In World of Warcraft, players will always run into other characters on their journeys throughout Azeroth. A majority of these encounters result in teaming up or having amicable chats, but there are rare instances of someone with their own group of followers tailing closely behind. Instead of acting normally, these individuals ignore any other presence and repeat a simple action such as casting the same spell in sync or harvesting herbs multiple times. This act is known as multi-boxing, a practice which has drawn the ire of many community members over the years.
While multi-boxing has existed since the early days in World of Warcraft, evolving technology and quality-of-life changes have made it more profitable in recent expansions. With the ability to get more loot per-character without truly controlling them, an influx of raw materials and gold into the game wreaked havoc on many server economies. Though Blizzard previously updated its terms to stop the most egregious cases of multi-boxing, a new change intends to kill the practice for good.
Earlier today, Community Manager Kaivax posted on the official World of Warcraft forums to say that all software and hardware used to mirror commands is prohibited. Whether being used to control multiple accounts or multi-box in a roundabout way, any input broadcasting will result in immediate action. The punishments include a one-time warning and temporary account suspension, but many multi-boxers are already at risk of a permanent ban if detected and are recommended to immediately cease.
On the surface, most players will immediately welcome this change for its effect on the Auction House. In the past, multi-boxers could flood a market with thousands of crafting reagents while still making profit due to the sheer quantity of materials posted even at dirt poor prices. Now, the steady decrease of multi-boxing should be accompanied by an increase in auction house prices and the average character's gold. More importantly, players finally won't feel disadvantaged for competing against someone controlling multiple characters in PvE or PvP situations.
At the same time, Blizzard's updated stance against multi-boxing has some important details to clarify. The new terms only prohibit using input broadcasting to command different characters at once. Players can still have multiple clients up and running if they manually control their characters one at a time. Furthermore, players expecting to waltz through zones free of Druids may still encounter automated solo bots, and will need to report them to ensure action is taken.
In the end, this change addresses many grievances caused by multi-boxing over the years. While the positive effects won't happen overnight, some aspects of the game should improve as more players come back when the Chains of Domination patch releases later this year.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is available on PC.
Source: Blizzard