The Furious Five

Not Quite Myselves Lately...

2009-05-12T12:39:00.005-05:00

It's been an eventful week for my 3 guys, halfway to 78 and Grizzly Hills is done. I'm now a few quests into Zul'drak, I should be 79 by the time I'm done with this zone. Then it's off to Sholazar Basin, where I'll get 80. Storm Peaks and Icecrown are all gold. It's been a weird trip, as the pics below attest to...

In Other News:
We've got some new faces in the guild, but we're still recruiting. We have a 25 man raid roster to fill.

What We're Looking For:
* 1 Druid - Feral Tank (Dual specced Feral DPS with appropriate gear set a plus)
* 2 Druids - Restoration
* 2 Mages - Arcane prefered
* 1 Priest -Discipline
* 1 Priest - Shadow
* 1 Priest - Holy
* 1 Shaman - Elemental
* 1 Shaman - Restoration
* 1 Warlock - (3 points in Improved Imp a plus)

For more info,click here.

A Very Busy Week

2009-05-05T09:36:00.002-05:00

I had plans for this week, I really did. I had intended to get 80 on my trio, but that just didn't happen. As of this writing they are 20% from 76 and just moved to Grizzly Hills. And I'm ok with that atm, for a couple of reasons:

First, I'm now quite sure that my guys will be hitting 80 without setting foot in Icecrown or Storm Peaks, that means I can clear the quests in those two zones at 80 for maximum gold. Considering these will be fresh 80s with epic flight (only the Priest is missing epic flight right now, and will have it next week at the latest) they will all need money to raise their skills. All three have Jewelcrafting + another profession. Alchemy for the Priest, Tailoring for the Mage(he's actually nearly maxed as it is though), and Leatherworking for the Druid.

This coincides with one of my other failed plans for the week, I had intended to power level the Priests Alchemy this week, however I got lucky in Ulduar and got my tier 8 legs on Khaas. So I spent about 1200g getting an armor kit, and gems (1K for Solid Stormjewel). Basically, that was my alchemy funds for the week lol. But it's ok, I'll get it and the Epic Flight soon enough.

We've been making great strides in Ulduar, the alliance between Face on Fire and Urge Overkill has proved nothing but successful: As of last night we only have 3 bosses left to kill (excluding the unlockable Algalon). The fights in this place are nothing short of epic, and I'm truly proud of our team.

TTFN!

The Rundown
Loot for Khaas:
Valorous Darkruned Legguards
Flamewatch Armguards

More Ulduar, More 3 Box, OH MAI!

2009-04-28T10:46:00.005-05:00

It's been a busy week, we've done some knocking around in Ulduar. Our second week in and we're making noticable progress: For starters, the first three bosses Flame Lev, XT, and Razorwing went down quick and easy. We had a few good attempts at the Iron Council, but we had some puggers along and not all of these were really up to the task. So, instead we went to Kologarn, we offed him after a couple of tries. Unfortunately, I was too tired by then to think about getting a good pic of his corpse, but I DID manage to snap a quick one of Kal at 0% just as I died. (I HATE adds). In other news, it appears we've allied ourselves (tenatively) with the guild Urge Overkill, we did 25 Naxx with them this week and overall it went really smooth. If it's any indication I suspect we'll have lots of bloody adventures ahead of us with these guys. I got some new loot on Khaas out of this 25 run: Shoulders, Legs, and Ring. And several other members scored big, most notably one of our warriors got Betrayer of Humanity off of KT.

One of our druids Someshta and wowinsider.com are the cause of the Patchwerk screenshot. Peggle is one of the most insidiously addictive games I've played since I was a kid, it has a classic feel to it, like the days of Asteroids, Tetris, Bubble Bobble, Breakout, etc.

In Boxing News:
My 3 box crew is 74 and just breaking into Dragonblight, several features/changes in 3.1 have really made boxing thru quests a breeze. Also, it appears that a variety of collection quests have been significantly nerfed. One for instance might have required 30 essences from some undead ... now it requires only 10. Obviously, this has helped streamline my quest grind significantly. I'm finishing out quests in every area, my plan is to hit 80 in Sholazar Basin most likely. That way all of Icecrown and Storm Peaks will give me max gold. At this writing the Druid and Mage have just gotten Epic Flight, so I now only have to worry about the Priest and Cold Weather Flight for all 3. Still a pretty hefty chunk of cash. However, once these guys do have their epic flight out of the way and money for cold weather flight I can start working on tradeskills. Each has JC + a second skill: Leatherworking (120) for the Druid, Tailoring for the Mage (Skill 420), Alchemy (120).

Khaas of course is the tank for this group, and one of my Shamans (Horaxë) will be with the group as well. I did some work to Hor this week too, I got his JC up to 420 and Inscriptions is steadilly climbing a point per day on Northrend Research, I hate that this is the only way to feasibly skill up. He's at 430 Inscriptions right now but at this rate he should be maxed in a couple of weeks. Anyhow, that's about it for this week.

The Week in Screenshots:

Post Patch WTF

2009-04-21T10:27:00.003-05:00

Well, 3.1 has arrived, and along with Ulduar there's been a lot of changes to the game that effect boxing. For starters, there's some new UI interact changes. For example: You can now keybind mouse clicks to the keyboard. This; I imagine, was more a change for people using laptops or disabled gamers, and use with game pads. However, this is a HUGE benefit for boxers. Now I can loot and do quests with my other guys much easier. There were other changes, such as the Relic shoulders now granting it's bonus XP to that gained from quests as well as npc kills. That being said, I haven't had a chance to do much boxing at all since the patch dropped.

The patch experience is not all good news however, there are still some pre-existing bugs that were not addressed. And the graphics engine though "apparently" upgraded is causing loss of fps without a noticeable change in the same graphics we've been enjoying for the past four years. This problem has only been exacerbated on my boxing rig, before the patch I had 4 copies of WoW open at 60 FPS with a handful off AddOns. Now, with 0 AddOns, a fresh install of WoW, a newly flashed BIOS, latest drivers, all Vista settings turned to max performance (Aero off), ALL settings in wow at minimal, etc and I'm pulling 40 FPS with one copy of WoW open...

Even my main rig is losing some frames...

Here's hoping a fix is forthcoming.

That being said, I've been primarily focused on Ulduar with my guild. Sadly, the world server has been more unstable than Gary Busey after an all night bender. Wednesday night: We knocked out Flame Leviathan, Friday night : We got back in and took out Razorscale and XT-002 Deconstructor before the instance server shat itself again.

You can see some pics of the progress here

More coming soon...

3.1 is here

2009-04-14T11:15:00.011-05:00

3.1 dropped today, it was a bit unexpected really. There wasn't much notice given by the blues, this upsets my levelling scedule a bit as I was hoping to have the new guys up to 80 by the time the patch hit.

As it stands, I've gotten the Druid, Mage, and Priest to 73 and cleared Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord in short order. The good news is that the patch delivers a few features that actually should smooth things over for boxing in general. For starters, in the patch we're now able to bind mouse clicks to the keyboard. This is something I never thought, but always hoped would happen. This means with 1 button
press I can talk to an NPC/Questgiver, or loot a corpse with all of my guys, etc. As opposed to manually switching screens for each toon and clicking the mouse for each one individually. It doesn't seem like much, but when you consider the amount of collection quests, etc that time adds up pretty quick. And since I'll be hitting the bane of multiboxing quest grinding "Dragonblight" very soon (why are there so many freakin collection quests here?)

That being said, I'm going to be refining my keybings/addons since I'm adding new classes to my team and spreading the team among 3 computers. With the new more powerful machines I'm able to run more addons and at a higher resolution with even better performance. Infact, I'm able to log on all of my dudes and move around passably with all 5 in Dalaran now on one computer ... having only 2 per machine will be even better, and epic flight should be a lot more manageable. As it stands now, my guys have dropped follow in epic flight because of fps drops.

So what all has been going on?
Firstly, there's 3 box crew. I've been tinkering with specs slightly for the Druid, Mage, and Priest. The Mage has switched to Arcane, Druid is still Boomkin, and Priest is still Disc, but I have moved

around a few points here and there for efficiency sake. That and because they're getting closer to 80 and their *final* specs.

Caerroil - http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=0xG0hiIRIdIVh0hZbxcub
Miraru - http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vck0IzxGuMtedcE0bo
Findail - http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhhiRhsffRpcxxc

Unlike with my previous boxing team, I hit the icey shores of Northrend at 68 rather than 70. Also, I skipped Borean Tundra almost entirely with the other group, I only went there long enough to get the 2 hander on Khaas, then I moved on to Howling Fjord. With the 3 box crew I decided to start with BT and clear it before moving on, my idea is to clear out all lower level quests before moving on to anything else, the reason I started a couple of levels down, and this will help me catch up. Plus, I'm thinking the more quests I can do in low and medium level zones the less I will do in Icecrown or Storm Peaks before 80. With my previous team I managed to get to 80 doing only a few quests in IC or SP, after I hit 80 I burned thru quests there and was making tons of gold. My objective this time around, avoid them entirely before 80 and maximize my earning potential. My concern is that I want to have enough money to get epic flight on all 3 ASAP, and maybe a couple of BOE/Crafted epics (for example: Titansteel Spellblade)

Secondly, there's some familiar faces who've returned to the game and the guild recently, as well as a couple of new recruits and recruit hopefulls. We're pushing for 25 man content, however it's slow going because we're not spamming trade chat like idiots looking for guild members. What we are doing is trying to find quality people, by that I mean: the optimal combination of temperment, dedication/enthusiasm, skill, and gear (to a lesser degree). It has always been my opinion that gear is not inherently necessary when finding new members for raids, if the rest is good then we can get them geared up. And will.

Besides, who wants to invite someone who already has all of the gear and achievements in the game accomplished? Surely there's not much left for them to do...

Primary Spec for Khaas (23/5/43) Unholy Hybrid Tank: link
Secondary Spec for Khaas (51/13/7) Blood Tank: link

As for the guild raids? We've been hitting 10 mans knocking out achievements. We even got to run a raid with our guild leader and her husband (both still in Russia till July 1st). Here's some pics from our last Naxx run:

Stay tuned, next update I'll have some info and screens from Ulduar as well as info on the new boxing team. (Warrior, Warlock, Paladin, Hunter, Shaman)

Good News: It's also a suppository

2009-04-07T12:31:00.003-05:00

I've had a lot of bad luck getting the new setup running properly. I'm glad I decided to just build one computer first, then the second (after I iron out any kinks). However, the new computer is now running like a champ. You can read the worklog of the entire setup here: Project: Leviathan

I've also been quite busy in WoW, our guild downed Sarth 10 Man with 1 Drake up last week for the first time. It was a rush, I don't think we're going to manage 3 drakes by the time Ulduar comes out, but we're going to atleast try for 2. Also, we've opened up recruiting. We're pushing for 25 man content now, so if you want to see the video of the Sarth fight or are interested in a cool horde guild check us out here: Face on Fire - Bloodscalp - US Horde

In boxing news, I've decided to level up some guys to replace shamans. I'm dropping 3 of the Hors from my main team in favor of a Priest (Disc), Druid (Boomkin), and Mage (Arcane/Frost). Till they're level 80 most of my boxing time will be spent on them. Though I have been boxing some raid content with Khaas and Horaxë. That being said, ding 70 for the substitutes!

Expect updates to be back on track, every Tuesday during maintenance more news, more pics, vids, etc.

When the Going Gets Weird

2009-03-04T20:49:00.005-06:00

Another eventful week; it's a good news bad news situation.

First, the bad news:
My old gaming rig died. I'd actually been planning on replacing it in the near future anyways, but ... not this soon. So, unfortunately this means no boxing for a while till I can figure something out. I've got an idea for the replacement setup, but it's going to take some money and right now I just don't have enough to do it. The good news is, I filed my taxes Monday, and it looks like I'll be getting enough back to cover the entire replacement setup.

Here's the specs for the replacement(minus psu and case)
Motherboard: EVGA 113-M2-E113 AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI ATX
Processor: AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 9600 GT Superclocked Edition 512MB
RAM: G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Hard Drive: OCZ Solid Series 2.5" 30GB SATA II Solid State Disk (SSD)

I'm going to be running 2 secondary rigs with the parts listed above with 2 shamans running on each. And my DK will be playing as always on my main rig.

The Good News:
Before my system went down I managed to get some upgrades, and Naxx has been good to me. I got a nice trinket and helm for Khaas. And I grabbed T7 Gloves and BPs for my Shamans.

And now for the best part. I was recently interviewed by Greg Tito of The Escapist Magazine for an article on multiboxing. I was very pleased with the way the article turned out, I thank Mr Tito for his objective analysis. And I was honored to see him citing my (Hor) in the article. Here's a link to Tito's article The Escapist: Multiboxing to Level 80 Nirvana

And here's a text version of the complete interview: link

2009-02-24T11:32:00.021-06:00

It's been a very eventful week for me. I've been taking some tentative steps into other Heroics, figuring out the fights and soon I should have several more Heroics under my belt. Drak'tharon Keep and Violet Hold are my current targets. I plan to have both of these cleared and on farm status this week, HVH will be especially nice since it's such a quick clear, and easy emblems.

I've been hording Emblems on the Shamans for tier 7, meanwhile I'm making Titanium Spellshock Ring for each of them, and I finally after a couple of weeks of farming managed to get each Shaman wearing Sash of Blood Removal

Gone in 34 Seconds

As you can see, I put in for name changes this week, all Shamans are now named Horaxe (with a special e). For any wondering, Horaxe was the name of my Shaman long long ago and in the far away land of EverQuest. I played the original Hor for years, and many friends still refer to me as Hor, so it was only fitting that my Shaman clones take up the name as well.

More and more refining of my techniques have led to faster and faster clears; and the Shamans continue to perform above my expectations.

I've been working mainly on Khaas however, getting my tanking gear together, and refining my macros and such. I'm at the point where the DK is pushing 2K DPS roughly while tanking. There's only a few items I really want on him atm from Naxx, so I'm starting to take Shamans instead whenever possible.

For Khaas I've finally managed to upgrade my Pauldrons of the Colossus I got lucky in Naxx this week and grabbed Heroes' Scourgebane Pauldrons. I also grabbed Valor Medal of the First War, I found much to my surprise this trinkets effect actually stacks with the JC trinket Figurine - Monarch Crab. And last, I picked up a Chained Military Gorget to replace my JC necklace, the Titanium Earthguard Chain; not a huge improvement in stats or defense, but definitely some much needed Hit and Dodge. As you can see in the screen shot below, my avoidance has gotten a real kick in the pants from the recent upgrades.

And last, but not least I cashed in 300 Stone Keeper's Shards!

Soon I'll have enough to get the mount on the rest of the group.

Gone in 60 Seconds

2009-02-17T12:34:00.008-06:00

Nope, I'm not talking about the classic film, or even the later remake with Nickolas Cage and Angelina Jolie. I'm talking about the last boss in Heroic Gun'drak. I've been farming this instance daily, while refining my macros and strategy. Likewise, I've been getting some upgrades.

This week the Shamans got not one, but two Emblem of Heroism rewards. (Lattice Choker of Light & Protective Barricade of the Light).

Khaas has had even better luck on the gear front this week:
Bracers of Dalaran's Parapets
Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight
Waistguard of Living Iron
Staggering Legplates
Plague-Impervious Boots

I haven't gotten into many 25 mans yet, but I managed to find someone selling the Bracers for 1.5K (which is half-price on Bloodscalp). This was just the encouragement I needed to finish working on enchanting. I got to 450 and bought all of the recipes, including 40 Stamina to Bracers.

Overall, I think I have my strategy for GD worked out, I'm working on a video of this instance now. I had recorded every boss kill before, but some of these were fairly sloppy kills with pretty crappy gear (ie, the day I hit 80 I hit this instance). Now however, I can clear the place consistently with very little real effort. So, video time. And ... time to start learning some other instances. My tentative goal is to box every heroic before 3.1 is released. So, fingers crossed.

DPS

2009-02-10T10:15:00.015-06:00

Normally, I like to post once per week on Tuesday (during maintenance) however the past couple of weeks have been a bit of a drag. Last week we were pelted with storms of biblical proportions. Ice, lightning, and tornadoes. Needless to say, power and cable were the least of our concerns for a while. Luckilly, we got off pretty light. We were without power for a day, but it was back on before the sun went down. The cable was back on the next day.

This week I've been taking my first tentative steps into Heroics, in that time I've managed to put Heroic: Gun'drak on farm status. I've also gotten video of each boss kill. I'll be editing this and making a real Gun'drak video out of the footage over the next week or two.

My newfound success in the Heroics is due in no small part to gear and macros. First off, I spent about a week knocking out quests for gold, with this I geared up the Shamans. Each now has quest blues, and a few epics: Titansteel Guardian, Iron-bound Tome, Revenant's Breastplate, Windrunner's Leggings, Windrunner's Boots. I'm now getting mats and the recipes for the spell power ring and necklace, tomorrow I should be making rings for all of the Shamans. Likewise, my DK, Khaas has been getting some upgrades including T7 Chest and the tanking gloves from the last boss in H:GD.

On the macro front, I changed my DPS rotation a bit thanks to a post by Fursphere on dual-boxing.com forums. (here's the thread: link). After reading this thread I decided to do some experiments, for science!

First, I took my DK and a Shaman to a raid dummy in Org. I made my new macro as Fur suggests, and tried a comparison of my normal rotation vs the new macro. There was a noticable increase in damage. So, I decided to try something more "real world" testing. And started attacking with my DK (for Ebon Plaguebringer) Since the DK and Shamans are always grouped, I wanted to see how much damage I could get the Shaman to do in a real world scenario with totems, Ebon Plaguebringer, etc. Here's how it turned out:

As you can see, the new numbers are big. And I was very pleased. But I decided to do one last test sample, I ran Heroic Gun with my group. All Shamans have the same gear, 2 I gave the new macro, and 2 I kept with my normal rotation setup. As you can see from the pic below, this made a real difference.

I modified Fur's macro slightly for my group, since they're all Orcs and I definitely want to use Blood Fury, I also decided to add another instance of Lava Burst to the random sequence. The idea is to increase the likelihood Lava Burst will be cast. At first glance it doesn't seem like much of a difference but really with this macro if Burst is off cooldown, it's very likely it's going to be cast. Anyhow, here's the macro:

DPS Spam Macro:
#showtooltip Lightning Bolt
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Elemental Mastery
/castrandom Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Lava Burst, Chain Lightning, Flame Shock

More coming soon...

Post 3.08

2009-01-21T14:08:00.002-06:00

Servers have been ... for lack of a better term, crappy. Seems that the patch that was supposed to fix the lag, made it so the Northrend servers reset everytime someone wins Wintersgrasp. As such, I haven't had a lot of opportunity to play around with the new features.

This week I've managed to get my new priest caught up with team 2. Now I'm just going to set him out to get rested till he's maxed. Meanwhile, I've been working on the Shamans, getting some crafted gear here and there. But mostly just playing catch up. A couple of weeks ago, I power leveled my DK to 80, and left the Shamans sitting at 78. Yesterday I knocked out that level, and today I'm already halfway thru 79. The XP is coming fast, and I'm starting to unlock dailies and the FPs, etc. I'm trying to save up cash for Epic flight it's actually coming along pretty quickly now that I'm back on the Shamans.

Despite the server instabilities and raid cancellations last night, I managed to get on Khaas long enough to get the new abilities and try out some new gear. All of the Titansteel Helms have been given sockets (hurray) and the new Rune of the Gargoyle made a HUGE difference. The end result of the patch for my DK was I went from 24K HP, 520 Defense, and 23K Armor to ... 28K HP, 540 Defense, and 26K Armor. I'm going to give Heroics a shot either tonight or tomorrow. And tomorrow night we're trying OS with a Drake up. So ... good luck to us ^_^

Not Much To Report

2009-01-13T10:44:00.002-06:00

This week has been kinda slow, due to lack of warm bodies we're not doing any 10 mans atm. Also, I don't want to burn myself out on my main group, so ... I decided to finish off team 2. I was going to xfer my Priest over to a different account to add him to the group, but there was an issue during the transfer process and the Priest ended up on Aegwyn, rather than Bloodscalp. I contacted Blizzard about it, but no luck. They say there's a confirmation before the transfer is finalized (which there was not) and which I've dealt with in the past when doing transfers. And the short of it: Wait a month and give us more money.

My decision? Since the priest was only just 60 and with no gear really ... I decided to level a new one since I've got RAF for 2 more months. Already up to 40. Once he's done, I'm going to make an Orc Warlock as a possible replacement to the Elemental Shaman in the group. More coming soon.

Ding 80!

2009-01-06T13:29:00.003-06:00

This has been a very eventful week, I've gotten a lot of levels knocked out and managed to get to 80 with very little done in Icecrown and Storm Peaks, over 90% of each zone is still unquested which means a lot of available gold for my fresh 80s. My domain is down atm, while I migrate files to a new server. So images are down on the blog, probably for another few days. But everything should be back to propper running order by Friday at the latest.

So, tonight I do my first Naxx run, I'm probably going to stick with my Unholy tanking build tonight. But I want to try out the DW 39/32 build asap. I just need to get some gear together first. I got cold weather flying on the team this week too. So now I just need to get epic mounts for them. Then I think I'll start working on levelling my mixed team again. More coming soon.

Ding 76, Goodbye Grizzly Hills

2008-12-30T08:51:00.007-06:00

A few days ago I hit 76, and managed to get both of the Grizzly Hills achievements at the same time. Now that I'm done with RAF I'm focusing on my main team, and the experience is coming fast. They're all full rested, and look like they might make it to 80 that way, if I keep doing quests.

I finished my last RAF character last night, a Hunter. I had some gifted levels banked, so decided to boost him to 30 then gift him up. He's sitting at 61 naked now. I don't really have any plans for him yet, but that gives me a complete set of characters, one of every class at 60+.

Thanks to mikekim on the dual-boxing.com forums for his advice on making a little extra gold from the holiday festivities in
this post.

My own stats: 26 Characters
6x Jingling bell
2x Snowman Kit
7x Little Green Helper
11x Little Red helper
6.5x stacks of holly (20)

A couple of highlights from Zul'Drak so far:
I'm already about to ding 77, however I intend to stick with the plan and get both of the achievements done for the area before I move on to Sholazar Basin.
I've found 2 really fun quests Kickin Nass' and Takin' Manes and Fuel for the Fire. Both of these quests are fun to box, having that many pets at once to keep up with can be a headache, but it's kinda neat to see them all running around. The second quest though, is just nuts. These abominations are actually somewhat durable, and have some handy abilities for the quest, even more fun though is tossing 5 of the Aboms, 4 Fire Elementals, and a Ghoul at Alliance in the area... *CACKLE* Actually, there weren't a lot around at the time. And I've been trying to be a good boy, generally I only attack people if they give me a reason. But sometimes ... the fact they are on the wrong team is reason enough.

Kickin Nass' and Takin' Manes

Fuel for the Fire

Doomsday Averted, Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T07:52:00.003-06:00

My computer has been back up and running for about a week now, I bought a 3 pack of Norton Antivirus and now all of my desktops are running it. It cleared the virus, but I was still having some problems with my main rig shutting down, turns out my hard drive was failing, in 8 years this is the first Seagate drive I've had that's failed. I had been putting it off, but I needed to reinstall Windows anyways, it's all running fine now. Since my last post I've gotten Miraru and Theomach to 61 for my mixed team, along with a couple of alts I can sub in Kostel: Priest, and Mirwai: Hunter.

Now that I'm finished wit RAF I'm back to my main team, DK and Shamans. I got them a level yesterday (76 now) and they're still full rested. Anyhow, wife and I are sick so we're probably staying in for the holidays.

From Keith, Brandy, and Buster
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

An Unfortunate Setback

2008-12-11T13:46:00.002-06:00

My network was infected last night, something got in and dropped several trojans. I'm not sure what exactly since I haven't even been on my computer lately. I did however receive an email from my mother last night ... so I'm thinking it's possible she has something and it was sent to me. Run of the mill kinda viral infection, "You have viruses, click here to install software that will remove them only 19.95!"

With the impending holidays, several of my accounts were offline (Christmas is more important than a weeks worth of boxing). But today was my day to reactivate, so this viral infection was somewhat annoying. I ended up buying a copy of Norton 2009 home pack, lets you install on 3 computers. So, I'm running full scans now ... and hopefully this will fix the problem. Meanwhile, I'm boosting a couple of guys for my mixed team: Miraru - Troll Mage and Theomach - Undead Warlock.

It's about time for my annual reset anyway, every year I reinstall windows, etc. Completely clean out my partitions of any crap I may have accumulated over the year. I had intended to wait till I finish building the new computer. But ... it might just be time to do it early. More coming soon.

Professions

2008-12-03T21:33:00.005-06:00

Sometimes, you need a break. One thing I learned from EverQuest, the endless grind will in the end burn you out. This is especially true if you're a boxer dealing with the new speed bump/frustrations of questing in Northrend: Vehicles, Collection Quests, phasing areas. These are the bane of my boxing existence. Since I just finished Dragon Blight, I'm ready for a change of pace. There are a LOT of collection quests there. So, today I decided to work on some tradeskills. In particular, I decided it was time I settle on what skills I want on my teams.

Before I get into this, allow me to explain a little of my thinking here. First, I thought it most important that my main team have every tradeskill. The reason, everything's BOE now. I can craft a great epic item with one guy, and give it to any of my other toons, or sell it on AH. This frees me up a LOT. I don't "have" to have a particular tradeskill on every character just to make things work. For example, before I would've had Leatherworking on all of the Shamans just for drums, let alone the BOP armor pieces. But now it's just not necessary, since the Drums have a debuff attached (you can only use drums once every 2 minutes now, like Blood Lust and Bubble). It's even more important that the primary team have all of the craftable skills, that way I can get the good recipes in instances.

Team 2: These guys are primarilly for support, and fun. I've got four guys here with Mining, and though I hate working on this skill, it's worth it. Because this gives me a total of 5 Titansteel Cooldowns. Aside from that, I've got the Herbalism and Skinning covered (just didn't have room for Skinning in Team 1). Beyond that it's just a question of what I want to do.

Team 1:
Khaas - Death Knight [ Enchanting & Jewelcrafting ]
Anaimh - Shaman [ Alchemy & Herbalism ]
Bnaimh - Shaman [ Blacksmithing & Engineering ]
Cnaimh - Shaman [ Mining & Leatherworking ]
Dnaimh - Shaman [ Inscriptions & Tailoring ]

Team 1:
Sedlec - Paladin [ Enchanting & Jewelcrafting ]
Caerroil - Druid [ Mining & Skinning ]
Miraru - Mage [ Mining & Tailoring ]
Hergrom - Shaman [ Herbalism & Mining ]
Theomach - Warlock [ Mining & Tailoring ]

Bear Cavalry

2008-11-20T08:20:00.000-06:00

Click for fullsize

More outlands fun coming soon!

WoTLK Midnight Release and Then Some

2008-11-18T08:19:00.000-06:00

By now, most people have already gotten their Wrath copy (or copies) and started hitting Northrend with a vengeance. Myself, I live directly across the street from my local Gamestop, so I decided to wait till about 15 till Midnight to go. It seems I highly underestimated the wow geek population in Arkansas.

The line actually curves around behind the tree, and back along the other side of the mall...and wtf is there a tree before Thanksgiving?!?!

Luckily ... I cut in line.
Well, it wasn't so malicious as all that, I noticed a group of friends at the front of the line who were shouting my name as I was looking for the other end of the line. They called me over and asked me how I was doing. Apparently, I needed to take my receipt inside so they could process it and give me a new receipt to hang on to till they officially started handing out copies.

Overall, it went really quickly with little fuss. They were prepared, one line was for Collector's Editioin pre orders, the other was for regulars. There weren't quite so many CE orders, so I got in quick regardless. Tabby, the manager was not surprised to see me, or the amount of WoW copies I had reserved. She had a surprise for me as well, an oversized display box for Wrath. (Which I sold before I even left the mall, some kid offered me 20 bucks for it.) The store was prepared with goodies for everyone, including a scratch and win card for everyone who pre ordered. (I got six and didn't win a thing lol)

I DID however get a strategy guide and a bookmark, apparently because I had bought the most copies there or something. 5 Reg WoTLK and 1 CE, +6 Gamecards. My friends wanted to hang out after, they all had their laptops with them and asked if they could come over. So I said for a ride home and a Klondike bar anything's possible.

While I waited for my friends I had this eery feeling I was being watched. It was quickly confirmed, when I noticed a few geeks eyeing me and my overstuffed bag of WoW goodies. Finally, a little asian kid ran up to me and asked if I was a gold farmer... the irony. I explained I was a multi-boxer, that 5 of these were for me, and the sixth was for my wife who decided she wanted to start playing a couple of weeks ago.

The kid, who couldn't have been more than 10 grinned and yelled to his friends HE'S A MULTIBOXER! As you can imagine ... I felt like a rat in a corner. To my surprise, everybody cheered. Before I knew it, there were several people coming up to me, and everyone had questions. It was the normal stuff, "How the hell can you afford it? How does it work? Isn't it illegal? Is it hard?" etc ad infinitum. This was the point when I sold the oversized box. Before it was all said and done, people were asking for my xfire info and if I lived here in town.

It was weird, after spending so much time at near pariah status in the game for being a multi-boxer, I was near rock star status with the locals outside the game. It turned out to be a fun evening, I made some new friends and got some goodies (I even got a loot card from the stuff packed in the CE box). I found some nasty error in my registry left behind after removing some burning software a couple of months ago, this was fixed after about an hour of figuring it out and actually fixing it. Meanwhile, all of my accounts were upgraded, and I decided to take advantage of RAF while I still had it and boost a DK up.

Here's where things take a nasty turn, I had honestly expected to take the DK and my mixed team around but ... ended up ditching the mixed team and the paladin from my main team ... to add the DK to my Shaman group. It has proven THOROUGHLY enjoyable. Now, my DK and Shaman group is 74 and pushing. I've got the next few days off, so we'll see where that lands me. More, including pics of the team in action coming soon.

To the winner go the spoils:

Team Compositions

2008-11-11T08:18:00.000-06:00

I've finalized my team rosters, thanks to RAF and a lot of coffee, I now have well over 26 characters to choose from.

Team Thunderpussy

Team SRS Business

Unfortunately, I don't have infinite time to play them all, so I've decided to narrow my focus to a primary and secondary team. This will give me a lot of gold farming potential with dailies and quite a bit of fun in Heroics. So, here's the teams.

I really like my Paladin and Shamans, but I'm also very excited about playing a mixed team. My first team to box in wow was a mixed team that I was levelling just to test things. I ended up scrapping that team when they were mid 50s, and decided to start from scratch levelling 4 shamans, and then gifting a Paladin to 61. Which gave me the first team. This second team is actually the remnants of several other team comps I was thinking of. DK, Locks, and a SPriest as an example. I finally decided I wanted to do something very different and made a full team of completely different classes. With a dedicated healer and a lot of burst potential. The team is incredibly versatile. So it's going to be hard not to just jump on them immediately when Wrath drops to get them levelling, and honestly I might. But I'm trying to contain myself ... and focus on the first team till 80. Anyhow, that's it for now. More coming soon.

An introduction

2008-10-31T08:23:00.000-05:00

My name is Keith Jones, I live in Arkansas. And I am a dual-boxer. I play World of Warcraft as a full group of five. I started boxing a long time ago in EverQuest, originally 2 boxing my Shaman along with a friend's Warrior, or another friends Shadow Knight. It was a great way to grind without having to go LFG. Later, I rerolled on a PVP server with friends from Utah. I started playing a Wizard, and eventually started 2 boxing a Wizard and Enchanter, giving us a full group. It was then that I noticed something odd, a group of identical dark elves all with a variation on the name Sam. He had a full group, and they were all one person. I was on my way out of EverQuest at this point, but the seeds were planted. When I came to WoW, I raided with several different characters before becoming somewhat burnt out.

I tried a couple of different servers, before settling on Bloodscalp with my friends from the Utah EQ group. I played a variety of different characters, levelling fast and doing casual raiding, arenas, pvp. But, a combination of really horrible pug situations, and boredom led me to contemplate the end of my WoW experience.

Then the Recruit A Friend promotion was announced.
I found out I could "link" accounts and characters would get triple experience. It was a short leap of logic to realize that this meant I could actually level a whole group really quickly. This was just what I needed if I really wanted to try running a whole team, but would it work? I did some snooping and found dual-boxing.com, not only was it possible, it seemed it actually wouldn't be that hard. I already had a couple of computers that could run WoW effectively, and there was software that would streamline the whole process. So, I decided to get a copy of Keyclone and make a couple of trial accounts, I was hooked. The rest is history.

The Interview

2008-10-29T21:08:00.000-05:00

Thanks for getting back to me. I definitely want to hear about older players of MMOs who multiboxed back in the day. Any detail you have about that subject would be great. When did you start? How did you do it with the tech available?

It all started about ten years ago, I was fresh out of high school. I'd always been a geek, I loved computers, played D&D, Magic the Gathering, and old MUDs on dial-up bulletin boards. Then, I got into EverQuest. Initially, I played my Barbarian Shaman, Horaxe solo. But even early on I started duoing with melee players that I got along with. Shadow Knights and Monks especially. Once I was levelled up and raiding, I noticed some things. First: A lot of the tanks in the guild had heal bots, that is to say they kept a Cleric on a second computer/laptop and just healed themselves as necessary. A monk friend of mine asked me one day if he could log me on and dual-box with my Shaman. We traded info, and this ended up becoming pretty common practice for a while. And so with the monk on one screen, and my shaman on another; not to mention a keyboard on my desk, and another in my lap, I began my love affair with boxing. As the years progressed, I stuck to simple dual-boxing. Eventually, I made my own second account and started playing on a PVP server with RL friends of mine. We made a group all at level one and started levelling together in the last days before WoW, our group consisted of my friends playing Shadow Knight, Shaman, Cleric, and me on a Wizard and Enchanter. Meanwhile, I expiramented with other setups in other games. In Dark Ages of Camelot I ran a group of 4 Bone Dancers, lack of control wasn't really an since I had an army of skeletons with the dancers, all set on aggressive. It was fun, but DAoC got boring pretty quickly. I had similar luck in other games, most notably in the Lineage 2 Korea, Taiwanese, and English Betas (no I'm not asian, I just managed to get in the betas) and then WoW hit and everything changed.

Suddenly it seemed like all of my friends were playing one game again, WoW. And initially I didn't get the game, I just wasn't into it. Eventually though, a friend convinced me and for vanilla wow I played just like everybody else. First an Undead Mage, then a Human Warlock. I raided as both, but stayed on the lock for a LONG time, my guild was raiding Naxx by the time BC came out, My old friends from EQ got me to reroll on Bloodscalp, a small guild all real life friends. Very laid back and casual, I got bored pretty quickly with single characters, I would level them quickly, get them gear, then start all over. By the time I decided to start boxing seriously again, I had levelled just about every class in the game to 70. Arena PVP no longer interested me as much as it once had. So, having noted the severe lack of tanks in the guild, and realizing I had completely avoided the Shaman class since I played one so long in EQ. I decided to get out of my comfort zone and make a group to box with (A Paladin and 4 Shamans). I spent a couple of months when RAF was released levelling up various groups until I settled on my main group, since then Wrath has been released and I've levelled more, and started doing Heroics.

Here are some other basic questions I've compiled. Please feel free to answer as much or as little as you want. And thank you!

First off, some personal bio info, feel free to answer as much of this as you want, I'm just trying to get a picture of who you are. What name do you want me to use? What country, state and city do you live in? What is your occupation? Are you married or do you have a girlfriend?

Use the name Hor, this has been my online alias for the past 10 years, ever since my Shaman in EQ: Horaxe. I'm 29, from Ft Smith Arkansas, in the US. I'm a student at U of A, but to pay the bills and the account subs I work as an accountant for a large retail store. I've been married for 3 and a half years, she's an English Teacher and likes video games, but she's more of an XBox 360 kinda gal.

What is your current group makeup? Faction, Class, Level, Gear level (epics? quest blues?)

I have two groups, my main group is an Unholy Death Knight, and 4 Elemental Shamans, all Orcs, level 80 mixed blues and epics (just started farming heroics with these guys recently). Group two is complete mix, different race/class for every character. BE Prot Paladin, Orc Ele Shaman, Undead Disc/Holy Priest, Tauren Balance Druid, Troll Arcane/Frost Mage; this group is mid 60s, the Pali is 74 atm (he was the tank for my main group in BC).

What is your current hardware setup? What are the specs? What kind of router network do you have set up?
Right now I'm only using 2 computers to play wow. My main and my old gaming rigs. The main was built to upgrade the old rig about a year ago. Both of these were computer mods of mine.

Main Rig
Intel Q6600 Quad Core
2 Gigs Corsair Dominator RAM
EVGA 8800 GT OC Vid Card
EVGA 780i Motherboard

Old Rig
MSI Motherboard
AMD 5800+ Dual Core Proc
2 Gigs of OCZ RAM
BFG 7950 GTX 1 Gig Video Card

Main rig is hooked to a 22 Inch Dell Widescreen, I have a pair of Samsung 940N 19 inch screens on either side. One hooked to the old rig, and the other is hooked to my laptop. I watch Adult Swim.com, movies, or listen to iTunes on this generally. Or of course, browse the internet for WoWhead info or something.

What addons do you use? Do you have macros mapped to one keyboard or do you have a keyboard for each character? I have an 80s sci-fi image of a guy surrounded by monitors and keyboards like prog rock keyboardist Tony Banks. http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a328/joetflynn/TonyBanksAvatar.jpg Is that what it looks like? Any pics you have of your setup would be awesome.

Once upon a time, I did actually keep several keyboards or "keypads" on a desk to box with. The first time I saw a group of boxed characters it became immediately apparent the guy was using an all hardware solution, with wireless keyboard and mouse sending it's commands to multiple computers. I thought very seriously about a setup similar to this, and infact played around with it. But I found a few frustrating limiations. First: EVERY keystroke is sent to the secondary computers. Which is cute the first time the whole group simultaneously says "thanks" the novelty wears off however, very quickly. Over the years though, things have gotten a lot better and boxing has gotten a lot more high tech. Once upon a time I was amazed at a KVM switch, now you can get a software KVM solution ... for free.

Specifically I use KaVoom KM to switch between screens, and Keyclone to send my keys. As for AddOns, Jamba and SmartBuff are my primary boxing AddOns. Recount also helps me keep an eye on my DPS so I can fix any problems like position, etc. I use a Logitech 5 Mouse and G15 Keyboard (I actually use the macro keys for things like CCing). I also keep a FANG Keypad around, though I haven't used it since I started using Keyclone. As for the rest I use Netgear Wireless G router (mine and my wife's laptops use the wireless, my PCs are plugged in via Cat5). I'm using a basic cable internet connection, and so far it's worked fine.

Pics

http://srsbusiness.org/setup1.jpg
http://srsbusiness.org/setup2.jpg

How many hours a week do you play wow? How much of that time is spent multiboxing?

On days that I work, I play a couple of hours per night. On my days off, I usually play more. This is largely dependant however on what I and my wife are doing. If she's got a lot of work to do then I tend to play more. As for the boxing, I generally do a heroic or more per day with my boxed group. I atleast do Gundrak every day, it's fast and easy. If my guild mates are on, I'll take my tank along with them for some heroics, or some raiding. Largely it's reactionary, that's one of the main reasons I box, I get to decide how I play, and when.

What was your most successful class setup for dualboxing? 3boxing? etc. How did you go about distributing loot? Master looter? Or coordinating rolling? How long did it take you to gear up for raiding?
T
he Paladin/Shamans group was very successful, I haven't been doing the DK/Shamans thing for very long, but it's proving to be just as good, if not better. As for loot, I just set master looter and grab everything with my tank. Both the Pali and DK are enchanters, so I can DE anything I need to. Between my two groups, I have every tradeskill in the game, so getting geared up for Heroics/Raids is actually a non issue.

What drew you to playing more than one character at once? Was it the challenge? Lack of finding good groups on your server?

It's not as easy as one answer, there's just more pros than cons. Yeah it takes a lot of concentration, and a little more cash per month. But it's still an affordable hobby. Also, I made a deal with myself: I quit smoking to start boxing. I did the math, boxing is cheaper than 2 packs per day of Camels. Actually, a LOT cheaper. But really, yeah I've had my fill of "pugs" 14 yr old kids screaming because the rogue rolled on the "tanking" sword. The hunter that rolls need on EVERYTHING, then wipes the group when we dump him. So on and so forth. And when it comes to the boxing itself, it's very liberating, I get to play at my own pace. If I want to log off and catch a movie with my wife, I don't have to "feel bad" for abandoning the group, or even bother waiting around for a replacement. I just go ... my groups there when I come back.

Blizzard has gone on record stating that multiboxing is legal right now. What are your thoughts on possible EULA violations?
Not sure I understand the question, I do pride myself on following the rules. If the question is, if Blizzard made boxing illegal, would you still play? Would you still box even though it was illegal? The answer is no on both counts. At this point, boxing is the one thing keeping me around. Some of my friends have moved away, and rarely if ever play anymore. So, yeah that would probably be the end of WoW for me, atleast for a time.

Do you use your multibox group to PVP? How is that going in the Arenas, Wintergrasp? Do you think multiboxing offers an unfair advantage in PVP? Are you ever tempted to go around with a five man group to gank solo players?

I very rarely PVP, I burned myself out on PVP in BC. This does not mean I won't blow any hapless alliance away when given the reason. I have gone on bloody gankfests, rampaging thru SSO Isle and SM (during the Halloween event). But it's not overly satisfying, it's like being an 80 rogue and killing low levels in a level 20 area. Fun once in a while, but wouldn't want to make a career out of it.

Do you believe that people should still group with other players as much as possible and that multiboxing shouldn't preclude interacting with other players? Have you continued to multibox in Wrath? Are you in a guild that supports multiboxing?

I don't think one should necessarilly preclude the other, for me I enjoy both. But that has a lot to do with friends I've known for a long time. I enjoy grouping with them. My guild's fine with me boxing, I myself don't care for boxing in raids however, I'm just not as effective as two or five seperate people can be in the raid. I will bring some DPS if we are having no real luck finding nukes or something. Same applies for BGs, I feel a little like a liability in most BGs, Arathi Basin especially. I can guard a node like no other, but ... that means there's 5 people on one node. Rather than say 2-3 so I don't feel quite right about taking my group there, and I don't really want to split my group up.

How much money do you estimate you've spent on hardware in order to multibox? What were the startup fees like (buying the game and expansions)? What are your monthly fees like? How many accounts do you have? What hidden fees is multiboxing costing you (electricity or internet)?

Hmm, well I spent maybe $100 getting the software side: Keyclone, and KaVoom, along with the gamepad (that I don't really use anymore). As for the rest, I bought the battlechests for Vanilla and BC WoW. Then a Collector's Edition and 4 plain Wraths for my initial account and others. That amounted to a couple hundred after my employee discount, the discount also applies to monthly fees, I buy game cards and get a 10% discount on those. So, every couple of months I'm dropping about 150ish. Overall, I think it's a pretty affordable hobby. Honestly, I think the impact of my boxing on my internet and cable bills is negligible.

Sorry if that was a bit long winded, but I wanted to give you thoughtful answers as this is something I care about. Hopefully I've given you something you can use, I'm looking forward to reading the finished piece.

-Keith Jones