Multiboxing and bot-farming? When will SE draw the line?

[LordSideKicks]

That's not relevant. A RTM who powerlevel using multiboxing will have each account under a different name and can be ban for account sharing without anything to do with boxing. A legit boxer will have all his games registered under the same SE account.

Thanks for the info. Let's see if SE ban them.

[PerrythePlatypus]

Muliboxing =/= boting
Two different things. Boting should be extremely strictly enforced as not aloud. Alas SquareE's server security is pathetic, and they don't seem to care to make much effort to get rid of them.
One of the reasons I'm out of here.

[Pinworms]

If they are using a 3rd party program it is against ToS. Pretty cut and dry. If they do it without then they are fine.

[Ravno]

If you are using your mouse driver, mumble, direct X or any 3thd party program it s against TOS ?
It's not clear, a third party program is against ToS if it's a cheat or give an advantage to the player.
Not sure about software boxing since you gain no advantage to an hardware boxer.

It's a gray area (at least as long as you do pure 1 keypress = 1 action) and SE will never tell witch 3thd party are allowed or not they have others things to do than giving certifications.
If SE judge it's a cheat, software boxer will be ban so that's definitivly a risk and i advise to stick to hardware boxing. But the risk is low, i don't see why SE will think it's a cheat since all others MMO allow boxing (software or hardware).
And by the way, there is a report of one software boxer who was mistakenly ban because SE thinked he was a bot and he get his ban lifted after telling SE he was a software boxer and witch software he was using.

[SirSchmoopyofAwesometon]

A program that controls the other toon?

What happen to just having keyclone?

I still rock keyclone. I don't multibox anymore, but it worked just fine for WoW..

[sQQuare]

only game (to my knowledge) ever having a ban against multiboxing was very early everquest (the ultimate multibox game haha) but after awhile they removed it because it made no sense.

How would you ban ppl, on what grounds, what proof would be considered enough, and lastly no company could afford the amount of GMs required to track multiboxers since they follow the same patterns normal player does.

The difference on botting is that you can track it by searching for repetitious patterns etc, and lastly multiboxing make use of core fundamental functions that have been around in IT since the 60s, it would come down to "haz pc must be multiboxer" ie most of us who plays.

And lastly, and this is where Blizzard got alot of heat, tracking program like warden(wow) would have to be allowed to act the same way as keyloggers and trojans in order to really see if you are using a program that allows you to run several clients at the same time. Warden is "only" allowed to track its own memory space, which is still considered "blizzard" property.

So while a multiboxer might annoy the odd player in an mmo much like a fly annoys an elephant the resources required to hunt down ppl who multibox are atm being used by NA to hunt terrorrists, so untill that problem is solved or multiboxing becomes no1 prio of the NSA, dont bother

[LyndisRay]

we can bypass it that way and avoid having to make up to 5+ posts like you just did - which appears to be annoying for you as well.

Many thanks for the information. I'll do that in the future.

Get this. Some ppl do it to Plvl Characters and sell the Characters to earn money. Using 3rd party program or use build in macro. I believe is against TOS to sell accounts and it is hard to catch but you can see them doing it in game.

Multi boxing is good or bad?

I don't doubt that in any way, such things exist in this world. It's still speculation in the grand scheme of things (unless you personally know a lot of them and/or unless you have firsthand experience at multi-boxing yourself), and it's discriminatory to automatically assume that any multiboxer is participating in illegal activities. Ultimately if they are, then they put themselves at much risk.

As for whether multiboxing is good or bad: that's a matter of questioning a player's playstyle. I'm not going to talk about participating in illegal activities; I speak of the concept itself. Yes, there is the potential for good or bad; that's everything in life. Questioning why a player plays all day, why an individual (non-multiboxer) monopolizes a camp/market, why a person openly blasts/criticizes others, etc. are all individual choices. Any feelings on such matters would be biased on personal feelings and experiences; it's a matter of opinion. It can be seen going both ways, and really all you can do is respect (not agree nor condone) that person's unique playstyle and go on about your business. I'm sorry that you had much trouble dealing with a certain individual, but that person's action(s) does not reflect the whole.

That said, my perspective and intentions on the matter are biased obviously. We all don't fit some mold that you profile; this statement goes for everybody. I don't even understand why people buy accounts in the first place, let alone sell them. You'd make way more in a minimum wage paying job with the time invested, but hey, that's the way I logically think of it. I kind of feel RMT is given too much credit if they can play the game so well; it is my belief RMT are going to be using the bots and absolute automation (they wouldn't know how to play the game and wouldn't focus on gearing). RMT are going to generally be absent, and to my knowledge, you can't be absent from FATE, Leves, etc. But yeah, I haven't seen these RMT groups running around in the game (that's not just stationed somewhere), so I wouldn't know a damn thing. I've been accused of being one though *pfft*.

I try to be helpful when I can: like actually raising people, throwing cures, killing nearby quest-related mobs, killing non-FATE adds on someone in FATEs, etc. And I don't see the value of gil especially when most of the good stuff come from dungeons. I haven't farmed anything nor camped anything; I try to avoid counter-camping in every way possible (even as just a single individual character). I have 70k to my name, and I feel very comfortable with just repairs and the like. I don't multibox to make gil, and for that matter, I don't do it for RMT purposes *ugh*. I've been multiboxing for years, and certainly some people know me from FFXI.

As I said before, I still haven't ran into a fellow multi-boxer in FFXIV myself, and I don't know what they do and what they choose to do. Even so, I see no problem in any program that is used for key-cloning/broadcasting or opening multiple instances. I realize it does say ALL 3rd party programs/tools in the ToS, but there are far too many 3rd party stuff that is inadvertently used anyways. You can even use a USB sharer (ableit they are not that reliable), and that's not a tool nor a program. Some of us are just more resourceful than others, and I'm sure somebody will think of something that nobody else has already thought of. I literally could just control each instance individually for minor things like FATEs (seriously, you only need to do minimal to get the exp); it's not like I can't use multiple keyboards and mouses anyways. There's even a discussion in the French section of the forums showing one guy's setup. However, I employ a normal & legit method that makes it easy, of course I'm going to utilize it. I'm sure if you could speed through a dungeon using a trick, people would do it. I'm sure if you want to powerlevel your crafts, people would do just that too. So change the nature of the game if it's such a problem because that's where the root of it is.

People's playstyle and choices are going to be different. But as long as they're not doing what's clearly outlined as prohibited (noticed the keyword "clearly", not gray area), then yeah it's only an annoyance to some while "the thing to do" for others.