Why Do You Multibox?

Werit asks if Multiboxing is Fair or Foul on his site. Some people think its a form of cheating.

For PVP games, it certainly can be used for that. Some people cheat in games like Pirates of the Burning Sea (and probably in Warhammer Online as well) where you are restricted to playing on faction on any particular server. They use a second account to spy on the other side. On the other hand, dual boxing in actual combat was generally not as effective as it sounds. Managing two characters is not as efficient as having two players playing one character each; in an RVR game, I think it would actually set your team back, because few can play both characters as well as two real people would play.

I multibox, but I only do so in one game: EverQuest II. That game is a PVE game with very little or no PVP (except on certain servers, which I don't play on), and I don't consider multiboxing to be an unfair advantage in a PVE game, since it doesn't effect anyone else.

Some people assume people multibox because they are anti-social. I don't think that's typically the case; in fact, I probably even group slightly more often, since I can LFG from both machines.

I multibox for a few reasons:

• I think it adds an additional element of tactical interest. RPGs are very role oriented, because they traditionally require groups with varied skills, such as your Holy Trinity: chanter, tank, healer. Playing one of those roles without the others is boring. That's one reason why grouping is usually more fun (the social aspect is another). However, we can't group all the time.
  
• I actually started dual boxing because my Defiler soloed so incredibly slow, especially once she got to the ROK era. I think ROK may have driven me to dual box. I am not sure whether to admire or fear for the health of anyone who had the patience to level a Defiler to 80 naturally. I'm leaning towards "concern for their well-being." I may be the "anti-social multi-boxer" but at least I have a life.
  
• I'm a very casual player and am very time constrained. I work long hours, sometimes need to work on weekends, and often have to drop at a moment's notice. Some people might say MMOs aren't for me. Maybe they still aren't compatible with my kind of schedule (despite how casual accessible they have gotten in recent years). But for an extra $15 a month, I have managed to make EQ2 compatible enough.
  

In a way, I guess I dual box because it gets around what I perceive as design flaws in EverQuest II. These flaws aren't specific to EQ2 itself; I would dual box in World of Warcraft as well if that had been my game.

The design flaws I perceive:

• I enjoy the end game because that's where we do instance runs as groups. The progression curve becomes flatter and instances generally require more skill and tactics than overland quest arcs and soloing. I group for the dungeon runs; I don't dual box those (I doubt anyone would let me if I tried :) ). Leveling to get a different kind of character there is not quite as exciting for me. Some people say "its the journey" that counts. To them I say "I've done it twice." And claiming the leveling process is to learn the class doesn't make sense to me when it takes longer to level to 80 than it takes a doctor to get certified for some very difficult medical procedures. And you aren't learning the class unless you are grouping, and you aren't grouping in the low levels anyway because there aren't enough other people around below the level cap. So I have been dual boxing new alts that I've created to get them to the fun faster.
  
• Solo mobs are boring. I think one of the problems with recent games is they try to balance things so solo mobs can be handled by anyone, and that means they don't have any interesting abilities nor are they challenging in any way: the game designers don't know what skills the character will have, so apparently they assume they don't have any. I think a better design for MMORPGs would be to make everything require a party, and let people train pets (hirelings/Heroes) to fill out their own party when they are feeling anti-social or are time constrained.
  
• There really needs to be a way to LFG (with the in-game tool) any character on your account from any other character. Let's say I'm working on soloable epic updates on my Monk. No one would group with me just to watch me run around Norrath clicking on things. But maybe I'd be glad to group with my Assassin for something - let me do that! Let me LFG my Assassin and then route tells to that character to the one I'm on. Add a way to fast character switch while we're at it.
• With a subscription fee, I guess I start to feel I need to make a certain amount of progress or else I'm wasting my money. It may seem silly to spend more to give myself that little boost to ensure I make that amount of progress, but the numbers work out in my head. I might not care so much about "progressing my character" if these games used an alternate business model such as a pay as you go scheme where you pay based on how much time you spend in-game instead.
• I simply find it more interesting playing two characters at once. I grew up on multi-player dungeon crawls: Wizardry and Bard's Tale and Ultima 4-6. I leveled my monk to 80 the normal way, and now the early (pre-80) game just doesn't seem as fun as it was the first time around; but by adding a second character to manage, it adds something intangible to the leveling process that makes it more interesting.
  

So now, dear readers (both of you), I have some questions for you. Do you multibox and, if so, why? Or if you don't like multiboxing in PVE games, why?

KM Switches and Other Multi-Boxing Aids

It seems Stargrace has discovered the joy of the software KM (keyboard+mouse) switch. She had recently started dual boxing but was controlling the keyboard and laptop by physically going to each keyboard. When I first started dual boxing, I did that as well, but KM switches make it a heck of a lot of easier.

A KM switch lets you control multiple computers using a single keyboard and mouse. This differs from the more popular KVM switch in that you still require separate monitors for each computer. If you have multiple desktop machines, that saves on desktop real estate since you don't need to have more than one keyboard and mouse. And if you are using a laptop and desktop together, these devices save you the hassle of having to switch to the other keyboard. And when gaming sometimes, every second counts!

You can go out and buy a lovely hardware KM switch like this:



... but nowadays, there are plenty of software equivalents.

The way the software KM switches work is when you move your mouse offscreen (in any direction, up or down, but more commonly, left or right), control moves to another computer. This means that the OTHER computer will start receiving your mouse and keyboard input.

My setup at home has three computers: two desktops, and a laptop for work. The center computer is my primary computer and the keyboard and mouse is physically attached to that machine via the standard USB ports. When I move the mouse to the left, it appears on my other desktop machine. If I move it to the right, it appears on the laptop I use for work.

KM switches are really great for gaming. You can use it to dual box (to control characters running on two separate computers). You can look things up on the Internet on the secondary computers while playing fullscreen on your primary machine.

Stardock Multiplicity

I use a program called Multiplicity which works pretty well. It does have some drawbacks: some games like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, City of Heroes, and Warhammer Online stop responding to mouse clicks after you've switched off and on screen a few times. Its rather frustrating since Warhammer Online is one of the main games I play right now. It also confuses programs that use mouselook when your mouse ends up "offscreen," so I disable it when running a game from the first person perspective like Fallout 3. Multiplicity has a number of really great features though:

• You can share clipboard information between the machines. This means I can look up coordinates in eq2wikia and paste them into my fullscreen EQ2 instance running on my other computer. With as much running around and exploring that EverQuest II quests typically require, that's a lifesaver!
• You can also share FILES between machines. Its as easy as highlighting the files in Explorer, hitting Ctrl+C (the keyboard shortcut to Copy), and then moving the mouse "offscreen," and then hitting Ctrl+V (the keyboard shortcut to Paste) in the other computers folder.
  

Synergy

For a more general purpose KM switch that won't cost a dime, check out Synergy. It supports Mac, PC, and Linux, so multi-OS users would benefit from that. I haven't used it myself yet, but Stargrace seems to like it. I intend on trying it out because of the frustration I have with Multiplicity not working with Warhammer Online.

Octopus/Interbox

If you are primarily a World of Warcraft player, you might instead look into Octopus or Interbox, since these appear to be customized particularly for boxing in WoW. They support some features such as key cloning (so you can have some keyboard commands that get broadcast to all clients simultaneously.) It can also broadcasting multiple clicks to multiple windows on the same machine.

Did you hear about the guy who plays 36 World of Warcraft characters at the same time? He uses Octopus.

Keyclone

Of course, if you just want to broadcast multiple clicks but don't want a KM switch, you can use Keyclone. This software will even work with multiple instances on the same machine.



KaVoom

One commercial alternative that I have tried is Exxtramon from KaVoom software. This program is pretty neat because in addition to letting you control two machines with a keyboard and mouse, you can also use your secondary computer's monitor as an extension of your primary computer's desktop. Let's say you have a laptop and a desktop. In that case, the software would make your laptop behave as if it was a second monitor attached to your desktop. However, your laptop can still do its own processing and run its own programs, and you can then flip back and forth between the extended "virtual desktop" and the laptop's actual desktop at will. Its a neat feature but not something I needed for gaming. However, they do offer a separate product that is only a KM switch without the virtual desktop feature.

Anyway, hopefully this helps anyone out there interested in dual boxing, or struggling with dual boxing without these tools. Even if you are not dual boxing, if you have more than one computer side by side, a software KM switch will seriously make your life easier.

NPC Companions

I've been two-boxing my defiler, Malta, when farming with my main, Akshobhya and I've been revisiting some old Desert of Flames sites. She's now at level 54, and hopefully soon I'll be able to two-box them together without mentoring.

I find that playing two characters makes the gameplay much more interesting. Obviously, I can't play both characters at the same time optimally (Akshobhya got to 70 before I got the second account, and I've made sure to play Malta with real groups and actually solo her without Aks on occasion just to make sure I can play her properly.) But it adds to the number of different abilities I have, and therefore my options are expanded.

This makes solo game play much more interesting. This is partly why grouping/raiding is more interesting than soloing. When soloing you can only do whatever it is your archetype is designed to do, but with a group you have more options and strategies available to you. But the fact is sometimes we simply have to solo. Unfortunately, with all the responsibilities of a married homeowner with a full time job, for me, that's rather often.

What I wish was that you could get a little extra help in game without having to use a second account. In Guild Wars, we could get henchmen or collect Heroes to round out a party. Perhaps if we were limited to having only one Hero with us, and could use their skills (or perhaps a subset, since EQ2 has way too many skills) in addition to our normal skillset, would that be a good or bad thing for EQ2 (or WOW or any other traditional MMORPG)?

It would add a Pokemon collect-them-all style element to the gameplay as people tried to collect Heroes of each class. If they were tradeable it would help create an additional market which would keep the brokers lively. And it would render a lot of the "balancing" they do in game for solo play unnecessary. After all, who would care if your healer or mage can't solo effectively, when they can summon a tank or DPS companion to help out? And I think they would be good for the market because people would now have more than one character's worth of equipment to maintain (which would be part of how henchmen would be balanced compared to traditional soloing without NPC help.) The henchmen might come with somewhat of an XP penalty, though not so much that they become pointless of course.

Naturally, this type of feature shouldn't be done at the expense of grouping. But people seem to trend towards smaller groups when given the choice, so it might actually help encourage grouping since, with the help of NPC companions, more people would be able to consume heroic content. And it would help a lot of groups get off the ground more rapidly knowing they can replace their NPC companions with human player should one show up. It would also alleviate one problem I have with dual boxing: when I do have time to group, I am willing to stop dual boxing to genuinely partner with another person, but I can't LFG while I'm duoing, so most of the time people don't realize I'd be interested.