Comments on: Question of the Day: Alt accounts for the win?

By: Straw Fellow

Straw Fellow — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:25:47 +0000

I was in a guild once with someone who played four shamans at once. Two trolls, a tauren and an orc. They were a roleplayer too and actually came up with personalities and played all four of them. It was a very interesting experience.

As for my opinion, I’m perfectly fine with it. It doesn’t give someone any advantage they wouldn’t have had if they had just asked a friend to come along.

By: kiantremayne

kiantremayne — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:11:06 +0000

Not sure about actively encouraging it… DAoC’s design (probably unintentionally) encouraged it by having a number of character builds that were incredibly beneficial but didn’t require the palyer to actively do anything. Not just the standard buffbots, but also things like bubble-specced wardens.

Later games learned a lot about how NOT to implement buffs from DAoC – one of that game’s few real design failings.

By: Aufero

Aufero — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:02:03 +0000

I can’t think of a game besides Eve that actively encourages it, although several (including WoW and the original EQ) passively encourage it by design.

I’ve never done any multi-boxing. While the challenge sounds interesting, it just seems like too much work. (I’ve been tempted several times in games that restrict alts, as one of my favorite MMO activities is trying out different classes and skills. The general ban on multiplay in MUDs always frustrated me, and I tended to stick with the ones where that wasn’t viewed as a problem.)

By: Wilhelm Arcturus

Wilhelm Arcturus — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 04:17:33 +0000

And I guess a follow up question might be, does any MMO other than EVE Online actively encourage multi-account play?

The reason I got the third EVE account at one point, mentioned above, was because CCP was offering one of their regular “never fly alone” deals where you get a break on the game and a three month subscription.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:10:27 +0000

While I prefer party control to single unit control, multiboxing just isn’t something I have the tech for or the sub budget for. I do have multiple Wizard 101 and Puzzle Pirate accounts for different reasons, but those don’t cost me anything.

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:36:38 +0000

My first experience dealing with someone multi-boxing was also in DAoC. I was doing armorcrafting, which relied on tailoring components. One of the other people doing armorcrafting ran a second account and worked up tailoring. He was the first person to brag about having a mithril piece…. I just couldn’t keep up because nobody in our guild was doing serious tailoring, and I had to pay a markup for the tailored pieces.

In WoW, a friend of mine multi-boxed a whole party: 1 Druid, 1 Mage, 3 Shaman. He even ran instances and did a few outdated raids. Very interesting ot hear him talk about running with that group.

Personally, one character is enough. I prefer to play with friends than try to control a whole party myself.

By: Jen

Jen — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:14:58 +0000

I run two accounts in WoW, but not even for multi-boxing purposes (although I do run myself through stuff since I have the second account available anyway) – I just ran out of character slots on my main server for all my alts.

By: pkudude99

pkudude99 — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:10:02 +0000

I ran 2 accounts in SWG — 1 was a master armorsmith that didn’t have enough points left over to be truly effective at harvesting, so I got a 2nd account to be a combat/harvester character. And the 2nd account ended up being my main, was in a different PA than the 1st. . completely different circle of friends on that toon, really. Was much fun. Logged in a couple of years ago when I still had the station access to run around and see how different the NGE had made ir (I’d actually quite before the CU, much less the NGE) and I was surprised at the sheer sense of nostalgia I felt when running around the old haunts.

By: Darraxus

Darraxus — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:48:25 +0000

I have run two accounts when doing RAF in WoW. It canbe a serious pain in the rear end.

By: boatorious

boatorious — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:38:52 +0000

Games should allow multi-boxing, but it should not be terribly beneficial. If too many players multi-box, your game is broken.