored, very very bored and hearth.

I left the instance unhappy but then remembered that there was a 26g quest at the start that netted me 5x26g woo hoo! plus some greens to DE not bad, not bad at all. I then read up about CoS, and realised I'd just missed meathook - damnit. Oh well, I'll know next time.

Heroic Grundrak Down

this happened a few weeks ago but in wow time was only 3 days ago, I had to go to the UK for work (22 hours flytime >.<) and only got back 3 wow sessions ago, the day before the flight I attempted Heroic Grundrak and here we go - nice glove upgrade :)

multiboxer

there's a multiboxer addon for wow named multiboxer, I really like descriptive names for applications don't you? I didn't write this excellent mod and it looks like it's no longer maintained which was ok until the 3.1 patch came along and broke group invites, so I fixed it but since I'm not the owner and the owner isn't replying to my messages I'm hosting it the my files section. So if you need multiboxer v2 that works with wow 3.1, help yourself. I think there maybe 4 of us in total lol due to jamba taking over the world.

new kit

5 weeks ago my trusty gaming rig died, on a staurday morning no less >.<. I was all ready to start my first boxing heroic and this happened. Anyway in my area we don't really have pc component sellers so I checked out the 3 local pc shops. Needless to say they just didn't have a gaming rig lying around and yes I would have to get one built. Well $AU1600 later I ended up with a Q9550, 1tb drive, Gigabyte 250 video card etc etc. I was able to reuse my old ram. It's amazing the speed this thing flies at, silently too. I couldn't afford the i7 so this was it for me. My next purchase is a 60g SSD which should arrive within a week, the idea here is that I'll put the wow data directory on the SSD and nothing else, no other writes at all and with a seek of .2ms I'll be able to run around dalaran without lagging.....maybe....

sendmice

there's an opensource mouse utility (not written by me) that I've been playing around with that allows you to send mouse commands via a dos batch file like right click, left click at screen pos etc and then batch up the commands. The utility of this is amazing for multiboxers who control multiple screens. The problem with a lot of multiboxing applications for single machine boxers is that you can't replicate mouse commands on multiple windows, sendmice gets around that for predefined moves ie you have multiple mages and want to cast multiple blizzards. Well you could create a wow macro to centre the screen on each window and then hit the sendmice bat file to click each blizzard button/move to centre of each screen/cast blizzard. You can find it in the my files section of this blog, enjoy.

wow - I'd forgotten all about this blog while levelling

Best intentions are funny things aren't they? The road to hell and all that. Anyway there's been some huge changes in my boxing setup since the last post, in brief:
Those level 7 chars got to level 70 and I ditched all but the Paladin when RAF came out. I then used the Paly to powerlevel 4 Orc Shaman and the Paly/Shaman are my main team now. Last night I cleared Heroic Utgarde Keep on the first attempt. Not bad, not bad at all.

Level 11 and 10

I've just left Eversong Woods for Ghostlands - all mobs have been very easy and I'm just 1 (4) shotting them while the Pally does her nails. Only lost 2 of the team once due to a mouse error :) basically my mouse sometimes decides to send a keystroke for autorun or something due to my fat fingers pressing one of the side buttons.

My Setup
PC - Intel Dual Core E6600
Graphics - Nvidia GTS 8800
Mem - 2g of Corsair and 1 gig of yum cha brand
Screens : Dell 24 Wide + Syncmaster 19
KB - Logitech G15
Mouse - Razer Copperhead

Software - keyclone - awesome and well worth $10

I run 4 sessions tiled on the Dell and 1 for the Pally maximised on the Syncmaster. Keyclone will tile them for you if you start them with keyclone, I believe wowmaximiser will do the same thing.

Starting the multi-boxing journey

Probably a good place to start is to describe what dual or multi-boxing is. Multi boxing is running more than one copy of a game concurrently. Doesn't sound too exciting does it? It becomes pretty exciting when that game is World of Warcraft and your multi boxing 5 accounts. 5 ACCOUNTS! yes 5 accounts, I've read of people multiboxing with 20 accounts so 5 doesn't seem toooo bad.

So why would you run 5 accounts? Well if you're like me - impatient, then you want a group to go to Arc or wherever right now instead of sitting in general :Lock LFG Arc - 2 hours later and nothing. Also you want to be able to trust your pug and of course when can you ever trust your pug :) I don't know how many times I've been in groups that just exploded or I've missed out on phat loot because the master looter gave it to a guildie, or some idiot rolled need on an item so they could DE it. Arg.

If you multi box 5 accounts then you are your own group - you always get the loot :P many multiboxers regularly do instances and of course they never have to worry about the 12 year old rogue who thinks he's invincible and pulls while the tank is eating and the squishies are drinking.

So 2 weeks ago I started out with 2 accounts to see what it was like, I liked it - I rolled 2 BE mages and loved the simulataneous fireballs. I got them to level 7 and realised that 2 aren't enough. Since then I've added a pally, priest and another mage and they are all now level 7 and at the same quest point. I only just got the priest to 7 this morning before I went to work.

I know 7 isn't very impressive but I'm starting this blog at level 7 so that as I iron out issues with the macros and software I can share the solutions and also hopefully get some top tips from other multi-boxers.

Next post I'll describe my setup and talk about software and macros.

about me

I am seriously addicted to world of warcraft and have been playing since January 2005. My first 60 was an alliance mage named Ameggy and I had a lot of fun levelling her, however I was never online at the right times and couldn't raid and the best I could do was sit in trade all night looking for pugs, I did ok and managed to get a few MC runs but at that time Mages were little more than decursing and vending machines. Well I levelled Ameggy up to 70 when TBC came out and got her to 375 enchanting/tailoring and thought I was pretty 1337 lol. Well one day I'm farming rep somewhere and a horde destro lock drops out of nowhere and before I knew it I was dead, he then camped me and I realised that Mages suck. I switched to horde as the ally were getting on my nerves with all the whining 12 year olds and rolled a BE lock. That was the best move I'd made in the game thus far. The lock playstyle really suited me and I loved PvP, there's nothing like killing a player in PvP even after you're dead. Dots=Win. I loved it so much I renamed my character to : Pheardotdead just so the ally knew what they were in for lol.

PvP got a bit boring though and I'm much more a PvE'er so what to do? The worst time was sitting in trade for 3 hours each night for over a week for an Arcatraz run so that I could get Kara attuned. I finally gave up and decided there had to be a better way. Multiboxing was the answer, it's not without it's own ups and downs but when it's 11:30pm server time and you feel like running an instance you don't have to wait for anyone. Please feel free to look around this site and grab any macros and addons.

how to box

so how do you box? Here's the list of stuff you'll need:

1 - Well for a start you'll need 2 or more wow accounts, 10 day trials from blizzard are usually available so sign up for a couple here : http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml

2 - keystroke parser of some sort, there are a few around but I highly recommend keyclone at : http://www.solidice.com/index.html, what does it do? It parses keystrokes to 1 or more wow screens, sets up maximizer regions (read more later), handles pip swap (more on that later), mouse cloning etc etc. Personal opinion here: there are other methods, some free, some not. Keyclone is not flavour of the month at the moment but it's solid, easy to setup and pretty cheap for all the features and service support you get from Rob. It was the first one I ever used and I keep on coming back to it because it's so damn easy, it's set and forget, it JustWorks(tm).

3 - an in game slave controller - I recommend Jamba from : http://wow.jafula.com/addons/jamba, what does it do? mmmm pretty much everything, in a nutshell it automates everything for your slaves driven by the actions of your main, like taking parsing taxi node info so all your slaves fly at the same time, quest response automation so they all open/accept/finish quests at the same time - lots of other things you'll need. It's beautifly written and has amazing support in the community and by the developer Jafula. I really don't think the guy ever sleeps.

there will be more !!!!!

first macros