A couple of months ago, I read a post on the Nomadic Gamers, Eh! blog where Stargrace begins her post talking about multboxing in World of Warcraft. And I don’t just mean a little bit of multiboxing; I mean eight accounts. As she notes, she was making tons of gold but not really having fun. “[H]onestly I’m just much happier playing 2-3 characters instead of all 8,” she writes.
I’ve been there. Multiboxing used to be such a way of life in the early days of MMOs. It seemed to me that everyone who could afford it did it, especially in economic sandboxes or grinders where having an instagroup or pocket healer was a huge advantage. I’ve certainly done it myself – and driven myself to boredom and exhaustion.
But it seems like I don’t see it nearly as much as I used to, and it’s not just down to the specific MMOs that I play; several of them make it very easy to play multiple characters at a time (and even have specific rules governing this type of play). Whenever I mention, for example, playing three toons at once in SWG Legends, I more and more often am treated to the digital equivalent of puzzled looks.
So let’s talk about multiboxing: Has multiboxing fallen out of fashion in MMOs? Do you ever do it, and which MMORPG benefits the most from multiboxing?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
