When looking back at my World of Warcraft experience, I came to the conclusion that when added up, I've been playing this game for over 3 years already. I've even participated in the very first beta ;)

Over time, a lot has changed, I took a few breaks, leveled plenty of classes to the max level, had my days of hardcore end-game raiding (pre-TBC, Naxx), Reputation grinding, Honor grinding (pre-TBC, Warlord), war effort grinding (our guild opened the gates of AQ).

After a year and a half, I took a break from what had become a huge grind, before TBC came out. I returned a while later with some colleagues on an RP realm however.

I've seen the introduction of Blood Elves, the change in faction balance, the faster leveling, and the lack of instance groups at lower levels due to this, combined with the lack of understanding of game mechanics by an ever increasing number of new players (no time or groups for them to get the experience at a low level).

I've also greatly enjoyed doing all new TBC quests a few months after it came out, with less crowded zones, and now I'm liking the casual side of WoW :)

As part of staying on the casual side (casual meaning no hardcore raiding/grinding) I've given the geek in me more freedom to fool around with anything WoW related.

One of the first result of this was the C# World Of Warcraft Armory Library 0.1 I recently released.

The next thing I'm on, is trying out Multiboxing, which is the subject for today's post. There is a lot of information out there, a lot of misconception and taboo around it. Hopefully you'll have a better view on the concept after reading this, as well as an easy to follow guide to try it out.

Multiboxing

First things first, what is Multiboxing?

Multiboxing is the action of controlling multiple accounts from a central point, where each key press results in a single action or macro on all your accounts.

It is important to note this 1 to 1 relation. It's this relation that seperates multiboxing from botting. Bots combine multiple actions into a single key press, which is not allowed and will get you banned.

What is allowed is for example pressing 1 on your keyboard and having one account perform Frost Nova, while another account has Flash Heal bound to 1.

Creating in-game macros and binding these to keybinds is also allowed, since you are using the existing macro system. (e.g.: Popping a trinket and then casting is perfectly fine when you play on one account, therefore it is allowed)

Legality

Lots of people think that multiboxing is a bannable offense and report it.

This is one of the greatest misconceptions out there, because multiboxing is allowed by Blizzard, illustrated by the following collection of GM and CM responses: Dual Boxing - GM Conversations.

As you can see, there is no doubt about the legality, various blue posts have shown it is acceptable.

There are two main rules which have to be respected however, to stay legal.

First of all, all accounts used to multibox with have to be in the same name.

And second of all, the one to one relation between a key press and one actions, as described above, can not be violated.

Advantages

As soon as people accept the fact that they can not get a multiboxer banned simply for the fact they are multiboxing, a new argument gets raised, about how multiboxers gain an unfair advantage (mostly used as a PvP argument).

While this may hold up on a PvE realm, for PvE actions, GM Belfaire strongly counters this argument by suggesting grouping gives the same advantage.

On a PvP realm, or for PvP action (PvE or PvP realm), Malkorix writes several blue posts stating that it might even give a disadvantage for PvP.

Blue posters are objective on this matter, and clearly see that 5 good individual players are still better then 1 good player controlling 5 accounts and having to think a lot more on coordinating them all together, while also being more limited in dealing with various actions.

Opinions on Fun

We've seen multiboxing is legal, does not give an advantage someone else couldn't achieve, yet there are still arguments, which I categorize into opinions.

One of these arguments is on the aspect of fun, people believing it can't be fun to multibox.

This is an opinion about multiboxing, you are free to have them, but what does it matter to you if you think I'm not having fun multiboxing?

These arguments are the hardest kind to argue with, because they are subjective instead of objective.

You might not like multiboxing, that's fine, I don't mind, nobody is forcing you to multibox, no multiboxer is making you do something against your will, so I would politely like to point out the following as a counter to all subjective opinion-based arguments:

Different people have different definitions of fun. Let each have it their way.

Conclusion

As you can see, multiboxing is legal, provides a real challenge, enables you to learn more about the game (macro's, game mechanics), eliminates dependencies on others when looking for groups at lower levels, and is a great way for a geek to spend his time tinkering with World of Warcraft.

In the next post, I will go through all the steps I performed to set up my multiboxing setup (5 shamans on 2 physical machines), stay tuned!

Resources

Some of the sites I used to learn more about multiboxing:

• WoWWiki - Multiboxing
• Dual Boxing - Wiki
• Dual Boxing - Forum
• Vboxing.net

Ever heard of the very popular game for the PlayStation 2, called Guitar Hero? Until recently, I only vaguely picked it up here and there, but not being a big PlayStation gamer, I never payed much attention. That is, until today. A friend of mine gave me a link to Frets On Fire, which claims to be the PC variant of Guitar Hero. Seeing it was free, I downloaded it and gave it a try, and I have to admit, it's addictive!

Allow me to give you a small introduction on this game.

First of all, start by downloading Frets On Fire and installing it on your computer.

Let's get started and begin the fun by selecting one of the available songs, there only three out of the box, but you can download additional songs.

The selected song will load and you'll notice five frets above the snares. These frets can be selected using the F1 to F5 buttons, but there are also instructions available on using your guitar hero controller. After a while, you'll notice various notes coming towards you, the goal is to pick the correct snare when the note is around the same position of the frets. You can pick a snare by pressing the ENTER key while holding a fret.

Some notes will be very short, while others have a long trail behind them, simply hold the fret down long enough to play the entire note. An example of this can be seen in the video I recorded of Anthrax - Caught In A Mosh on the left side which has some very long notes in the beginning followed by lots of short ones towards the end.

The better you play, the higher your score will be. A counter will be ticking up in the upper left corner, keeping track of the amount of successful notes played in succession, while in the upper right corner you'll see the bonus meter build up per note. This meter will tick up per 10 correct notes played and give you up to a 4x multiplier for your score, an incorrect note will reset it back to 1.

To make your ears like the song, you'd better play as many correct notes as possible, because missing a note will be audible due to the guitar suddenly falling silent. It's also possible to make a wrong note stand out very clearly. There are various degrees of difficulty, making you hit multiple notes together and shorter after each other in increasing difficulty. Since I'm still quite bad at it, the video I recorded was played on the easiest difficulty.

Don't feel sorry to play on the lowest difficulty though, the most valuable feature of the game is being the fact that it's a great party game! The laughs and hours of fun you can have with this game are amazing, especially since it's free!

Another nice addition is the possibility to change the look and feel through the use of mods, and even introduce multi-player functionality.

Frets On Fire managed to make me love this genre of games, where the simplicity makes it so addictive you'd play it all day long.

If you'll excuse me now, I have to prepare for my big rock concert! :)

Time for some Monday morning fun... These days we got so many religions, why not add another one? I give you the Bits & Bytes Religion!

Unlike a lot of the single god religions, this one is polytheist, like the old Greek Gods. It's a religion focused to the IT-business. Let's take a look at the gods.

God of Software
Watches over every piece of software ever written, and being written at the moment. If you want to keep your software running and want to write quality software, pray to this one.

God of Hardware
The guardian of all hardware related things. Responsible for your HD crashes, but also for nano-technology.

God of Users
The 'simple' god. Responsible for the common knowledge and actions of all users. If you want users to get smart, ask him a favor.

God of Performance
The Speed God. He knows to tweak every millisecond from a piece of software or hardware, but when you make him anger he can also take revenge by making everything run so slowly you decide to start over from scratch again.

God of Maintenance
Also known as 'The Handyman'. Make him happy and you'll be able to fix everything you encounter. Make him angry and your life will be turned into a living maintenance hell.

God of Bugs
Responsible for every bug ever created, but simultaneous also in charge of 'Luck'. You'll find yourself asking favors of him a lot, to prevent you from writing accidental bugs.

And the most important one:

God of Electricity!
He who commands all other gods. Without him, there is nothing. Mostly he is a very caring god, but when he is angry, it's very very bad. Electricity outage, electrical interference. He can destroy hardware and bring every piece of software to a halt.

Now, on to the worshipping.

There's no need to go to a special building to worship them, or wear special clothes. The only thing they take into account is your motivation and happiness. When you create something and it works, be extremely happy, and when you are making something, try to make the best of it. Doing those things will please them, if you aren't motivated and you create something bad, they can get angry with you.

And here we are, a new religion :)