WHAT IS MULTIBOXING?
Multiboxing is playing on multiple World of Warcraft (or other games) accounts/characters at the same time. This used to include being able to mirror key inputs to multiple clients simultaneously.
MULTIBOXING ISN’T BANNED
Multiboxing in World of Warcraft is not and has never been against Blizzard’s EULA.
But this hasn’t stopped people from harassing innocent players and spamming Blizzard with false reports.
A few years ago Blizzard made a huge change to their policy about multiboxing in World of Warcraft. Announcing they were no longer allowing hardware or software input broadcasting. When this happened the frequency of harassment that anyone who was or appeared to be multiboxing increased a LOT.
Blizzard’s OWN support website has a page about multiboxing, explicitly stating that it is NOT a violation of their EULA. The page has been there forever, and was only changed when they disallowed input broadcasting.
WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS?
People harass multiboxers mostly just to be jerks, but also due to misinformation they’ve heard from content creators.
Several of the bigger Twitch streamers and Youtubers put out content saying that multiboxing was now banned entirely.
This was simply NOT true.
But putting out false information wasn’t enough for some people, you also had Asmongold using his Twitch viewers to mass report players. Which even in his community there were people who tried to tell him multiboxing was allowed and he was trying to get innocent players banned. He didn’t and still doesn’t care.
Mass reporting innocent players to get them banned is an actual bannable offense.
It is not only a violation of Blizzard’s EULA, but Twitch’s as well.
Blizzard not only did nothing to stop this kind of behavior, they actually punished people who were rightfully reporting him for it. Asmongold knew he wouldn’t get banned, so he didn’t care and kept doing it.
Another reason multiboxers get harassed is the false narrative that they’re responsible for crashing prices in the auction house.
Which is not true.
I’m often out doing gathering and no longer see them in the large groups I used to. Yet on the auction house people are constantly undercutting, which is what tanks the prices.
This happens on huge full pop servers and tiny low pop ones.
Some people do it just to push competition out by making it unprofitable to post, but that’s another issue.
WHY WAS INPUT BROADCASTING BANNED?
Blizzard claims they prohibited input broadcasting due to botting and “automation.” But the most used software for this doesn’t do any automation. Their policy on automation has always been one key press = one action. ISBoxer, the software most often used tor input broadcasting, ONLY allowed what the game itself could do.
You would have to use other software to do automated actions.
This was a bad argument on Blizzard’s part.
The more likely story is that Blizzard needed to do something to try to stop the bots, and went with the easiest (and cheapest) method. The easiest method often is the one that hurts the most legitimate players.
There is really nothing we can do about it, there was no actual reasoning used for this decision.
FIGHTING BACK AGAINST HARASSMENT
If you’re a multiboxer that is being harassed usually all you can really do is report and blocked them and hope a GM does their job. If they’re being especially obnoxious about it, using multiple characters to get around being blocked for example. Then you should take screen shots of everything. You can submit a ticket directly from Blizzard’s support site, and include the screen shots as proof of the harassment. Report them in-game as well, but take the screen shots first because their messages disappear when they are reported.
Sometimes you’ll get whispers from people who are just curious about what you’re doing, make sure to mention the page on Blizzard’s site if they say something about multiboxing being banned.
