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A Civil Conversation About Multi Boxing in PvP.
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Post by
Poolie72
I think the whole argument from those that think MB it cheating is the fact you are controlling multiple chars at once. Each reacting to 1 persons control. That’s the whole argument here. Not whether Blizzard allows it. Not that it’s great for the economy in wow. Not that it takes great skill etc. All that is a side issue from my point.
I don’t expect people who like MB to go “Well I see your point and you have converted me” but then again that same goes for me. All those points in favour of MB haven’t convinced me that MB is ok. I am open to discussion and will take comments on board, but as yet the MB still are not playing fair and spoiling the game.
For me Wow is a game where you take on and control 1 Char at a time.
Post by
870547
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
Seems I was wrong on this point then about copying a char. but for me MB is still unfair play and cheating, anyone controlling more than 1 char at once is in my view (and that's the point here) it's just not cricket !
Blizzard doesn't agree...and honestly, neither do a lot of other people.
Which is totally different than a program playing a toon for you on a separate computer...It is, since a Multi-boxer is running a slave program that links up the accounts and the computers so that he can bind things to one specific keyboard and hit buttons to have them all fire off spells....but the player still needs to hit the button, as it's not automated.
Post by
Astygia
Boxing is a big macro? A macro that requires multiple computers and programs to work multiple toons?
Yep.
Doesn't require multiple computers and programs though. Just one, unless you're running your own raid group or something. You must not be informed.
Which is totally different than a program playing a toon for you on a separate computer...
Sure is.
Take that up with hatman since he started the thread. If you're not up for discussion then maybe you could blog.
Hatman is asking for a civil discussion on the matter, while keeping in mind that it's legal and allowed by Blizzard. You're the one using weak examples and definitions to proclaim it as 'botting', which is not allowed and not the same. I'll take that up with you, thanks.
Post by
941615
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
jefflovealex
Its a pretty simple system. The people who hate multiboxing are either sick of dealing with it in battlegrounds or narked they're unable to multibox themselves. So they scream Cheating and give poor arguement as to how.
The people who like multiboxing either enjoy the challenge of disrupting them or get the chance to play them.
Personally i don't see them as a big deal. CC the command unit and the rest sit there like turkeys.
Post by
asakawa
........but for me MB is still unfair play and cheating, anyone controlling more than 1 char at once is in my view (and that's the point here) it's just not cricket !
I think multiboxing is fine.
In the interest of keeping the conversation civil, I've quoted both these diammetrically opposed opinions. Neither can be said to be wrong, but neither offers any explanation as to why the writer holds this opinion.
If this thread were a poll, they would be entirely appropriate, but I don't think this is what was intended, either here or in the original thread.
This is a remake of a thread in which tempers were running hot and views were becoming polarised and hyperbolic. The trouble is that people don't tend to post about these things unless they have a dog in the fight and the fact that multiboxing is rare and support apathetic meant that the other thread was giving a very skewed view of the issue.
A thread about multiboxing isn't one I would generally click on because I don't really care much aside from a general level of respect for those who do it well. As a moderator I had to read every word of the previous thread and I came away with the overwhelming feeling that nobody had said what the vast majority of the WoW playerbase actually feel which is "Multiboxing is fine".
Blizzard are fine with it. Most players are fine with it. That's the place where the discussion has to start.
I don't have much in the way of opinion on the matter but I'm generally "pro-multiboxing". I don't think it's inappropriate for me to give that opinion.
Post by
Laraden
Multiboxing is, imo, perfectly fine. If you want to pay for it, that's your right. If you want to spend all the time to set up 5,6 whatever number of chars and gear them for PVP? Go for it. I run into you in PVP, I'll laugh a little, shrug, and leave you alone unless I'm in a group.
Guess I come from a different mindset than a lot of people though. For one, I come from EQ, where multiboxing is practically a normal practice. I've run up to 6 accounts on EQ at once, *WITHOUT* any outside programs to control my characters.
Yes, that involves a ton of alt tabbing and practice. Yes, it can be difficult.
On WoW? I recently loaded up a second account and am leveling a priest. I don't plan to use her for much of anything except when I run old raids on my war, really, but guess it counts. I play my war on my desktop and priest on my laptop. There's no programs involved in it, again.
If I had the time, money, and desire, would I 6box again? ..Probably.
Post by
Vorpalbunny
I am of the group that thinks multiboxing is fine.
I dont' always like coming up against them in BGs if they know what they are doing, but that doesn't ruin the expierience for me, it just presents a new challenge. I generally play a boomkin in BGs and, depending on what class it is, I have no issues breaking up the multiboxer once I get behind them. Roots, typhoon, whirlwind and poof, suddenly the multiboxer is broken up and easy pickens for the rest of the team.
I've been utterly destroyed by multiboxers, especially in EOTS. They hunt me down so I don't have the option of blowing them off a cliff, it becomes a fun game of cat and mouse where I keep 5 toons distracted for a little bit while my team takes another base.
My favorite situation with multiboxers happened last weekend. It was in AV. Horde had a 5 box hunter and so did we. Myself on my boomkin, the alliance 5 box and a healer holed up in TP while the horde 5 box hunter and several others tried to take it back. Several times in a row I would knock their hunter team off the top of TP with Typhoon. Did it kill them? No, however I didn't want them to start unleashing multishot on us. I was in front of that once and watched myself and several others drop like flies, not pretty. We had a ton of fun, most fun I've had in awhile while PvPing actually!
I have never multiboxed myself, but if someone else wants to I have no issue with it personally.
(Also I have never run across one in anything other than BGs, that I know of so I have no opinion outside of the PvP world)
Post by
678294
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Orranis
I find it more annoying in BG's than in say, Rated BG's or Arena, where people are supposed to be coordinated. I've faced multi-boxed toons at about 1600-1700 MMR in 2's, but haven't seen any since then. I think there's three multi-boxed Death Knight that along with two individual healers have like rank one in fives on one battlegroup.
Post by
518492
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Astygia
It is my belief that Multiboxing shouldn't be allowed. Fair enough. Too bad your reasoning is so weak though.
I understand that these people "look for a challenge", but the truth is, they don't.
The either want to A) circumvent the MM part of a MMORPG B) gain an advantage over a BG or C)
Oh, there's no other possible reason. I guess "fun" is BS.
Most of the WoW population doesn't go onto forums.
You know this how? Sure lots probably don't but statistically, saying that 'most' do not is just a blank assumption. And even if you're right and most didn't...failure to learn is
their
problem.
They may have seen a multiboxer, but have no idea what to call them. They don't understand them. Some players have never seen it. For these people, it is a frustrating and mind-boggling concept that interferes with what they thought this game was about.
Essentially you're saying that because people don't know what it is or how to handle it, it shouldn't be allowed. That's some pro reasoning.
Most of the people on the forum who spit out lines like "Well it poses something new to deal with" or "LOL just sap the leader LOLNUBS" are
Expressing their opinion on the matter, or telling you how to handle the mboxer.
To say that all the regular players don't have a problem with it is speaking very confidently about a population that can't be generalized.
Kinda like saying most of the population has never visited a forum or some outside resource.
When one player decides to create fake side-kicks, it throws off the perceived balance WoW tries to offer its players. If that player didn't have his side-kicks, all of the encounters would play out differently. Battlegrounds were not designed to have robot armies vs robot armies. It was meant to allow 10 different players to face 10 different players, and see what side prevails. Multiboxing ruins that concept, and forces people to adjust to a system that wouldn't exist otherwise. IoC is a prime example, or Alterac Valley, where the entire BG could be impacted in such a way that the entire BG's integrity is comprimised because someone wants to use their robots to "offer the player a challenge"
In this I agree - but the catch is that the only reason it throws off that balance is because so many people in random bgs either don't care, or are bad. I'm reasonably sure that very very few (perhaps even none, I don't care to browse that long) of the top-rated RBG teams use a multiboxer because when matched up against people that actually place objectives/winning the match above HKs/KBs, they are more of a liability than anything else. In randoms however, they're OP simply because the idea of doing more than 'dps the red one' never occurs to some people.
"It is no different that facing 5 co-ordinated players" - a statement that isn't true. If the player COULD find actual friends to form a team with, they would. But they can't (or won't), so they circumvent the system with multiboxers.
Are you saying multiboxers don't have friends? lol. You know there's websites, forums, and ingame entire guilds dedicated to multiboxing, right?
It is different than facing 5 coordinated players - because it's easier. If I'm stealthing into a group of 5 people...I'm going to keep on going past them probably, because they'll handle me when I open on one of them. If it's a boxer...I'll just watch for the leader, and shut it down. Most boxers use fairly obvious/logical mirrors (master trinkets, all slaves also trinket, master uses survival CD, so do slaves, etc). When the leader blows his trinket his entire little group will most likely have done so also. Then it's a matter of clever CC use and interrupts (in the case of shamans and warlocks, the usual suspects in terms of boxing) to score some free kills.
But in truth that's not even necessary unless it's a key objective - the boxer is 4 or 5 people that could be doing something else but are instead turreting at whatever location. Capitalize on the weakness this creates, if it's an objective you need or they've created a chokepoint, call backup and handle it instead of charging into a steamroller unprepared and undermanned.
5 real players wouldn't be able to click on ability at the exact time, so multiboxers ARE NOT THE SAME.
That's true...as explained above, 5 real players will be killing you the moment you open on their teammate, while a boxer (if handled right) will mostly be standing there waiting to die once you shut down the master.
Have fun with TOR.
Post by
518492
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Astygia
You can always tell when you strike a nerve with a Multiboxer
Can you? Not only have my nerves not been struck, I pay for my account, my wife's account, and my father's account. I don't have enough extra cash to multibox, and I don't think I have the determination to set it up and then level them either.
You can usually tell when someone's post is motivated by frustration / inability to adapt, however. Lemme guess - you ran into a shaman machine that took over a bunker. And got floored. Repeatedly.
I don't box - but it's fun to watch others do it, even if they're my enemy.
To offer a solution that I think is fair, as I posted in other threads about this topic, is to make it bannable ONLY if you use LFR, RDF, or BG tools.
Things are either bannable or not bannable; in other words, they're either allowed, or not allowed. Making something okay in this current content over here but not that current content over there would be poor rule enforcement and just plain foolish.
I think the Looking for Group tools should be for people ACTUALLY looking for groups. Since Multiboxers use their robots to circumvent the need for groups, they shouldn't be allowed to bump real players from using these tools.
Nobody's being 'bumped', and they
are
real players - you make it sound like people get pushed out of their queue by the skynet machine. That's a negative... they'll just be waiting their turn, like the boxer did.
It doesn't break the game - if you're daft enough to repeatedly facepull a 6-pack of shamans, you kinda deserve the trip to the graveyard.
In PvE, as a tank or a healer I rather love it when (and it's a rare occasion) I get a 3boxer of dps....in PvE it's almost always shaman or frost death knights, and it's like towing your own portable ion cannon around behind you.
Lastly, again with your 'real players' comments. Boxers are rare enough in either venue (pvp, pve) that it's really not bumping people, no more than people who use bgs to bot (real bots, that just run around in a pattern and occasionally swing at things so the owner can go afk), or people that just plain suck queuing up to run into a cloud of reds. I'd be more worried about bads and bots taking slots away from motivated players than the boxers.
Post by
870547
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Astygia
Not convinced, dude. And Blizzard getting more cash is not a defensive maneuver... I don't dislike your arguments, it's nothing that personal. I just don't see it the way you do.
To be fair if Blizz were to do an xbox360 and make boxing against the ToS, I wouldn't have a problem with that either. But as it stands it's allowed, and no matter how nitpicky you wanna get with the definition of 'botting', at the end of the day there's still a person controlling, making choices and reacting with those toons, making it
not
botting.
Agree to disagree I suppose.
Post by
Nathanyal
Aye, it is only considered botting if the toons act all on their own without any sort of input from a person. If you can't grasp that concept then I don't know what to tell ya.
Post by
hraesvelgr
When I see 5 people in a BG working together, I don't instinctively think "Surely I can take them on". No, I call for support.
If you start treating multi-boxers as if each toon is being played by a different person, you'd be less bitter.
Post by
Thandion
I've only come across it once in a battleground, a random AV I entered my the rogue I'm levelling via pvp. It was a Goblin shaman, with 9 other goblin shamans following behind like ducklings. I have no idea if it was a multi-boxer or a bot, but it was frustrating as hell, because they just took our tower defence apart even when turtling a tower.
I've only encountered someone doing this once though, across multiple toons, so I don't mind it so much. It was amusing to see ten shamans drop fourty totems in the exact same spot at the same time though.
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