Getting started with Multiboxing World of Warcraft What is Multiboxing? Multiboxing is, at its core…

Getting started with Multiboxing World of Warcraft

What is Multiboxing?
Multiboxing is, at its core, the practice of playing two or more copies of an online game at the same time. To illustrate the simplest form of multiboxing, and why a player might consider it in the first place, I will give a personal example.

I got my start in multiboxing back in 2003 while playing World War II Online (WWIIOL). In that title, players assume the role of the infantry, armor, artillery, aircraft, and ships of that period. Artillery units can be moved (pushed) by the player who is playing that role; however it is exceedingly slow – slower than a walking soldier. Of course this is as it should be, these are large, heavy guns being pushed by a small crew through European forests, and slogging mud, after all. However, it’s not very fun as a game activity.

The solution is Multiboxing. Players who enjoyed playing the Artillery role would often purchase a second account and use that account as their “hauler” – they would play an artillery piece with their “main” account, and also tow their heavy artillery around at will with their “Alt ”, switching between the accounts with an Alt-Tab, or (in my case) playing Artillery on my Desktop computer, and my Hauler on my Laptop, sitting to one side of me. Once the gun was in place, the “hauler” was parked some distance away, and out of sight. No other player to bore with dull gameplay consisting primarily of “sitting in a truck parked in a forest outside Brussels” for hours at a time.

That example also begins to touch on the “why” of multiboxing. Multiboxing allows you the freedom to accomplish tasks in a game that are designed for multiple characters/units, while not requiring other players to (necessarily) be present.

Multiboxing WoW – Why?
Players will Multibox World of Warcraft for a wide variety of reasons – my own reasons are:
For the technical challenge. I’ve been playing WoW since June of 2006. I have well over 2400 hours invested in that time, and Multiboxing is new and interesting.
I’d like to have more 70s so I can see ‘end game’ from more than a Rogue’s perspective, but I’m notoriously bad about leveling Alts. Leveling 2 (or more) characters at the same time is slower than leveling 1 character, but still substantially faster than leveling them one after another.

But, isn’t it cheating/hacking/TOS/likely to touch off brushwar in South America?
Well, I don’t know about that whole brushwar thing, but as far as the legality of Multiboxing in WoW, Blizzard Customer Service Representatives have gone on record many times stating that it’s absolutely legitimate to multibox, so long as you are not automating the actions of your characters in the process, and are adhering to the “One Button, One Action” rule.

"Multi-boxing is not a violation of the Terms of Use, Sincast. On the contrary, it's a fairly common practice and extremely fun to watch." – Syndri
"Badkarma, we do not stop players from owning and playing multiple accounts. There are all manner of ways to use two accounts that are not outside of our in-game policies and legal documents. " – Berghe
"We do not prevent people from owning multiple accounts, nor playing those accounts simultaneously as long as they abide by our Terms of Use and EULA." – Vrakthris
"multi-boxing,. , it's not considered a violation of policy." "[It] is viewed simply as a clever, yet tedious play style, but not altogether counterintuitive to the spirit of the game" – Syndri
[W]e do not stop players from owning and playing multiple accounts. What you want to avoid when playing both accounts is using any third party programs to automate game play in an effort to have the characters on the account playing the World of Warcraft without your presence. There are all manner of ways to use two accounts that are not outside of our in-game policies and legal documents (Terms of Use and End User License Agreement, http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/), and as long as you steer clear of behavior that could be considered exploitive (Exploitation Policy: http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01716p) you should be A-Okay. ;) –
Most, if not the absolutely vast majority, of multi-boxing is done with a fairly simple wireless keyboard setup or a number of simultaneous client windows.
As long as the actions aren't automated, then this sort of practice is perfectly within our policy, as the account holder is playing each and every account his or herself. – Belfaire 3/2/2008
Nah, it's one person using one keyboard to simultaneously control more than one account. There's no automation in that case.
If there is, then it's against policy.
Dig? – Belfaire 2/24/2008

So, we’ve adequately established that multiboxing isn’t going to get you any more than some funny looks, let’s have a go, shall we?

Tools of the Trade
Since multiboxing is defined as the use of more than one character at a time, and you can only log into WoW with one character per account at a time, the first step in the process is to have access to multiple accounts.

Many of you reading this will already have access to more than one account that you can use to have a go at multiboxing.
You have an absolute right under the Terms of Use to access the accounts that your minor children use to play alongside you. They really need some sunshine, anyway.
You can sign up for a Trial Account at the World of Warcraft website.

Additionally, there are other “second account” options that players may have access to that constitute a violation of the Terms of Use, even if that violation is utterly undetectable by Blizzard.
Any other account you have access to, such as the account of your spouse/significant other/roommate/friend/guildmate-who-quit-WoW-and-gave-you-their-login-details/grandmother/cat/goldfish.

DISCLAIMER: Using any account that Blizzard does not see as ‘yours’, i.e. your account, or the accounts of your minor children, whether that use is for multiboxing or even “for just a minute” to get something out of his/her bank when they are busy with other things, is “account sharing” under the Terms of Use. If this makes you nervous, then I would recommend you sign up for a Trial Account for having a go at multiboxing. Additionally, never ever fetch anything out of your sweetie’s bank while he/she is away, no matter how inconvenient it is for you not to do so.

COUNTER-DISCLAIMER: It should also be pointed out that if you share accounts from under one roof/on one connection, that account sharing does not pose a significant risk to either account. The view from Blizzard’s servers is that both accounts are logged in simultaneously from the same location/IP address. Until Blizzard adopts mandatory use of biometrics/fingerprint readers to ensure that only you are using your account as stated in the Terms of Use, you have little to worry about sharing accounts within the confines one household/internet connection.

Now that that’s settled, and you have secured access to at least two accounts, you’re going to need two more things to get the ball rolling.
An addon called Maximizer. Maximizer will allow you to have multiple *borderless* WoW windows on your screen at one time, in any resolution of your choosing. It can be found at Curse Gaming. http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/146/
Hardware or software that will pass your keystrokes to all of your WoW clients. I use a software solution called Keyclone. It’s $10 to purchase, and it’s been quite trouble free for me. The author’s website is http://www.solidice.net, and that’s where you’ll find the latest version. Once licensed, all future upgrades to Keyclone are free.

OK. You’ve got two (or more) accounts. You’ve got Maximizer installed in your WoW directory. You’ve bought Keyclone, and got it downloaded and installed. You’re ready to start setting up your crunchy center of Multibox goodness.

First off, we're going to dive into Windows Explorer and do some basic setup.
Navigate to your WoW directory (usually found in C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft)
Inside your WoW folder, you'll see a WTF folder (doesn't mean what you think. It stands for “Warcraft Text Files”. Those Blizzard folks...). You'll see a 'config.wtf' file inside.
Make a copy of that file (either with Control-C, then Control-V, or by right clicking and selecting Copy, then Paste – whichever you're more comfortable with.)
Rename the file (with F2, or with another right click menu option) to “1_boxing.wtf”. We'll come back to this later.

The first thing you're going to want to do is log into a character on each account separately, set them up to use “Windowed Mode”, and turn off any addons you are running (temporarily).
Escape -> Video Options -> Windowed Mode (in the upper left corner)
Set your video options to 800x600 for demonstration. We will use Maximizer to resize the windows to whatever size is most convenient for you later on in the tutorial.
Log out of the character, and use the Addons button in the lower left to access your addons list. Select “Disable All” from the dropdown at the top of the page, and accept the changes.

Once you've done this on both accounts, exit the second account, go back into the WTF folder, make another copy of the config.wtf file, and rename it '2_boxing.wtf'.

Now that we've got that out of the way, we're going to continue, one small step at a time, until you've got two accounts up and running.

First, we'll just get you logged in with two accounts at once, and do some “core” activities manually. We'll rig them up with macros to make the process easier later.

Launch WoW – twice this time. You'll find that you are presented with two “Play” screens, then you'll be presented with two login screens (though you may have to drag the window headers at the top around to see them both simultaneously).

Log into one instance of WoW with one account's credentials, do the same for the other account. You'll find yourself looking at the familiar character select page, in two windows.
For the purpose of experimenting with Multiboxing, make yourself two brand shiny new characters. Choose two characters of races that start in the same location (Orcs/Trolls or Gnome/Dwarves, or any other single race). Further, choose two of the same caster class (Mage/Warlock/Priest/Druid/Shaman), as they are easier to work with initially.

All Multiboxing movement is based on getting the Alt Characters to /follow the Main, so that's where we'll start.
Once you have both characters logged into your chosen starting area, pick one as your “Main”, and the other will be your “Alt”. We're going to get one to follow the other.
Select your Main's window and /invite your Alt to a group.
Select Accept to the Group Invite on your Alt.
With your Alt, select your Main.
In the chat window of your Alt, type /follow
Select your Main's window, and run around a bit. Note that your Alt follows your Main wherever you go.

Congratulations, you're Multiboxing!

Now, running around while having another character or five following you is pretty neat, but not exactly the most useful thing in the world. Next, we're going to fire up Keyclone and configure it, so when you push a key in one instance of WoW, it's transmitted to the other window. Go ahead and close both instances of WoW for now, and open up Keyclone.

Basic Keyclone Setup
In Keyclone, you'll want to hit Setup right off the bat, and enter some settings to get Keyclone to pick up (and thus, talk to) your two Warcraft windows.

On the left side, you'll see a number of options categories. You only need be concerned with the following three things for now.
Under 'do-not-pass', you want to add the TAB key, so that your Alt(s) won't accidentally select the closest (read: WRONG) target when you use TAB to pick a target with your Main.
Under general, you want to tick the 'auto-add windows titled' and 'exact name match', then enter 'World of Warcraft' in the line below.
Tick the box that says “focus follows mouse”

Hit OK, and you're done setting up Keyclone for now.

Fire up your two copies of WoW and log into your two accounts. Notice how when you start typing the first account name, Keyclone transmits that name to the second account's Account Name box. Hit PAUSE on your keyboard (usually, it’s located above your numeric keypad on the right side of your keyboard) to suspend Keyclone's functionality for the moment while you log in.

INTERMEDIATE USER'S LOGIN TIP: If you are the sole owner of your accounts, it's convenient to set the passwords to be identical across them all – then you can suspend Keyclone while you type in your account names, you can select the Password box on each instance of WoW, then you can unsuspend Keyclone and just type the password one time.

Now that you've got Keyclone suspended, you can type in your usernames and passwords for your two accounts, but don't log in yet - we're going to do this the easy way. Once your info is typed into the clients, unsuspend keyclone (with PAUSE again), and hit Enter. Both accounts will log in simultaneously.

Once you're in-game, you're going to want to suspend keyclone while you go through the process of /invite, accept, and /follow again. Then unsuspend keyclone, and go find yourself a nice level 1 wolf/boar/nightstalker/etc.

TIME FOR FUN!!!!
Select a single mob with both characters, make sure Keyclone is unsuspended, and press whichever key is your default spell attack (Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Smite, Shadow Bolt, or Wrath) and giggle with glee as you watch both characters cast at once. Lather, rinse, and repeat this process until the mob is dead for your first Multiboxing kill.

So, now you can move, and you can shoot, but getting to level 70 this way will be terribly painful. There is help on the way.

Macros for Multiboxing
Using Blizzard's built in macro system, combined with the keyclone will make your multiboxing life easier as you level. Let's start with something very basic.
To get to the Macro Editor, you can either type /macro into chat, or you can hit Escape, and then select Macro. Either way, you'll get to the same place.

In your Main macro frame, you'll need what some Multiboxers call “The Big Button”. You'll need a copy of this macro on all of your Alts, and it's a good idea to have it on your Main, too, just in case.
The Big Button is a multipurpose macro that handles your most commonly used functions, like telling your Alt to target the same mob or NPC that your Main has selected, or telling your Alt to start following your Main once again (after you've interacted with a questgiver, or opened a chest, for instance)

On your Alt, in the Macro Frame, select “New”. This will open a 'flyout' that contains the game’s various icons as well as an input box for a macro name. Pick an icon and a sensible name, select OK, and the flyout will disappear, and you're ready to enter your first macro.
In the input box for the macro, type (or copy/paste) the following.

/target focus
/follow
/assist
/stopcasting

Drag the icon for this macro to your hotbar. Put it in slot #1 (where “attack” is currently). Drop the “sticky” button for “attack” that you just picked up on an empty spot on the ground, and it will disappear. Because you don’t want your Main to attack something every time you tell your Alt to follow your Main, drag the 'attack' button on your Main off the #1 spot, so it, too, is blank.

FOCUS

Starting with your Alt, target your Main, and type /focus into the chat window. Your Main is now the focus of your Alt, and you can do some nifty things with that relationship.

Use your Main to target a mob, then hit the '1' key. Your Alt should target the same mob as your Main. Now hit the button for your spell attack attack again, and your characters should both attack the mob you picked out with your Main. Spend a little time just running around and killing stuff for the moment.

Yeah, you're right. Multiboxing is, at first, pretty easymode. You should be twoshotting just about anything you attack, even with just two characters. The challenge comes not from any individual combat – as you progress, you'll have more abilities that you learn, and the challenge comes from learning how to weave them together using macros so that you are using your characters to their fullest extent, or to make your life easier. Speaking of which, we’re now going to add some macros that make logging in, grouping up, and getting rolling easier.

On your Main:
Make an Invite macro. With two characters, all you need to put in it is one line of:
/invite YourAltsNameGoesHere
If you have more than one Alt at this point, add each one on a new line.
/invite YourAltsNameGoesHere
/invite YourSecondAltsNameGoesHere
/invite YourThirdAltsNameGoesHere

Save it, drag it to an unused button (8,9, or 0)

Now we get into some of the nuts and bolts of macros. This macro will accept a group invite, accept a quest you share from your Main, accept a trade initiated from your Main, release your corpse when you die (and you will!), and accept the “Resurrect Now?” dialog when you've done your corpserun. This macro goes on all your characters in an out of the way spot.

/script AcceptGroup();
/script AcceptQuest();
/script AcceptTrade();
/script RetrieveCorpse();
/script RepopMe();

Now let's give them a whirl, shall we?

Log out of both of your characters, then log back in.
On your Main, press the button that corresponds to where you put your /invite macro. An invite window should pop up on your Alt's window. If not, check the spelling in your macro.
On your Alt, press the button that corresponds to your Accept macro. You should join the group.

On your Alt, in the Chat window, type /focus YourMainCharactersNameHere, then press enter, and then your Big Button.

BONUS POINTS:
Make a /focus macro on your Alt and put it on your hotbar.
Remove your offensive spell from your hotbars and replace them with a macros that use “/cast YourSpellNameGoesHere” instead. An 'attack' macro is easier to update, and clever use of some more advanced macro commands means you can put multiple abilities on one button (such as a macro that casts Smite if your target is hostile, Lesser Heal if your target is friendly, and Resurrection if your target is friendly and dead – all from one button press)

At this point, you should be able to log in, group up, head out, and kill stuff without actually having to manually type anything in.

QUESTS!
Picking up quests is fairly easy. Run back to that first questgiver in your starting area, and pick up the quest with your Main. Now open your quest log, and use the “Share Quest” feature on your Main, then the number-button on your keyboard corresponding to your Accept macro. Your Alt should accept the quest, and away you go!
Note: As you know, some quests are not shareable – so be sure to share them out to your Alt (s) as soon as possible after picking them up, so you can pick them up individually on your Alt s, if need be. Finding out that a quest isn't shareable when you start wondering why quest items aren't dropping for your Alt s is a huge letdown. Don't ask how I know this.

Turning in quests must always be done manually with each character, though if you step through the quest dialogs on all characters (as opposed to walking through the dialogs on one, then the next, then the next, etc.), then the Accept Macro will ease the pain a little bit, sometimes (like on those quests where the reward is silver only, or when accepting the next quest in a chain).

So, now you have the basics – you can launch two copies of WoW, fire up Keyclone, log in, group up, follow your Main around, accept and turn in quests, target mobs, attack them. I'm presuming that you've figured out how to loot at this point, as well. This comprises approximately 80% of what you'll spend your time doing while Multiboxing. We're moving right along!

MAXIMIZER!
The final piece of the puzzle is setting up Maximizer, and creating a batch file to automate some initial tasks to make switching between playing your main, and multiboxing easy.


First, we're going to create a “launcher” for your Main.
Go back into your WTF folder, right click a blank spot in the folder, and select New -> Text File.
Rename the text file to “1boxing.bat”.
Right click the file, and select “Edit”.
In the file, enter (or copy/paste) the following:

copy "C:\program files\world of warcraft\WTF\1_boxing.wtf" "C:\program files\world of warcraft\WTF\config.wtf"
"c:\Program Files\world of warcraft\maximizer.exe" --margin 0,0,0,0

(This presumes that you have a standard installation of WoW. If you installed to your D: drive, or to C:/wow, etcetera, then you'll need to make the appropriate changes to the directory paths listed above.)

This copies 1_boxing.wtf (the copy of your original configuration file we made at the very beginning of this process) to config.wtf, then launches WoW in a full screen mode using Maximizer instead of the WoW launcher.

Now, we're going to create a “launcher” for your Main and Alt combination. It will be a little more difficult, since you're going to have to tell Maximizer how much “blank” space to leave on each side of your two WoW windows separately.

Minimize all your windows, and right click on your desktop.
Select Properties, then Settings
Note the numbers that your monitor is using for resolution - 1024X768, or 1280x1024, or 1600x1200, etc.
Jot down not only those numbers, but also calculate the numbers that are ½ of each of them (512x384, 640x512, 800x600, etc.).
Go back into your WTF folder, right click a blank spot in the folder, and select New -> Text File.
Rename the text file to “2boxing.bat”.
Right click the file, and select “Edit”.
In the file, enter (or copy/paste) the following:

- For 1024x768 resolution:
copy "C:\program files\world of warcraft\WTF\2_boxing.wtf" "C:\program files\world of warcraft\WTF\config.wtf"
"c:\Program Files\world of warcraft\maximizer.exe" --margin 0,384,0,0
"c:\Program Files\world of warcraft\maximizer.exe" --margin 384,0,0,0

- For 1280x1024 resolution
copy "C:\program files\world of warcraft\WTF\2_boxing.wtf" "C:\program files\world of warcraft\WTF\config.wtf"
"c:\Program Files\world of warcraft\maximizer.exe" --margin 0,640,0,0
"c:\Program Files\world of warcraft\maximizer.exe" --margin 640,0,0,0

- for 1600x1200 resolution
copy "C:\program files\world of warcraft\WTF\2_boxing.wtf" "C:\program files\world of warcraft\WTF\config.wtf"
"c:\Program Files\world of warcraft\maximizer.exe" --margin 0,600,0,0
"c:\Program Files\world of warcraft\maximizer.exe" --margin 600,0,0,0

For all other resolutions, take the 'smaller' number in your resolution, divide by 2, and follow the example patterns shown here – “0,(½ the smaller number),0,0” and (½ the smaller number),0,0,0

This copies 2_boxing.wtf (the copy of your configuration file we made after setting WoW to windowed mode and 800x600 resolution) to config.wtf, then launches *two* copies of WoW, and places them one on top of the other on your screen, with no borders.

You can use this technique to launch even more copies of WoW. The 'margin' portion of the command line is the hardest part. It specifies the 'gap' for maximizer to leave on the screen in a top,bottom,left,right format. Using maximizer, you can create a WoW window of a size of your choosing, just by adjusting the “margin” settings in your batch file.

So, now that you've finished with your batch file, save it, and double click it, and just be very patient as it loads – loading two copies of WoW can take a minute or two, and maximizer can be a little finicky about moving the windows to where they belong if you start clicking on things while it's doing it's job.

Once your two windows are up, you're ready to log in with both accounts and perhaps start levelling in earnest! However, if your WoW window looks 'funky' now, that's because you're 'stretching' what was an 800x600 window to be whatever size half your monitor is. You'll need to edit your 2_boxing.wtf file to fix that.

Navigate to your WTF folder, and find your 2_boxing.wtf file.
Right click it, and select select 'open' or 'open with'. If you select 'open with', then choose wordpad as your editor.
Part way down you'll see a line that says: SET gxResolution "800x600"
Edit that line to match the window resolution that you've chosen using Maximizer - for instance, if you're using 1024x768, and you've got one window over the other as in the example given above, you'd use 'SET gxResolution "1024x384'.

From here, you've got all the basics down - you can set up windows for any number of accounts the way you want them (with a lot of trial and error at first), log in, set up a group, target mobs, cast spells, accept and turn in quests - you'll probably now want to get in touch with other multiboxers and start picking up some 'advanced' tips – primarily in the form of multipurpose macros that can do more than one action per button if you hold down a modifier key – for instance, a macro for your priest that casts Power Word: Shield if you Alt-click the button, Shadow Word: Pain if you Shift-click it, and Smite if you simply click the button.

There is a sizeable multiboxing community with plenty of tips and advice to be found at http://www.dual-boxing.com

Welcome to the world of multiboxing in WoW, enjoy your stay!