Thursday, November 10, 2011

Multiboxing WoW: Simple Starter Guide

What is playing WoW without at least trying multi-boxing?   I know you are looking to quit and don't want anymore reasons for playing, but really now!

How to multi-box on a single machine in a few simple steps

But first, let's fine tune the information I give you to better suit your needs. There are 4 possible paths from here
First, I ask you, how is your computer and monitors specs? Are you using a smaller monitor? Would you rather (and have the capability to) put Wow on an individual
Using the free program, Autohotkey, or using a non-free program, Keyclone. I personally prefer Autohotkey, however, when running WoW on linux through wine, I experience a few annoying Autohotkey crashes here and there, which usually come at a bad time, so I gave Keyclone a go, and was pleased.
Is this against World of Warcrafts terms of service?
It is against the Wow terms of service to make out of game macros which perform actions on their own. However, and you can google search it to verify this, it is NOT against their terms of service to multi-box, remap keys, or use key cloning programs such as these. However, Autohotkey does have a macro capability to it, so that it falls into a grey area with Blizzard at which they will not commit to say anything more than warning not to use macros. There is no grey area with keyclone. If you are seeking highly skeptical personal accounts of experiences using key cloning software, I personally have used Autohotkey within their terms of service for the last two years in order to multi-box, or remap keys, and with no problems of course. If this particular article is rather out of date when reading this, I'd recommend heading to http://dual-boxing.com instead to get the latest information on Blizzards take on these particular programs.
A general rule of thumb is that you need to press something in order for it to be legal

What is your system?

Windows:

Free:

The Autohotkey route.

Get Auto Hot Key at http://www.autohotkey.com/ Why? This is so that you can press one key and have it pressed in all windows. There's other alternatives out there, but this ones free and is seemingly unlimitedly customizable, and also great for remapping keys if you are running out of room (Making numlock the 5 key, for instance). After installing, open up a word pad of some sort. Write a script, which the how to's can be found at either one of the tiny little how to's on their site, or http://www.dual-boxing.org. Save that file with a .ahk extension. Simply open it and it will then run (options for it are in the system tray). Don't want to be bothered learning how to script for it? Just edit mine, it's in plain daylight what you will have to change to make it work, or if your seriously wanting to try multiboxing but don't wanna be bothered, I'll even edit it for you. I use a 10 box script i made for anything 2-10, even solo it works fine.

 The last program to get is Wow maximizer http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/146/ The reason behind this is so that you can again open up word pad and write a (for windows) batch file, which will run wow maximizer to open up however many windows you want with one click. Wow maximizer eliminates the borders to maximize the usage of space on your screen, but it's mostly to open up 6 wows, cause who wants to do that when they could be putting popcorn in the microwave. The batch file. The numbers you see there are the pixels from the top, bottom, left and right portions of the screen that wow extends to. Ask if your confused [img]http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/5893/zzz2vz1.jpg [/img] Now it's time to dumb things down and still be able to do the work of 6 pve idiots. It's time to go in game and make some macros to spam. First, you'll want to make sure you have two /as's, one for your normal spells and your multi box spells. It's time to switch between the two

 Now it's time to make some macros for your terms of service legal robots. You won't be at the top of your prime for damage, but inside you'll feel a warm feeling knowing your macro is pumping out 4x-5x minions damage 
 Basically no class is spared in wow from being a quality team mate one button spam bot. 


 That's it. Open up 10 box.ahk, open 6 box.bat, and go have fun as a bunch of girls with pink tabards on a single machine with really out of date specs.

Certainly, not to go without mentioning, a possibly the finest site out there for more tips on multi-boxing on wow would be the forums at dual-boxing.com

Two Possible /castsequence Clipping Problems & Solutions Often Encountered in Multi-Boxing WoW

Why is my stupid channeling spell not working in my /cast or /castsequence ?  It keeps getting interrupted as soon as it starts!   WHAT FOWL CURSE BEFUDDLES ME SO??!?!!!!

The /Assist Channeling Clipping Problem:

If you are experiencing clipping or stopping during channeled move's /castsequence or /cast macro, the reason may be one of the following!:

Question 1:  
Are you doing a channeled move such as mind flay, drain life, etc, and have not heard about [nochanelling]?   If not, precede to question 2.

The Solution To Problem A is:
You'll need to add a simple nochanneling modifier to your cast or cast sequence. An example would be:
/cast [nochanneling] Drain Life. 
 Or:
/castsequence [nochanneling] Vampiric Touch,Mind Blast,Shadow Word: Pain,Mind Flay,Mind Flay,Mind Blast. 
 Leave the brackets

Question 2:
Does your channeling macro contain a /a or /assist?

 It's looking like a classic nochanneling modifier is siting nice and correctly in the coding, and working great.  But suddenly, when assisting someone else, the blue beam of the Mind Flay disappears almost as soon as it becomes into existence.

Let's try to look past the macro and stay focused on the topic.  It  says interrupted, see?!  See!!?

Hopefully what is really happening here is that interface > combat > auto attack on assist happens to be set as on. The cast sequence macro started with a /a (the main assist), and every press of that in this example would make the priest channeling casts break and try to auto attack instead, causing the clipping.

If this is your problem too, you can currently (version 2.4.3) disable attack on assist in the escape menu>interface>combat section as the first option.

Open up the escape menu, click interface

Click on combat on the left to bring up the combat settings pane on the right.  Then un-check attack on assist.  PS: For those multi-box melee drones that you'd like to have at your command, thumbs up for having that option checked.. multi-box dps warriors will be a bit tough to command without it.


If this was your problem, now it is solved, and you may continue on looting your stupid twitching legs for all of eternity.