Home / Software & Gaming / Blizzard doesn’t support multi-boxing, but it’s not hacking

Blizzard doesn’t support multi-boxing, but it’s not hacking

Blizzard has clarified its position on multi-boxing in World of Warcraft – the practice of using multiple accounts on multiple PCs to play with several characters at once – by saying that it doesn't consider it hacking, but that it certainly isn't something that's supported by the game maker.

“Hackers” is a term often used to cover people partaking in a very broad range of activities, like exploiting game bugs/mechanics, stealing another person's private account information via keyloggers or phishing, and infiltrating a system's security to gain some level of control over the system or sensitive information held therein. The latter of the three is most accurately described as hacking,” reads the posting collected by MMO-Champion.

While Blizzard described each of those scenarios as breaking the game's Terms of Service, it said unequivocally that, “Multi-boxing in and of itself is not a violation, provided the player isn't using any macro scripts that automate gameplay beyond what is allowed through default macro and API specifications.”

This understandably annoyed a lot of fans, who see it as no more game breaking than bug exploitation. It's assumed that the reasons Blizzard doesn't crack down on it is because in most instances players need multiple subscriptions, which means more money for the publisher.

Multiboxing WoW
Does multiboxing make it less of a game and more of a job?

When this was brought up, Blizzard's response was: “We don't support multi-boxing, we never have, and we have no current plans to do so. There's a major difference between verifying a person is not violating the Terms of Use purely by playing multiple characters at once, and adding functionality into the game to officially offer support to anyone who wants to.”

KitGuru Says: I've never understood wanting to spend double, triple or more times the money, just to do better in a game. When you're grinding daily quests again and again, running multiple accounts to do them several times – you're making it into a job. It's supposed to be a game. Have fun with it.

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2 comments

  1. the few people ive known to use multiboxing havent exactly done it for acces to ekstra daily quests etc, quite the contrary they have done it to save time. using one account to level another, leveling 2 identical characters at once (everything dies twice as fast when it gets hit by 2 of everything), or simply running around with your own personal buff doll. also being able to do your daily quests on 2 characters at a time, tradeskilling for yourself without all the posting, additional bank space, and additional auction slots… it all free’s up time to have fun instead of grinding.

  2. Good timing, I’ve just noticed this happening on GW2, though running 3 identical character (rangers, same equip, same pet) I was assuming they were gold/item farming.
    Im pretty sure Arena Net would ban them being, on the harsher side of things. (plus no subs)