Overall, the expirement went really well. I took the paladin along the path of retribution and just used Righteous Fury to hold aggro, while the priest went holy for improved healing and some DPS talents like Divine Fury, Searing Light, Holy Specialization and Surge of Light, along with Glyph of Smite. Mobs died quickly, and after the paladin got the replinishment effect it was difficult to run out of mana on either toon.

At level 56, while I was in the Plaguelands leveling, a guildie offered to run me through Scholomance and Stratholme. I gathered up all the quests and off we went. By the time we were done, both characters (the priest especially) had some nice blue (and a purple!) gear, and was about 30% from dinging level 61. So, now I’m taking my time leveling through Outland, with a focus on getting professions up to speed before I set foot in Northrend.

The experiement was a lot of fun, and though I considered doing the same thing with more characters (and I might in the future), for now I’m eager to get my priest to 80 and into heroics and raids, and my budday Neal and I are still doing our RAF with other characters.

Related posts:

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

In a group, the experience awarded by mobs drops due to the fact that it was easier to kill in a group. WoWWiki covers the math in detail, but in simple terms:

XP Gained = Mob’s XP / Number of Group Members * Modifier

Modifier is a constant that changes based on the number of people in the group; it’s higher in larger groups, so as to not punish people as much for running instances with full groups, etc. While playing solo, or in a two-person group, Modifier is 1.

In the end, assuming a two-person group (which is what I was running), and also assuming both characters are the same level (which they were), each character receives half the experience that a player killing the mob alone would receive. This makes the leveling experience when dual-boxing slower, and makes questing not only more efficient than grinding mobs, but practically required to make any decent headway at all.

However, Blizzard introduced once system that flipped that world upside down: Recruit-A-Friend. It was intended to get new players up to level more quickly so they could play with their high-level friends; the high-level friend would send an invitation, and for 90 days, the two accounts would be linked. For the duration, characters on both accounts receive 300% XP from everything assuming that (1) they are grouped together (2) they are relatively close to each other, and (3) they are within 3 levels of each other (if not, only the lower character gets the 300% XP).

So, the higher-level friend would create a new alt with his new WoW-playing noob buddy, and for every mob kill get 150% normal experience (the experience is split, making it 50%, and that is tripled, making 150% total), and 300% experience for every quest.

This is huge.

A friend and I have been leveling a few alts using the Recruit-A-Friend system. It is really… really fast. The 300% XP from quests is amazing–I’ve had quests give me half a level or more worth of experience.

At the same time, I’ve decided to dual-box again, this time using Recruit-A-Friend, during the times my buddy and I aren’t playing our RAF characters. 150% XP from mobs makes it much less painful to do, ie, quests where each character has to loot a certain number of items, and the 300% XP from quests makes practically every quest worth doing. Last night I started another pally/priest combo on my new server, and when I logged off they were level 10. I’m still using the same technology from my previous posts, so if you’re interested, be sure to check out the other posts in this category.

As time progresses, I’ll post some other information, tips, and tricks.

Related posts:

1. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 1
3. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction
4. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 2
5. Patch 2.3 and the Experience Curve

Related posts:

1. Weekly WoW Bash: Yes, You Do Need Help
2. Weekly WoW Bash: Girls Have More Mana
3. Weekly WoW Bash: Sounds Like a Raid to Me
4. Weekly WoW Bash: How to Spot a Noob
5. Weekly WoW Bash: No One Listens to That Rule

• 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

• What is multiboxing?
• Why multibox?
• What immediate challenges will I face, and how do I overcome them?

Some people (like myself only a few days ago) may know what multiboxing is, but not know much about it; others may never have heard of it before. WoWWiki defines multiboxing as

“a term to denote one user playing multiple accounts simultaneously.”

The definition is pretty straightforward, the implementation not so much. Before we get into that, let’s talk about reasons people want to multibox.

Multiboxing can basically be classified into two very wide schools of thought: PvE and PvP. (One may argue that basic single character play in WoW is also defined as such, but with multiboxing the line is usually more distinct.) Some people want to play multiple characters simultaneously to bring the pain in the battlegrounds or arena, and by coordinating (in Xzin’s case) five characters attacks flawlessly, this is a very successful tactic. Others want to multibox to run instances or raids (many times even by themselves), or in my case, level two classes that I find difficult or boring to level separately (with the added benefit of dinging 70 on two characters at once).

Multiboxing is also fun. Overcoming both the challenge of controlling two or more characters at a time and the challenge of rigging a set-up that allows you to do so can be a rewarding experience. Multiboxing could potentially be as simple as having two computers next to each other and playing WoW on both of them, with traditional set-ups on each PC. But it tends to be more complicated than that. Let’s talk about some of the things you should think about before deciding to multibox.

First, there’s the obvious issue of needing multiple accounts–one for each character you want to play at the same time. This can potentially be costly, depending on how many characters you want to play. Since I’m only playing two, and my wife has an account that she doesn’t use (because she didn’t really get into WoW), I have that part covered.

Next, you should decide what sort of set-up you’re going to use. You have a few choices. One, you can run multiple instances of WoW on the same computer. This has the advantage of being cheaper, in that you do not need to purchase additional hardware to play WoW on; however, it comes with the downside of being more taxing on your computer, and unless you have a pretty beefy machine, you may not be able to do it at all. I have a pretty decent computer, and originally I was going to play two instances on it, but then I remembered I have a laptop (from work, I admit) that has WoW on it, and I can (barely) sqeeze it onto my desk, thus allowing me to play WoW in full-screen mode on my main PC (instead of trying to sqeeze in two copies of WoW at a smaller size), and also gives both instances of WoW full access to the machine’s resources. So, my decision was made: play the main on my nice home PC and the secondary character on the laptop.

Another obstacle to overcome is the fact that you have to be able to control multiple characters at the same time. Although it would technically be possible to just move my hands from my keyboard to my laptop and back to play two characters, it’s not very elegant, and in the case of playing even more characters at once, not even practical. Luckily, there are tons of resources out there, including hardware, software, and addons to help you get the most out of your multibox gameplay. We will take a look at this in a future post.

Finally, you should really decide what characters you are going to multibox. If you want to five-box a PvP team, five shaman (or shamens–for you BA) are very popular. If you want to run a five-box PvE team, a tank, healer, and three DPS is usually the way to go (paladin tanks are nice, since their aggro is retroactive and they are low maintenance, leaving you to concentrate on your healers or DPS). In my case, I just want to level a paladin and a priest, so my class makeup is already decided.

In future posts, we’ll talk about the hardware and software you need and how to get started; all my experience comes from my relatively simple two-box setup, so that’s what you’re going to get. If you really want more information on playing three or more characters at once, I recommend you check out the resources available out there on the net.

Related posts:

1. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 2
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Dual-Boxing with Recruit-A-Friend
3. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction
4. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
5. Decisions

Two classes I’ve always wanted to level but never really have are paladin and priest. I dearly want a pally tank, though a death knight tank could be cool as well, and I’ve always wanted to try a healer (just recently I took my druid resto, that’s my total sum of experience with healing) and maybe experience all this face melting everyone is talking about.

I’ve started a priest a few times, but never gotten one past level 10. I’ve also started a pally or five, and recently finally got one to around level 26. The pally, as many of you know, is absolutely painful to level (at least in many people’s opinion). The lack of things to do between auto attacks, especially in the lower level range, makes it a bit boring, and troublesome when fighting a lot of runners.

So this all got me to thinking: how could I make leveling these two classes less boring? I toyed with ideas back and forth, but nothing leapt out at me. Then, looking through my blue post tracker RSS feed, I saw yet another player complaining about multiboxers in PvP. Then it hit me: what if I leveled the pally and the priest at the same time?

Thus began my foray into multiboxing. Throughout this series of as-of-yet undetermined length, I will explore my experiences as a complete multiboxing noob, including tips, resources, and any thing else I personally find useful or interesting on the subject. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Foray into Multiboxing: Dual-Boxing with Recruit-A-Friend
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 1
3. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 2
4. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
5. Baby Healer Dings 80

I love addons. I have a lot. And, to help with one part of the problem outlined previously, I’m starting a new feature entitled “Mod Madness,” where I will bring you what you need to know about various addons.

Being The Altoholic, I naturally have a lot of alts. I thought it would be appropriate to start of the mod feature on just that addon: Altoholic.

Altoholic is all about making information about alternate characters, or your alts, available to you at any time. After the jump, we’ll take a more in-depth look at this addon.

Description

Altoholic presents a ton of information about your alts to you no matter which chracter your logged in as.

Download

Altoholic is available from several sources; I downloaded it from Curse Gaming.

Review

Altoholic presents itself as a minimap button (unless you use FuBar):

Clicking on the minimap icon brings up the main Altoholic interface:

As you can see, it lists every character from every realm that you have logged on as since you installed the addon, listing their levels, talent spec, gold, play time, and rested experience, as well as total levels, playtime, and so forth. (Warning: this addon will show you your total play time for all the characters it knows about. This feature can and will make you depressed and cause you to worry about yourself.) I’ve installed the addon and logged in to just a few of my characters for this demonstration.

Mousing over a character shows a bit more information about it:

Down the left side of the addon’s interface, you can see all the various information it captures, including equipped items and your inventory and bank. (Populating bank information requires that you visit the bank and speak to a banker while the addon is loaded.)

You will notice across the top is a search bar and some related options. This allows you to locate which character has a certain item.

If you open the guild bank interface, it will populate information (based on what you have access to view). Later, we will see how Altoholic makes use of this information.

If you visit the mailbox on your characters, you can also see what mail you have and even read it while being away from the mailbox.

One of my favorite features is the ability to browse the recipes known by all your characters. Again, you must open each profession pane from your spellbook and let Altoholic gather up the contents first.

Mousing over a material for a recipe lets you know which of your characters have that material.

This functionality is carried over to any item tooltip, including the ones that show up when you mouse over an item in your inventory:

The Altoholic is very nice for anyone with multiple toons, not just us fanatics who have a bazillion characters, especially if each has a useful tradeskill and you need to know who has what material and what recipe.

Related posts:

1. Mods for 2.4 Coming Around
2. My Addon: Nice Try
3. Greetings
4. What to Do with the Banner?
5. My Favorite WotLK Change So Far

“What’s more worrying is that he’s a healer…”

Related posts:

1. Weekly WoW Bash: Yes, You Do Need Help
2. Weekly WoW Bash: Sounds Like a Raid to Me
3. Weekly WoW Bash: How to Spot a Noob
4. Weekly WoW Bash: No One Listens to That Rule
5. Weekly WoW Bash: Do I Gotta Explain It?

Related posts:

1. Weekly WoW Bash: How to Spot a Noob
2. Weekly WoW Bash: Yes, You Do Need Help
3. Weekly WoW Bash: Sounds Like a Raid to Me
4. Weekly WoW Bash: Like Playing a Hunter
5. Weekly WoW Bash: Do I Gotta Explain It?

Related posts:

1. Weekly WoW Bash: No One Listens to That Rule
2. Weekly WoW Bash: Yes, You Do Need Help
3. Weekly WoW Bash: Sounds Like a Raid to Me
4. Weekly WoW Bash: Like Playing a Hunter
5. Weekly WoW Bash: Do I Gotta Explain It?

Yes, you do need help.

Related posts:

1. Weekly WoW Bash: Girls Have More Mana
2. Weekly WoW Bash: Sounds Like a Raid to Me
3. Weekly WoW Bash: How to Spot a Noob
4. Weekly WoW Bash: No One Listens to That Rule
5. Weekly WoW Bash: Do I Gotta Explain It?

Related posts:

1. Weekly WoW Bash: Girls Have More Mana
2. WoW Bash Lives Again!
3. Weekly WoW Bash: Yes, You Do Need Help
4. Weekly WoW Bash: No One Listens to That Rule
5. Weekly WoW Bash: Do I Gotta Explain It?

Today’s entry is “Girls Have More Mana.”

Related posts:

1. Weekly WoW Bash: Sounds Like a Raid to Me
2. WoW Bash Lives Again!
3. Weekly WoW Bash: Yes, You Do Need Help
4. Weekly WoW Bash: No One Listens to That Rule
5. Weekly WoW Bash: Do I Gotta Explain It?