Playing With Myself

On our guild forum one of the members posted about their experience dual-boxing. They went into some of the details about how they configured the machine, the broadcasting software they use, what macros they created, screen layout, and add ons. I remember hearing about someone defending an AV GY with five Elemental Shaman over a year ago but never thought much about it. With the game in gradual decline I thought about it now. It's always hell finding a tank or a healer if no one in the guild is around. So why not group with myself?

Headed off to the Wiki to review their multiboxing page. Gave a good review of Blizzard's official take on the practice along with some of the general theories. I then continued on to the hardware recommendations which was sorta scary. The author goes over boxes, custom KVMs, and mice then throws out a $5k sticker. Having built PCs for a number of years it sounded a little unreasonable. The software overview had a number of recommendations but make no mention of Octopus.

After about three hours of research I finally threw my hands up and wanted to try it. My primary machine does okay:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775
2x 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
Western Digital Caviar 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

I copied my current WoW folder then configured it to be windowed with lower video options. Having two accounts already, I used the Recruit-A-Friend program to get three trial accounts. It will be handy to have extra XP/abilities plus some Zhevra mounts. *snicker* After reading Lightning Overload I wanted to create Alliance Shaman but trial accounts don't have Burning Crusade. Opted to start out with Mages.

The 3.0.2 patch ended up working against me. Since a lot more is stored on the server, I couldn't copy layout, config, and macros around the various WTF subfolders. I also was getting hung up on creating focus macros so after two hours I finally stopped and settled with a fairly simple assist-n-blast setup. My main shaman is already 51 so I'll only need four accounts running for a while.

I was a little nervous launching four instances of the WoW client yet everything worked rather well. I kept my master account on the big screen in front of me then moved the three slaves to my side monitor. The primary Octopus setup guide was a little too terse so I ended up following Dual-boxing.com's guide instead. Somewhere around 6am I was giggling with glee as four synchronized Rank 1 Fireballs would hurl towards unsespecting Kobold vermin. Even got my first nub asking, “How are you doing that?”

So now I need to go grab three more World of Warcraft Battlechests. Mages have tons of potential with incredible burst damage and it would be fun to figure out focus macros for CC'ing. Yet Shaman would just own. Mail-wearing, Lightning throwing, Chain Healing bitches that will rotate Heroism and drop five Fire Elementals at once. Wild times ahead!