World of Warcraft made an announcement that’s going to have a sure impact on the MMO. In particular, changes are going to be made to the WoW TOS which is going to result in making the use of input broadcasting software a punishable offense. That means a possible end to multi-boxing.
Before we move forward, you’re probably wondering what this is all about. In World of Warcraft, multi-boxing is a way for a user to play different accounts simultaneously. This was originally allowed, though the rule was that it had to be one WoW registered account per game client to multi-box. For example, five accounts for five characters.
One way to do this is to use what is known as third-party input broadcasting software. With this, a single keystroke or action can immediately be mirrored to multiple game clients. In simple terms, what this means is that one player can play more than one character at the same time.
In a post, Blizzard revealed that they have been looking into the use of this software and found “an increasingly negative impact to the game as this software is used to support botting and automated gameplay.” A decision was made to make the use of the software an actionable offense and that Blizzard says “this policy is in the best interests of the game and the community.”
So what’s going to happen moving forward? Blizzard said in the same post that they’re going to start handing out warnings to players who have been detected using the mentioned software. Through the warnings, players are then going to be notified that they should stop using the broadcasting software while playing World of Warcraft. After that, the warnings can then be escalated into account actions like suspension and even permanent closure of the World of Warcraft account or accounts. Blizzard says that they “strongly advise” players to stop using this software.
However, going again over Blizzard’s announcement on this issue, the clear implication is that the ban is against the use of the software, and not necessarily on the idea of multi-boxing itself. That means players can still do multi-boxing, but it’s going to be that much more difficult than before.
According to a report by TheGamer, it appears that majority of the community is supportive of the change. This is because, according to the report, the “software gives multi-boxers an unfair advantage because it allows them to gather items and earn gold at a rate no other players could ever compete with.”
What about you? What do you think? Is this a move in the right direction? Let us know in the comments below.
