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Recruit-A-Friend

I realized after writing the first part of this guide that I mentioned the RAF program but never gave any details on it. If you’re going to be multiboxing a toon, there’s no reason not to sign up for the RAF. If you want to buy another copy of WoW and another subscription, you can, but you can also do the RAF with a free trial account as well. Head over here, send yourself an RAF email, then follow the instructions in the email. You can then create a new trial account and get the RAF XP bonus on both toons.

Just remember, trial accounts are very limited in what they can do: no trades or mail with paying players, and they can’t progress past level 20.

Gameplay

Now that you’ve got AHK set up properly, go ahead and set it to run in the Windows system tray. It does have to be going while you play WoW, but it won’t take up too many resources. Now you can start up two instances of WoW. Once they’re going I recommend setting them to run in Windowed Mode (under video settings) as this will dramatically increase performance. Even if your computer is man enough to run both in full screen, you’ll still save time when you have to Alt-Tab to the other window (and you’ll be doing a good bit of that).

Once you have two windows of WoW going, set your alt character to follow your main and then check to make sure that all of your macros are working. Hit one of your hotkeys on your main character, and make sure that your alt does the corresponding action. If it does, then you’re good to start questing. If it doesn’t, then you probably got something messed up in the script code. Go back and make sure that it’s all correct.

Controlling two characters at the same time is a whole new level of gameplay. It’s strange and disorienting, but also engaging and really fun. It’ll take a bit to get used though, so don’t give up too quickly. When you’re questing, you’ll have to switch back and forth between your characters to make sure that your alt is getting everything too. Accepting quests, talking to NPCs, and interacting with the environment all have to be done from the particular character’s window. There’s no way to accept a quest on your main and have the alt toon accept it as well. It gets a bit tedious at times, but overall it’s much faster.

Once you’ve got some quests and are ready to start questing (bags are clear, you have water and all that jazz), you can head out into the wild. There are a number of things I could tell you about this, but I’ll just stick to the highlights. Most of it you’ll find out on your own easily enough.

1) Set loot to FFA. This will help minimize switching back and forth between characters. When you run out of bag space on your main, trade everything to your alt toon, and keep going.

2) You want to accept every kill quest you can find. These sorts of quests go very quickly and are super easy to do with two characters. Gathering quests are more difficult since both characters have to gather their own set of the loot. I found it was best to let the alt character gather his whole set first, and then let my main toon start gathering. That way anytime you see something sparkly, you know you need to pick it up. You don’t have to switch back and forth to see how many your alt toon has gotten.

3) While in combat, it’s easy to get one toon turned around so he’s not facing the mob. If your alt toon’s back is to the mob, then he can’t attack. Keep that in mind as you run around, and you’ll get the hang of steering pretty soon.

Well, I think that’s pretty much it. Like I said, there is more to learn, but this covers all of the basics and most of the rest you can learn on your own.

Other Resources

Dual-Boxing.com

Wowwiki

Have fun!

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My long awaited Multiboxing Guide is finally here… the first part at least. I started writing this way back in November of last year when I wrote about my Adventures in Multiboxing. I got about halfway through it and then something else grabbed my attention, and I forgot all about it until a reader reminded me recently. So here is the first part on how to multibox and I’ll have it finished up soon.

If you’ve been around the WoW or MMO scene for any length of time, chances are very good that you’re familiar with, or have at least heard of, multiboxing. Multiboxing is when you are controlling multiple characters at the same time, whether it be two or more instances of WoW open on the same computer, or more than one computer, each with their own program of WoW.

Multiboxing can be useful for a number of reasons. The first, and most common reason, is that it makes killing things very easy. Many people multibox for quicker leveling, and some even do it in PvP to easily take down the competition. It can also be done to let a higher level character help a lower level one. Let’s take a look at how exactly multiboxing is done.

Multibox Lite

If you have more than one WoW account, or even just one paid account and one trial account, you can do a very simple version of multiboxing rather easily. Just open up two instances of WoW, one for each account, tell one character to /follow the other, and you’re set. I’ve done this numerous times to drag a lowbie alt through a dungeon on one of my higher level characters.

The main problem with this is that the second character can’t contribute or interact in any way. This doesn’t matter too much when you’re playing a high level character, but if you have two toons around the same level doing some quests, having both of them attacking at the same time will definitely speed things up.

The big advantage to multiboxing properly is that both of your characters are always contributing in some manner, whether it’s by attacking, healing or some other function.

Multiboxing Program

There are a number of programs out there to assist you in multiboxing. The one that I use is called AutoHotKey. It’s free, it can handle everything you need it to, and it’s also very easy to set it up for multiboxing. (It’s safe too – no keyloggers or spyware.)

AHK allows you to send your keystrokes automatically to multiple programs. So when you’re multiboxing you’ll be playing your main character, and the keys that you hit will be automatically sent to your other toon(s). Here’s how it works.

Once you’ve got AHK downloaded and installed, you need to edit the script, delete everything that is in there currently, and put in the following script:

WinGet, wowid, List, World of Warcraft

~XX::
KeyWait XX
IfWinActive, World of Warcraft
{
ControlSend,, XX, ahk_id %wowid1%
ControlSend,, XX, ahk_id %wowid2%
Return
}

You will need to change XX to the key that you want duplicated, and you can do multiple keys. So, for instance, if you wanted keys 1, 2 and 3 duplicated, then your script would look like this:

WinGet, wowid, List, World of Warcraft

~1::
KeyWait 1
IfWinActive, World of Warcraft
{
ControlSend,, 1, ahk_id %wowid1%
ControlSend,, 1, ahk_id %wowid2%
Return
}
~2::
KeyWait 2
IfWinActive, World of Warcraft
{
ControlSend,, 2, ahk_id %wowid1%
ControlSend,, 2, ahk_id %wowid2%
Return
}
~3::
KeyWait 3
IfWinActive, World of Warcraft
{
ControlSend,, 3, ahk_id %wowid1%
ControlSend,, 3, ahk_id %wowid2%
Return
}

If you want 4, 5, and 6, or Q, E, and R to be duplicated as well you can extend the script to include them.

A quick caveat on using AHK: Using the program as I’ve detailed is completely legal. Hitting one key and having one keystroke sent is fine. If you start playing around with AHK and add in a delay or start sending multiple keystrokes, that is crossing the line into botting and will get you banned.

Macros

Now that you’ve gotten AHK set up, you need to get some macros done as well. Most of the macros will need to be done for the secondary character, but there are a few for the main character that will help as well.

The first thing you need to do is decide which spells on the two characters you want paired up (i.e., cast at the same time). Since I was multiboxing a mage and a priest, I went with Frostbolt/Power Word: Shield, Fireball/Smite, and Fire Blast/Mind Blast.

Frostbolt, Fireball, Fire Blast is my normal spell rotation on my mage so I bound those spells to keys 1, 2, and 3. (You don’t have to do anything special for your main character here. Just pick your three spells, and bind them to the keys.)

For the secondary character, you’ll have to make macros for the spells. In my case, I made the following macros and bound them to keys 1, 2, and 3 on my priest.

Macro One:

/tar (Mage)
/cast Power Word: Shield

Macro Two:

/assist (Mage)
/cast Smite

Macro Three:

/assist Mage
/cast Mind Blast

A /follow macro for the secondary character will help a lot, saving you the trouble of having to type it every time.

/follow (Mage)

You’ll also need an invite macro for the main character.

/invite (Priest)

Check back soon for the second part.

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Have you completed School of Hard Knocks yet? It’s part of the Children’s Week meta achievement, so if you haven’t done it yet you’ve only got a couple of days. You may have also noticed the tremendous amount of QQing going on about this. What’s so bad about it? Let’s take a look.

First off, the achievement -

You know what? Achievement is too long of a word to type every time, and I always get stuck trying to remember whether the e or the i comes first. From now on I’m going to abbreviate achievement as “achy”. (Pronounced “atch-ee”, not ache-y.)

First off, the achy requires you to do some PvP, which is an unpopular thing with most of WoW’s player base. A pretty large section of WoW players don’t PvP at all, and a bunch more PvP occasionally but have a low tolerance for many of the frustrating things that happen in PvP (like, you know, losing =) ). Having to spend a relatively large amount of time in several BGs is more than a lot of WoW players were prepared to do.

The second problem with the achy is that it’s been decried as being “too hard”. It’s pretty easy to zoom through most of the other Children’s Week achies and quests, and then you get to this one and it may take a few tries.

So is it really as bad as people have made it out to be? Should it be removed from the meta? Should I knock off early from work and go get a margarita?

The answers are: Yes and no, no, and YES.

I do think that achy is a bad one, but not for the reasons that people have been saying. Here’s what’s *not* wrong with it:

1) Just because it’s a PvP achy doesn’t make it bad. Sure, you may not PvP much, and you may be used to zooming through a lot of other achies, but it’s OK for something to be different every now and then. Try some PvP, and who knows? Maybe you’ll enjoy it.

2) It’s not “too hard”. Trying to complete an achy in a PvP environment might take some getting used to, but that doesn’t make it too hard. It might take you a couple of tries to get it done, but that’s OK. It is, after all, something that has to be achieved. It’s certainly possible to get the achy done in the time frame given.

Here’s what *is* wrong: For the first time in WoW, people on the same team are forced to compete against each other to accomplish a goal. If you cap the tower in AV, then the guy next to you can’t. If you grab the flag in EoTS, then your guildie can’t (at least until it repops, but that’s another point).

Blizzard has always been careful to avoid this sort of intra-team competition in the past. Everyone gets the same amount of rep and honor for the same amount of work. It doesn’t matter if you cap the flag yourself or not. It doesn’t matter if you’re number one or number 20 on the DPS chart. You’re not competing against the people on your team for rewards. Even the old BG quests (like this one) just required you to be in the area when the action was completed. You didn’t have to take the mine yourself so long as you were close by when it was done.

That changed with this achy. Not only are people not concerned with winning the BG, they are only focused on getting the achy criteria completed. “Sorry I can’t help kill that Hordie, I have to cap this flag here and then /afk out.” “Sorry I can’t stop to help you there, I have to race all the way up to DBN tower and cap it before anyone else gets it.”

I think that Blizzard would defend this by saying that there are plenty of opportunities for you to get your stuff done. If you miss capping one tower because someone else grabbed it, you can hop into another BG soon and try again. But the fact remains that you’re still competing against your own teammates, and that’s never a good thing.

There are a couple of easy ways to fix this. 1) Change the criteria so that you can complete them by being in the area when it’s done, or 2) change the achy so that the criteria are team goals.

1) is probably the simpler of the two. Just make it so that everyone gets credit for being there when the tower is capped or the flag is returned. That way everyone is still doing the same things, but now they’re not competing against their teammates for the credit.

2) would take a bit more work, but would solve the problem just as well. Change the criteria of the achy to be team goals – for instance, winning one match of each of the BGs with your orphan out. This way everyone is working toward the same goal and the problem is solved.

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