World of Warcraft players who use multiple accounts simultaneously will find their favored gameplay much harder going forward, as last night Blizzard announced that “the use of input broadcasting software that mirrors keystrokes to multiple WoW game clients will soon be considered an actionable offense.” The studio explains that the decision is “in the best interests of the game and community” given the “increasingly negative impact to the game” posed by botting and automated gameplay.
Do note that you won’t be banned outright immediately for taking Arrrthas1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 out for a spin using your macroing software, but Blizzard recommends halting the play now to avoid marks on your account.
“We will soon begin issuing warnings to all players who are detected using input broadcasting software to mirror commands to multiple accounts at the same time (often used for multi-boxing). With these warnings, we intend to notify players that they should not use this software while playing World of Warcraft. Soon thereafter, the warnings will escalate to account actions, which can include suspension and, if necessary, permanent closure of the player’s World of Warcraft account(s). We strongly advise you to cease using this type of software immediately to maintain uninterrupted access to World of Warcraft.”
Reactions across the forums and Reddit are fairly mixed; a lot of people are exhausted over the disruption to the gathering economy from multibox farmers and RMT vendors and the like, while others are annoyed that they’d been peacefully leveling multibox recruit-a-friend characters for years and are suddenly just now having an avenue of gameplay shut off to them just before the launch of a new expansion. Either way, it sounds as if what’s being banned is the use of very specific software, so there will still be legal ways to manually multibox – and plenty of other games that still allow it.
If you’re pissed and want a Shadowlands refund (or 5) (or 10 for you really dedicated ‘boxers), you should probably apply for one sooner rather than later.
