TurpsterVision: Multiboxing Unmasked

We can't believe it either – Turpster has been let loose on WoW.com to bring you videos from in and around the World of Warcraft! You've heard him on the WoW Insider Show, and now see him on TurpsterVision right here on WoW.com.

Last week we had a look into the benefits of Blizzard's Recruit a Friend scheme and Multiboxing; today we look at how to get started with Multiboxing at home with one PC and several WoW accounts. For me to share these secrets of success with you I must first ask you to join me in the Multiboxer's oath:

I wanna be the very best,
Like no one ever was.
To roll 5 toons is my real test,
To level them all at once.

I will travel across the land,
Questing far and wide.
Or just get boosted through SM,
And the huge amounds of XP that's inside.

MULTIBOX! (GOTTA PLAY'EM ALL!)
It's you, you, you, you and me!
I know it's my destiny!

TO ONE SHOT!

For the real tips and hints, check out the video and then join me after the break for the software, addons and macros that you'll need. (WARNING: There are some really big numbers and long words that I don't fully understand but they make lots of characters do similar things at the same time)

Ok, first up we need to talk about software, in the video guide I suggest you use either Keyclone ($19.99 one-off payment) or Octopus (Warning: This links directly to the .rar file of the program for download) -- there are many other applications out there but these seem to be the best of the bunch as far as I have experienced them. Once you have installed your chosen piece of software, you need to tell it where you have installed your WoW clients on your computer and then where you would like to have them displayed on your screen. You can set up other options in here, such as creating a white-list (a list of keys that will be the only ones cloned and sent through to your clients) or a black-list (a set of keys that will not be cloned and sent through to your clients) or even cloning mouse actions -- though I choose not to do this as it doesn't work well in my experience unless you are running all of your accounts at the same resolution.

Next we need to download and install Jamba into our World of Warcraft Interface folder of every installation. Do this as you would any other add-on; and while you are at it you might as well grab QuestHelper and Cartographer if you haven't already got them. When you load up your account you will need to enter the Interface menu and type in the names of your characters. You need to repeat this on each account so that the addon can synchronize the commands for accepting quests, following etc.

I mention in the video about setting up the processor affinity for your WoW clients, to do this manually we need to first understand a bit of binary. It is often said: "There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't" - I guess I must be in the other 8 'cause I don't have a clue -- unfortunately for you, I'm all you've got! To set up the processor affinity manually you need to edit the Config.wtf file stored in the WTF folder in your WoW installation directory with a program like notepad. You need to add the line:

Set ProcessAffinity "XX"

With XX being the decimal number that relates to the binary string saying which cores we are using. Confused yet? Well hold on a tick, I've got a table with numbers in coming your way!

The table above assumes that you either have one quad core processor with 'Hyper Threading' or two quad core processors. The important things to remember is that you have to read from right to left and that 1 means 'on' or 'active' and 0 means 'off' or 'inactive'. So on the above example we are using the first two cores of the main processor and the first two cores of the secondary processor. This gives us the binary string of 00110011 which (by using a binary to decimal converter) reads as '51'. So our Config.wtf file would have SET ProcessAffinity "51" added to it and saved. If we were to use all 8 cores it would read SET ProcessAffinity "255". If this guide confuses you or you don't like the idea of jumping in the game files and playing about with these settings then it might be worth getting Keyclone where you can just check a few boxes during the command set up.

Still with me? Good...the people who skip past this bit are such a bunch of casuals... Next up we've got to tackle the in-game Macros. As I said in the video, we want to remain flexible in case the lead or master character were to die. To do this we have to have a 'Focus' macro:

/focus [target=TOON1, nodead][target=TOON2, nondead][target=TOON3, nodead][target=TOON4, nodead][target=TOON5, nondead][target=player]
/target focus
/follow focus

Obviously replace the TOON# statements with your characters names in the order of the 'chain of command'. Press this once at the beginning of every play session and whenever your main character dies. I also suggest running a separate macro with a '/follow focus' for whenever your players get left behind. For every character you are controlling I then suggest replacing the normal spell buttons on their hotbars with macros in this style:

#showtooltip
/assist focus
/cast SPELLNAMEHERE

Easy! Now you are pretty much ready to go out there and 'pwn' the world (of Warcraft). The main thing to remember with all of this is to have fun while trying out something new, so if at any point it starts to feel a bit like too much work, take a break and try it again later. If you are still unsure about any of the points I have covered then please leave a comment below. Otherwise why not join in with the fantastic community over at Dual-Boxing.com where they have loads of great tips, tricks and videos of players soloing end game bosses to inspire you!

For the people out there who want to know how to beat a multiboxer, you have to understand first how a multiboxer works. They are dependant on the coordination between their accounts. If you disrupt this, then you have the upperhand -- at least for a moment. So make sure you drop fears on characters to spread them out, face them the wrong way. Targeting the lead character will slow down the multiboxer, but as with any fight in WoW where you are out numbered, don't expect to win everytime!

I will ask one final thing, if you decide to start multiboxing on my server and you see me playing...don't camp me, it's just not cool.