Jul 31

This installment of Foray into Multiboxing will cover the following topics:

• Resources for questions
• Getting the hardware and software you need
• Setting up your workspace and UI

Before we get too far into this, I’d like to point out my prime source of information: dual-boxing.com. Here you’ll find forums, wikis, chat rooms, and links to just about any of the information you’ll need to get started. I was able to figure it out using solely the information from this site.

Ok, so we decided that we’re going to do a “simple” dual-box, with a class combo of a paladin main and a priest alt, with the paladin tanking and the priest doing DPS and heals. We also decided that we don’t want to have to switch to a new keyboard or mouse to control our second character. What do we need now? We need some key cloning software, foshizzle!

The basic idea is this: when you press a key on your keyboard, it gets sent to multiple instances of WoW, whether they are on the same computer or spread across your network. For example, say you’re five-boxing with five shamans. You press “1″ on your keyboard and every shaman starts to cast Chain Lightning. That’s the general idea with the key cloning.

If you want to get really fancy, you can get some extra hardware, like X-keys, and bind extra actions to them, like healing spells on one shammy, etc. Since the classes I am leveling, a paladin and a priest, don’t share spells, I’m going to be taking a somewhat different approach, and also not using any special hardware, with one exception.

My implementation will use a piece of software called Octopus. Octopus is key cloning software that allows me the following features:

1. Clone keys across TCP/IP. Since my priest will be running in an instance of WoW on my laptop, and my keyboard and mouse are on my desktop, I will need a way for the keys I press to make it to my laptop. This allows me to do so.
2. Clone selective keys. Since I’m not playing multiple copies of the same class, there will be very few times when I want the pally and the priest to cast at the same time. So, I will make F1-F12, along with their versions of control, shift, and control+shift map to spells on the laptop, while making sure they do nothing on the desktop. (This may seem like an odd selection of keys, but I will explain in a moment.)
3. Virtual KVM. This is a really neat feature of Octopus. Basically, in my configuration for Octopus, I can say, “I have a desktop computer with a monitor of x pixels by y pixels. I have a laptop. to the left, of x pixels by y pixels. When I move my mouse too far to the left, I want it to appear on the other computer.” And it does so, and you can click on things and use your keyboard on either computer, with nary a cable save Ethernet. Then, if I happen to need to click or type on the priest’s copy of WoW, I just move the mouse off the left edge of my screen and there it is. Very neat.

As I mentioned in number two above, I’m using F1-F12 and modified versions for my spells. Why this odd selection of keys? Because I own one of these (clicky to make bigger).

Those buttons on the left of the keyboard are called “G keys.” They can be set up to send other keystrokes. The three round buttons at the top-left modify the keys, giving a total of three sets of 18 G keys, for a total of 54 customizable keys. By mapping these keys to F1-F12, shift+F1-shift+F12, etc, I can use my G keys to send commands to my priest, while keeping the rest of my keyboard for my paladin.

In Octopus, this is my using a whitelist of keys to broadcast to the laptop; just press F1-F12 and all the variations to get them into the list. I also pass “-” (on the number pad) and have mapped this to “Jump” on the priest’s WoW, so she’s not jumping while I’m typing in guild chat on my paladin (ie, every time I press “space”). This way, if she gets stuck, I can use “-” to make her jump. In addition, I unbound the number pad from all functions for my paladin, and mapped 4, 8, 6 and 2 from the number pad to the priest’s move functions, and added them to Octopus’ white list, that way I can control her separately with minimal fuss if I need to.

So now Octopus is set up to pass F1-F12 and all variations; and number pad keys -, 2, 4, 6, and 8, to the laptop’s copy of WoW. I have my laptop sitting to the left of my monitor, with the Virtual KVM set up to allow me to move my mouse and keyboard from display to display. Since I get three sets of G keys on my keyboard, I decided to set up the priest’s UI as such (please not that I have not cleaned up this UI to my satisfaction; basically, I loaded some addons and started playing, not caring enough yet to clean it up–hey it’s only been one day!):

Notice the action bars in the top-right hand corner of the screen. The two vertical ones correspond to the first and second pages of my G keys (notice they are layed out basically the same); the long bar underneath corresponds to F1-F12 (unmodified), and here I place my most commonly used macros, including Shadow Word: Pain on the paladin’s current target–so, the paladin gets threat, and by pressing F1 and F2 the priest starts DPS. If the pally needs a heal, I press F10, and F11 if she needs a bigger one. F12 is bound to casting Power Word: Shield on the paladin.

The idea is, once the paladin gets some more threat generating abilities (like Consecration, Retribution Aura, Righteous Defense and Righteous Fury), I can get some solid aggro on a group of mobs and go to town on the priest, healing the pally when necessary.

I’m still working on some of my bindings; like I said, I’ve been a multiboxer for one day, and that experience lasted about three hours, a lot of which was troubleshooting software and getting WoW key bindings, etc. set up correctly. I will say that, so far, it’s a ton of fun, and I can’t wait to see how it is when the mobs get a little tougher to beat (right now, both toons are level 7). I look forward to learning more and posting my findings here!

Next post, we will take a look at addons and macros that not only help a lot, but are absolutely necessary to sucessful multiboxing.

Related posts:

1. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 1
2. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
3. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction
4. Foray into Multiboxing: Dual-Boxing with Recruit-A-Friend
5. Levelin’ Like a Madman