Do you depend on an extra account?

[Soln]

Just curious.  I've been retrying some MMO's and the extra accounts I had for healing, buffing, crafting, storage even create a lot more opportunities for play and advancement. But they are also a pain the ass to manage.  i.e. not fun.  I kind of /boggle at some of the broken combat stats of some games of say not having an active healer for basic encounters.  So I'm curious how many people 2-box or more and feel they have to just to get by.

1) How many extra accounts do you have and use actively
2) Do you depend on these extra accounts 100% -- i.e. you are not competitive in your playstyle without them
3) What do they do?  (e.g. heal, buff, craft, mule, other)

[Fordel]

I've only ever used a second account for DaoC, for a buffbot and only during my last half year of play. The Sub cost was still only 10 bucks a month then, so it wasn't TOO crazy. The fact I needed a fucking buffbot was one of many factors that caused me to stop playing.

Otherwise if I can't play reasonably with just 1 account, I don't play.

[Reg]

The closest I've ever gotten to having multiple accounts was paying a dollar per month for a second character in FFXI that I used for storage.

[Kageru]

If I felt I needed a second account to enjoy the game (EQ got close to that) I'd quit the game.

The guys who 5-box in WoW are just broadcasting the fact they missed the point.

[Slyfeind]

I did a little double-boxing in DAOC; I made a healer that followed my rogue around. I had a lot of fun with it, but I think that's because I didn't seriously "get into" double-boxing. I just did it to make a little adventuring party for myself.

If I felt I needed it in order to progress in the game, then I'd happily stop playing. It'll be interesting when they introduce henchmen to EQ1. It might make me roll up a warrior just to experiment with a cleric henchman for a bit.

[TheCastle]

I currently have 2 accounts for FFXI. One is my wifes account.
both of them have 1 main character and about 4 mules for storage and auction house activity.
It is absolutely necessary to have mules for anyone who plays FFXI to any kind of serious degree.

I used to dual box her character so I can power level my myself when leveling a support job about a year ago before they started making adjustments to the games difficulty vs xp worthy mobs.

Quite frankly though these days dual boxing makes little to no sense at all anymore in FFXI. It started with small things like the signet adjustments then after that they did everything short of send emails to everyone explaining that solo or duo yields better results than a 6 man party all the way up until the mid 50s.

So I don't dual box anymore surprisingly... I don't even feel the need to.

[Trippy]

I dual-box, sometimes triple-box in CoH/CoV right now as my usual way of playing.

In EQ I quad-boxed so I could "solo" (almost) anywhere and never had to sit on my ass LFG. I could dungeon crawl any of the standard non-raid dungeons/encounters through Velious with 4 (didn't explore Luclin all that much before I quit). It was fun going deep into places like Seb or Chardok all by myself. I was also the one in my guild that picked up any stragglers in my guild LFG. I.e. if one or two needed a group they could just join me and we'd go wherever we wanted to as a 5 or 6-character team (did a lot of non-raid epic quests for guild members that way). If more than 2 needed a group I would just drop out some of my characters.

WoW I mostly triple-boxed and occasionally quad-boxed so I could "solo" the dungeons like in EQ. That was a bit trickier, though, because of the combat mechanics. I usually had to be slightly above the level of the dungeon to be able to "solo" it efficiently (without dying).

[ghost]

I only use a second account for Eve, and then only for mining.  I don't have the skill to do more complex maneuvers.

[Hawkbit]

One game, one account.  The only time I might break that rule is if my dad quits WoW.  I'd take on his account because he's got some 70s that I don't have classes of. 

It's money for me... I just don't have enough of it to justify the additional fee per month. 

[Xuri]

Never had more than one account in any MMO I've played. If I want to control my entire party by myself I'll play Baldur's Gate/NWN.

[PalmTrees]

I dual boxed a bit in EQ, had a druid for the tp and healing, the novelty of it extended my time in the game an extra couple months.

Also did that a bit in Shadowbane, would two box it when farming mobs.

Currently in Domo I run a second instance to gather materials/storage.

It's never felt essential to me to have a second account going, just a little more convenient.

[Lantyssa]

I'm like Xuri, although perhaps even more extreme.  I like soloing even in games which allow parties.  I don't want to be four or five characters, I want to be one.

Wizardry might have been the one exception where I liked having a party.  Though I had the same group across all the games which allowed importing, and recreated them in the iterations that didn't.

[Rasix]

I'm not going to pay extra to solo.  If decent solo progression depends on having more than one account, I will not play that game. 

I have dual boxed in the past playing Everquest.  I used a friend's max level shaman to power level characters.  I never owned the character account, however, and had high level characters prior to using that shaman. It was pretty goddamn handy though, but I'll really never play anything even like EQ again in that respect.

I won't buy additional accounts for single character server games either. 

I have a hard enough time justifying subscribing to more than one MMO for more than a month at a time.

[Jimbo]

Questioin for all of you all multi boxing, are you all using a K/M switch and two machines, or are you using one of the emulatiors like Keyclone?  The idea of running 4 accounts of World of Warcraft looks kinda fun, in that it is a multi-tasking challenge.  The ability to fire up the kids account when he is at school, and I'm needing some help on a mission or quest, sounds like a back up plan to use.

[Fordel]

If it's just the second account, I think most folks just have the 2nd keyboard/mouse beside their primary. That's what I did in DaoC, put the 2nd on /follow and had the most used spells in easy reach on the 2nd keyboard.

[Nebu]

Multi-boxed in DAoC and ATitD.  I loved the games and felt no hesitation to support them through an extra account.  The extra accounts also enhanced my gameplay, so it was a win-win.

[Strazos]

The only game I really ever 2-box in is a big mud called Gemstone. My main is a rogue, with my alt being a Sorcerer who I use to either buff my main, or channel mana to people for other buffs he doesn't have access to.

Also, I use the Sorcerer to run interference in busy areas while I play around pickpocketing people with my rogue. I even have conversations between my 2 characters for shits and giggles.

[schild]

Two-boxing is where I draw a big fat line in the sand, and then fill it with concrete and then draw a line in the wet cement.

[rattran]

I had two accounts in SWG, but only played one at a time.

[Koyasha]

I thoroughly enjoy multiboxing like I did in EQ.  Had three accounts of my own back then, and access to another dozen or so from friends and guildmates.  There were only a few classes I didn't have access to a character of, and I could be my own group, as far as tank, healer, puller/cc goes.  I didn't use hardware or software assistance to multibox in EQ (initially, at least.  In time I wound up going ahead and automating my bard's twisting, cause the alt-tabbing to switch songs was too much of a pain) and honestly I feel like the game was just the right pace to do that in without much of any specialized devices/programs to assist.

WoW is hard to multibox, at least, in the same manner I did with EQ, because gameplay mechanics are much more button-mashy.  There's advantages and disadvantages to that, but mostly for multiboxing it's a problem because it means it's damned near impossible to start an action on one character, switch characters, start an action on another, switch, and start an action on a third, then keep cycling.  Fast paced healing mechanics don't help much either (I miss my 10 second Complete Healing).  While in EQ I could be about 90% as effective on two characters as a single person playing each, in WoW that drops off sharply with most combinations of characters.  Too much simply needs to be done, too quickly, to allow for swapping from one screen to another.  Keyclone and KVM devices may help with this, but in the end I choose not to be bothered, for now.  I multibox sometimes in wow, but most of that is one character on autofollow while the other does all the work, with the occasional heal from the follower.

As far as dependency...in order to play, not really.  But in EQ I got to the point where I always played my Bard and Cleric together, and if I couldn't bring both I didn't come at all.  This was mostly due to not wanting to let the cleric get further and further behind, I was trying to get her in better condition to raid with me.

[Trippy]

Questioin for all of you all multi boxing, are you all using a K/M switch and two machines, or are you using one of the emulatiors like Keyclone?  The idea of running 4 accounts of World of Warcraft looks kinda fun, in that it is a multi-tasking challenge.  The ability to fire up the kids account when he is at school, and I'm needing some help on a mission or quest, sounds like a back up plan to use.

I do it the old-fashioned way -- with separate computers and separate mice/keyboards. With EQ it was very easy to quad-box this way given the mind-numbingly boring combat mechanics, even playing a Bard as my "main" (yes I could twist and still play 3 other characters, that's how boring EQ's system was).

With WoW it's quite a bit harder given all the extra button mashing which is why I had to be slightly "over-level" to be able to do it since I was playing each character at a noticably reduced effectiveness. When I played WoW at launch "hydra" systems using things like Keyclone were still in their infancy so I never tried them (I didn't even know they existed). I did write my own add-ons to help manage the party so I could, for example, get the other 3 to auto-follow my main just by pressing one key.

If I was to go back to WoW I would definitely take a look at something like Keyclone if I was going to quad-box again and I'd probably setup some sort of two characters per keyboard system (I'm very good at handling two keyboards at once). I don't think I would want to try controlling all 4 with one keyboard since I'm not interested in making parties with all the same class (e.g. 4 Mages or 4 Warlocks).

[Signe]

Never had 2 accounts in any game ever.  I can barely keep track of one character at a time as it is.

[Sunbury]

I dual-boxed DAOC also, seems the most common.   I played an Armsman main, and added a Cleric on the 2nd.  

Heal regen was sooo slooow in DAOC, I actually reorganized my whole study while 'playing', e.g. resting to regain health before I added the Cleric.

I needed a new computer anyway, so I bought a whole new rig, and used the old rig for the 2nd Account.

Used it as a buff bot in RvR, sometimes a tag-along in larger RvR groups.

It was fun at first, but I've since promised myself to never do that again.

[apocrypha]

Yeah same here, DaoC was the start of my 2-boxing (this thread is starting to read like a self-help group..) - buffbot first, then powerleveling alts and just playing 2 chars at once. I've always used 2 seperate computers for it, no key cloning or anything, 2 seperate mouses and keyboards, all actions controlled by me directly.

I 2-boxed SWG, combat char and buff/healbot, made hologrinding a lot faster that's for sure :p

EVE has so many uses for a 2nd account that I would find it very hard to play again with just 1. Scout, industrialist, remote repper, trader, prober, etc. The skill training system encourages it too IMO - you can just keep training badass combat skills on your primary char and put all the other stuff that you don't want to waste time on on the 2nd account.

And now I always 2-box WoW and have done from the start. As others have said I play 2 chars at greatly reduced efficiency compared to two separate people playing the same 2 chars, but I tend to do the DPS/tank + healbot combo, plus boosting alts through instances and group quests with a 70. Sometimes 3-boxing for instance boosting but that's a hassle cos the 3rd PC is on the other side of the room and none of them are good enough to run 2 clients (plus I hate tabbing between them).

I wouldn't say I've ever depended on it - it just removes the necessity of finding a group for some content, but I have got very used to it. Plus it's good fun. I can make a lot of the grind feel less grindy to me because it's more challenging to try and play 2 separate characters well. 40 buttons to press between 2 characters in a massive hairy omg shit I pulled the whole fucking hill of goblins moment is always frantic, often hilarious and sometimes downright awe-inspiring :D  Back in the early days of WoW, before multiboxing was well known about, I would regularly get people refusing to believe that I was controlling both of those chars and that it wasn't just another person :)

[Nebu]

Used 1 computer in windowed mode when doing PvE (set priority to programs in the background).  If I was playing in PvP, I'd have my bot on a separate computer. 

[Nonentity]

I technically own 3 accounts for WoW, even though I only use 2 right now. I don't even really multibox them, I just have the 2nd account active to level some characters with recruit-a-friend. Once I'm done with them, they'll be transfered over to my main account.

I first experimented with dual boxing back in EQ, but I didn't really use it all that much, because ultimately, I have problems controlling more than one character. I'm with Lanty on this one - if I can get away with playing a single-character in multi-character games, I will.

Though, sadly, this usually just ends up as meaning me skipping out on a lot of those games (NWN 2/BG).

[Xanthippe]

I had two accounts in DAOC, one for a buffbot. 

I have two accounts in WoW, but one is for my kids.  I don't use it much at all, although I stuck my daughter's hunter onto my main when I was doing cauldrons in wpl for AD rep.  Figured I could let her toon soak up some xp.

I don't like to play two at once.

[Ingmar]

Does Sjofn's account count? 

[Sjofn]

Does Sjofn's account count? 

No, no it does not!

[Slayerik]

Two box in Eve. Well, I just use two windows on the same machine. Its quite the test when both are in combat characters. The nice thing about Eve is if you are space rich, you don't have to pay a sub. I havent paid a dime in probably a year for 3 accounts.

[Soln]

The nice thing about Eve is if you are space rich, you don't have to pay a sub. I havent paid a dime in probably a year for 3 accounts.

explain plz

[ghost]

The nice thing about Eve is if you are space rich, you don't have to pay a sub. I havent paid a dime in probably a year for 3 accounts.

explain plz

Sell ISK for time cards. 

[Phred]

The nice thing about Eve is if you are space rich, you don't have to pay a sub. I havent paid a dime in probably a year for 3 accounts.

explain plz

Sell ISK for time cards. 

No need to sell isk. CCP has set up an escrow system to facilitate player purchase of time cards for isk.

Same with buying isk. No need any more. Buy a few time cards and sell them off to ppl like Slayer.

[Sunbury]

How does CCP not run out of money, since I assume like most games ISK is indirectly created out of thin air?

[Slayerik]

How does CCP not run out of money, since I assume like most games ISK is indirectly created out of thin air?

Anytime a timecard is bought from a retailer or store, it is as good as a one month sub. They just happen to then sell them to me, legally in the game and securely through the forums, for isk. It basically makes a straightforward isk to money conversation. When I make a billion in game, it works out to about two 60 day time cards....30 dollars or so per card...Billion = 60ish bucks 

Inflation is a bitch.