No Garz. It wasn't that kind of weekend unfortunately. Believe me, I wish ti was, but it wasn't.

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So... With the new Recruit a Friend system that Blizzard has setup now, I got to thinking about trying out a dual boxing setup. There's a few classes that I've wanted to try out, but to tell you the truth I'm just not that into leveling anymore. But after some extensive reading over at dual-boxing.com and seeing that the WoW Battlechest is only $40 now, I figured I would give it a shot.

First I sent a RAF invite email to a different email address from my main WoW account. Once I setup the trial account, I upgraded to vanilla WoW then Burning Crusade. After adding a time card to the account I also received the Zevhra mount, but I haven't given it to a toon yet. The one addon I use is called Multiboxer. There's also TwoBox Toolkit that I think I might switch to. These addons just add a bit of automatic functionality in terms of quest sharing, autofollowing, etc. But they do not add any kind of botting at all.

What I do is this: I have two copies of my WoW directory and run each instance from one folder. My main is on my main monitor and my slave is on the secondary. It's not necessary to have two monitors. You can just alt-tab, but it's much easier to have two monitors and run the game windowed. It's so simple to just go over to the slave if something goes wrong. Now for the tricky part: keybinds. There's obviously no functionality in WoW to allow you to control two clients at once so that's where a key broadcasting program comes into play. On my Mac I use Clonekeys and on Windows there's a program called KeyClone. These programs will broadcast key strokes to every window that they are set to broadcast to. So this is where if you haven't already learned about macros and keybinds you definitely will be taking a crash course.

On the main, all spells are put into the bars and assigned keybinds. On the slave, I make macros for each spell and assign them keybinds so that they are complementing my main's spells. So on my Warlock (main) I'm hitting Shadow Bolt which is also hitting Smite on my Priest. So what about the macros? Well, since your slave is basically just following the main, I make the slave use the main as it's focus. As such, the slave never really has it's own target. It's always assisting the focus and attacking their target. So the macros are all set to target the target of the focus. As well for any heals/buffs I have the macro setup with a conditional key modifier so that if say I hit "7" the Priest heals herself, but if I hit "shift + 7" she heals the Warlock. It sounds confusing to begin with, but once I had a couple working macros it was just a matter of changing the spell name in the macro.

Where does all this hassle leave me? Well... With the RAF triple XP bonus, here's how it went: Friday night I got everything setup and took my macro crash course. By early Sunday evening I have my Warlock and Priest at level 26. I figure 30-40 will be like cake and might only take one night of questing because it went ridiculously quick when I soloed it on my rogue so with 3x XP it will just be insane. The added bonus is that when I hit 60 with these two, I can grant 30 levels (one for every two levels gained) from my secondary account back to my main account. That will leave me with a level 60 Warlock, 60 Priest, and 54 Warrior. By that time the 3.0.2 patch should be out which will reduce the XP needed for 60-70.

Oh yeah, one downside to all this: since you're leveling insanely quick, you're also not bringing in much gold. So you really have to have a bit of gold on hand to begin with. On the upside though since I'm using casters I don't have to really worry about gear upgrades too much other than making sure their wands are up to date. Mobs just don't have enough time to get to me to worry about armor at all. A typical fight is like this:

-send in Voidwalker (with Torment rank2 I can't pull aggro with this rotation)
-Corruption/Shadow Word: Pain
-Immolate/Mind Blast
-Shadow Bolt/Smite
-wand for the last 30%
-have Voidwalker Consume Shadows (heal itself) every 4-5 mobs
-rinse, repeat, etc. 

Since the RAF bonus only last for 90 days I'll probably do a Shaman / Mage combo right afterward. I'd like to get a Pally leveled up as well, but I'll have to see how that works since multiboxing really works best with casters do to facing issues with multiple melee toons.

There are no Gnomes in Horde so Horde stinks like three day old garbage. From a fish market. In the summer. *phew*










Actually I'd like to play Horde. I might just use the RAF bonus to level up some Hordies too. Hmmm... Undead Warlock and Priest.. I wouldn't even have to change my macros much at all either.

I thought you quit Topo.

Vemo, is Avata still around and does he still play, I haven't seen much of him.
That dual boxing thing looks pretty cool and I've seen a 5 boxed shammy in AV....they pretty much "1 shot" with their chain lightning.

I took a break, but not sure what is going to happen with WAR coming out.

Scadoo rocks

Your subject title is a complete misrepresentation and I suggest a 24hr ban!

All I know is...those chicks still can't wrestle!

*BARF*

Yeah...I agree, the one chick can't wrestle......but you should see her box!