Dual Boxing
Through my multiple alts, I often wondered if there was a faster way to level. Then one day, inside a truly sorry Arathi Basin match, it finally hit me. It hit me in the form of five perfectly timed Lightning Bolts.
Dual-boxing has been around for quite some time now within the WoW community. Some people are against it, saying that it gives unfair advantages within PvP. While this may or may not be true, Blizzard has clearly stated that they have nothing in the ToS against dual-boxing, and that they are not concerned with its effects in PvP.
With that out of the way, we have to wonder what the pros and cons can be to running a multi-box setup. The obvious pros to multi-boxing are; leveling multiple characters at the same time, the ability to complete difficult quests (and even instances) by yourself, and coupled with refer-a-friend two and a half times experience bonuses up until level sixty. The cons depend on what set up you chose, but a few are present no matter what; it can be difficult to acclimate yourself to controlling multiple characters, paying for multiple accounts each month, and the price of purchasing the game and any expansions for each new account.
I will fully admit that I'm not very familiar with hardware dual-boxing, and will have to point you to some resources at the end of this post. This leaves you with two other, and much cheaper, options. Software multi-boxing through keystroke duplicating programs such as Keyclone or a very simple addon called Twobox Toolkit.
Keyclone- Is a very cheap (19.99$ US) and simple program that does just what it sounds like; clones your keystrokes to multiple windows. Through careful planning and well setup macros,
you can control all of your characters with one key press. For example, lets assume that you have three mages named Astreak, Bstreak, and Cstreak, and a priest named Zstreak. Zstreak is your "main character", and the other three are following you. You could macro /assist Zstreak /cast Frostbolt to '1' on your keyboard, where you would have Mind Blast set for Zstreak. With one button press you have tackled a mob, or enemy player, with three Frostbolts and one Mind Blast. Additional macros can be made for anything from group invites/accepts, quest sharing, following, assisting. Pretty much anything is open if you plan it out well. I would recommend, especially if you are just starting out, to stick with casters, or if you must do a melee class make that one your main. Keyclone also includes a program called "Maximizer", which will allow you to set up multiple WoW windows to any size or location that you wish; you can see a basic layout in the picture above. You can find more information about layouts for Maximizer, recommended macros and leveling teams within the Keyclone site; http://www.solidice.com/keyclone/index.html
TwoBox Toolkit- There is also the option of the simpler, and totally free, addon Twobox Toolkit.
This addon allows you to set a "master", the master is your main character and the slave is your following character. It will have your alt automatically follow after combat, auto accept quests and group invites from the master, and you can also set it to automatically pass on loot. It also allows you to send it tells with simple commands such as "followme" to have it follow or "shoo" to make it leave group. The addon automatically sends the master tells to warn if someone is whispering the alt, if it is low on health or mana, and if it's buffs have fallen off. While this addon does not allow for auto assisting such as Keyclone does, it is a very solid option for anyone that either doesn't quite have the computer to run Keyclone, or just doesn't want to shell out the money. You can find this addon at wowinterface.com
Further reading-
Dual-boxing has been around for quite some time now within the WoW community. Some people are against it, saying that it gives unfair advantages within PvP. While this may or may not be true, Blizzard has clearly stated that they have nothing in the ToS against dual-boxing, and that they are not concerned with its effects in PvP.
With that out of the way, we have to wonder what the pros and cons can be to running a multi-box setup. The obvious pros to multi-boxing are; leveling multiple characters at the same time, the ability to complete difficult quests (and even instances) by yourself, and coupled with refer-a-friend two and a half times experience bonuses up until level sixty. The cons depend on what set up you chose, but a few are present no matter what; it can be difficult to acclimate yourself to controlling multiple characters, paying for multiple accounts each month, and the price of purchasing the game and any expansions for each new account.
...
I will fully admit that I'm not very familiar with hardware dual-boxing, and will have to point you to some resources at the end of this post. This leaves you with two other, and much cheaper, options. Software multi-boxing through keystroke duplicating programs such as Keyclone or a very simple addon called Twobox Toolkit.
Keyclone- Is a very cheap (19.99$ US) and simple program that does just what it sounds like; clones your keystrokes to multiple windows. Through careful planning and well setup macros,
you can control all of your characters with one key press. For example, lets assume that you have three mages named Astreak, Bstreak, and Cstreak, and a priest named Zstreak. Zstreak is your "main character", and the other three are following you. You could macro /assist Zstreak /cast Frostbolt to '1' on your keyboard, where you would have Mind Blast set for Zstreak. With one button press you have tackled a mob, or enemy player, with three Frostbolts and one Mind Blast. Additional macros can be made for anything from group invites/accepts, quest sharing, following, assisting. Pretty much anything is open if you plan it out well. I would recommend, especially if you are just starting out, to stick with casters, or if you must do a melee class make that one your main. Keyclone also includes a program called "Maximizer", which will allow you to set up multiple WoW windows to any size or location that you wish; you can see a basic layout in the picture above. You can find more information about layouts for Maximizer, recommended macros and leveling teams within the Keyclone site; http://www.solidice.com/keyclone/index.html
TwoBox Toolkit- There is also the option of the simpler, and totally free, addon Twobox Toolkit.
This addon allows you to set a "master", the master is your main character and the slave is your following character. It will have your alt automatically follow after combat, auto accept quests and group invites from the master, and you can also set it to automatically pass on loot. It also allows you to send it tells with simple commands such as "followme" to have it follow or "shoo" to make it leave group. The addon automatically sends the master tells to warn if someone is whispering the alt, if it is low on health or mana, and if it's buffs have fallen off. While this addon does not allow for auto assisting such as Keyclone does, it is a very solid option for anyone that either doesn't quite have the computer to run Keyclone, or just doesn't want to shell out the money. You can find this addon at wowinterface.com
Further reading-
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