Earlier this week I had an idea to write a blog post about how confusing and utterly stupid I thought Sony Online Entertainment’s new free-to-play Everquest 2: Extended idea was, but every other blog and news site has covered it to death. If you want the details, please check out Gordon’s breakdown over at We Fly Spitfires. The bottom line is this: SoE wants people to have free access to a gimped version of EQ2, but ultimately pay MORE if they decide to get into the game. You play for free, but even if you buy into the super expensive platinum plan, you STILL only have access to four races, out of a possible 19 if you had just shelled out the cash for the real version + subscription.
This fits right in with my earlier sentiment, in my “SoE copy cat” post about how I just get this vibe from SoE that they are a flailing company looking for any way they can get a toe hold on something good to get back into the game. They own the rights to a lot of online games, but they all feel old and shabby now. Everquest II is undoubtedly their flagship, but it is a hard sell these days.
However, this may just be my own feelings clouding my ability to think objectively about this. Personally, I am getting sick of MMOs. I love gaming, but I am really feeling burned out by the “grindyness” of MMO style game play. It has been over a decade now and I think the promise of large, persistent worlds filled with other people can no longer excuse the fact that MMO game play is downright boring when you think about it for half a second. It doesn’t help that I am at a point in my life where I just don’t have as much time to play games. MMO games are so social that they almost require a hefty time requirement to accomplish anything worth while. Maybe it is just me, but I can’t help but wonder if others feel this way too. Are we looking at downfall for MMO gaming on the horizon or have I just completely become out of tune with the gaming zeitgeist?
Either way, moves like this from SoE don’t help. They reinforce this growing feeling that, all the friends I have made aside, MMO gaming is just a waste of time in the end.
If you have purchased or looked at just about any modern game from EA or Activision, you know that the manuals you get with these games are complete shit. They never use color and they are mostly a place holder for legal walls of text that no one gives a shit about. I guess the problem is that my prime gaming years were during the C=64 and early to mid 90s PC gaming scene. Does anyone remember the pack in materials you used to get with every Ultima game? Here is an image I found of the stuff you got from the C=64 version of the game:
Ultima IV C=64 pack in materials
In case you can’t tell, this includes:
A cloth map of the game world.
A collectible Ankh.
A game instructions/help booklet.
A faux leather bound “History of Britannia” book detailing the history of the game world.
A faux leather spell book detailing all the spells and prayers in the game.
A card insert setting up the game story.
No, this was not a collectors edition. It was the normal edition of a game from a successful franchise that took honest-to-god pride in their work, even if it meant that producing this game would be more expensive and cut into the bottom line. Ultima IV, while one of the more amazing examples, was not alone. You simply got more out of game material for your game purchase back then. When I was a kid I absolutely treasured my game boxes. Hell, I probably still have a handful of boxes at my parents house that are storing my old game boxes (Heh, boxes of boxes). My point is that for the games I loved, this stuff was priceless. When I would get into a game I would literally lose myself in it. Not just when playing the game, but when I was in the bathroom, or at school, or wherever. I would carry the game lore materials with me and pour over them. In the case of the Ultima games, the manuals were illustrated with beautiful hand drawn art by Dennis Loubet. To this day I still lust after Dragon Quest games largely because I loved the art that Akira Toriyama added to the game manuals for those games ( Dragon Quest 9 comes out this Sunday!! ).
Even more modern games had great pack in material. The original Fallout came with a ginormous ( especially by modern standards) spiral bound game manual made to look and read like an annotated vault dweller guide that not only explained the world you would be inhabiting, but also provided intricate details of the entire S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system that the game used. The Baldur’s gate PC games were similarly blessed with robust manuals and pack in goods.
These days I am ashamed of the game manuals that come with games. You are lucky to even get a control layout listing. It shows me that no one takes pride in their games anymore. It is all about maximizing profit. I guess that is just business, but it end up feeling so … artless and sterile to me. Hell, I have pretty much switched over to only buying my PC games through Steam where there is no possibility of pack in materials. I couldn’t care less about the plastic, lifeless game cases I have stacked up near my PC, but when I look over at my collection of old RPG boxes on a special shelf, that stuff still fills me with the happy.
Check out this Youtube video of a guy ranting about the Crackdown 2 manual ( warning, he does use some foul language ):
My question is: Why even bother? There is nothing even useful about that “manual” much less anything in it that will inspire me to lose myself in your creation. You should have just saved yourself the fraction of a cent that it cost to print that crap and bought your team a latte with the saved cash.
I have to wonder though, it used to be that I would consult game manuals in order to know how to play games. I don’t just mean what controls do what, but to learn about the rules of the game and begin to form strategies to be successful in the game. The Ultima games spell system required you to know the obscure spell names that were all built up from a pseudo latin ( or was it real Latin? ) language. In order to ready and cast them you had to know what “An Nox” or “Vas Flam” meant. Trying to heal your wounds with a “Corp Por” spell would be an exercise in futility. The Wizardry and The Bards Tale games were similar. Hell, I remember the runic alphabet from Ultima and how you would sometimes run into it in the game and in order to translate you either had to have it memorized, or break out the manual and start translating. And, yes, I was one of those Ultima geeks that could, at one point, read runic phrases without looking anything up. You might think that incredibly geeky, and it is, but it serves as a testament to the immersion factor that simple effort and pack in materials could provide.
How dumbed down are modern games that looking up how to play isn’t even necessary? How little faith/care do people put into the story and lore of a game that they don’t feel the need to immerse you in it with teasers and hints in the manuals? I suppose that you could argue that making games intuitive and simple to play is a good thing, and you would be somewhat right, but I cannot recall the last time I was so sucked into a game that I carried the manuals up to bed with me to read some more about it while falling asleep, a common occurrence back in the day.
I remember my first Ultima experience being on the Nintendo with Ultima 3. I soon met a friend who showed me the real Apple version of all the Ultima games and I was stunned to see that you not only typed out commands as opposed to navigating in game menus, but you actually talked to NPC’s by asking them questions. To this day, I prefer the early Ultima style conversation system compared to the lists of conversation options that Ultima would later use and Bioware would go on to “revolutionize” with Mass Effect (**sarcasm noted). Everquest and Ultima Online actually got this one right in my opinion. In Everquest and Ultima Online you would hail an NPC to begin a conversation and key words that would further the conversation would show up underlined in the text. Responding with these keywords furthered the conversation and would eventually lead to clues or the offering of a quest. Sure, this meant that you would see a lot of PCs having conversations like “Hail, an NPC!” “Job” “Princess?” “Rescue”, but it was still an incredibly immersive element. Hell, I learned (taught myself) to type thanks to Ultima’s conversation system, so it has a practical side too!
Games back then also had much less convincing graphics so a large part of becoming immersed in the game world was having our imagination sparked and it was the extra out of game materials that usually helped in doing just that. Dragon Age: Origins was supposed to be a spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate line of games, which was a successor to the line of AD&D Gold Box games. The pack in materials for Dragon Age: Origins were pathetic compared to either of its ancestors. As a result, while I enjoy Dragon Age immensely and already invested more than an entire work weeks worth of hours ( with overtime ) into it, I still feel like an outsider manipulating the game, rather than feeling like the game is a part of my life.
I don’t know though. Maybe I am just an old curmudgeon about modern games compared to the ones I grew up with. However, I can’t help but feel disappointed every time I open a new game these days and feel like something special has been lost.
I still stand by my other worries about the new attitudes at Blizzard since the Activision that I made in my previous post, but at least for now the people have been able to talk a little sense into them.
I can understand people’sglee in wanting some accountability for the things you say/do online, but this crosses the line from holding people accountable to dangerous territory. Everyone is talking about it and it all seems so obvious to me that I will make my points in a bullet list and move on:
Here is an example of someone using RealID information ( real name + WoW character/server name ) to track a guy down to the point of having his address, home and work phone numbers, and work address. The entire process took the guy 20 minutes to figure all this out and it ends with a call to the guy at work. If you needed a concrete example to convince you that RealID is dangerous, this is it.
Tobold shows us how to “opt out” of RealID. It is completely non-obvious and requires you to treat yourself as if you were a child playing on your parents account. I am glad that this exists, since it means that third party add-ons for WoW should be blocked from my RealID information, but the fact that this is not a very obvious option that is DISABLED by default. Your fail is complete , Blizzard.
The RealID issue, for me, cuts deeper than thinking that Blizzard have lost it though. I love Blizzard. The are the creators and maintainers of my favorite games, hands down. I have invested literal months of my life to World of Warcraft and God only knows how much time I have lost to the Diablo games. I lust after Diablo 3 with every fiber of my being. I am, without a doubt, a Blizzard fanboy.
However, after the whole debacle of no Lan play in retail copies of Starcraft 2, as well as the other numerous complaints about Battle.net 2.0 changes coming in, this RealID debacle has killed my faith in Blizzard. Whether it is true or not, I now honestly believe that Activision has sunk its fangs into Blizzard and now is who is truly running the ship. I wanted to believe that Blizzard were simply too good, too much of a name to allow someone to buy them and take over like this, but all of these changes that we see here point to that not being the case.
Blizzard used to be a company who focused on quality over quantity. They seemed to be a group of people dedicated to taking good ideas and making them great. They were the gamers game company, never disappointing. That era is over now. I have to admit that when I heard that Starcraft 2 was going to release a collector’s edition with an exclusive in-game pet for WoW, it was a no brainer for me. Quality game with a WoW item? Sure! However, I think I will save my $99. I could use the money for many other things, not the least of which could be the release of Final Fantasy 14 in a month.
This shit just happens though. EA devoured Origin, arguably one of the best game development companies ever at the time, and drove it into the dirt. It started with a rushed Ultima 7 part 2 expansion pack, then there was the stupidification of Ultima 8, and need I even mention Ultima 9? You can believe that EA’s influence had a play in all of that. Today? Origin is nothing but a memory. The same will happen to Blizzard. Their talent will get sick of it and leave and before you know it Blizzard will be just another Activision crank factory, churning out Starcraft 17 and Diablo 298 within a year. Look at how Activision destroyed both the Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Guitar Hero licenses. How about the dispicable way they decimated Infinity Ward? What hope is there? Activision OWNS Blizzard now and things can only get worse.
Oh well. We had a good run Blizzard.
P.S. – Blizzard’s own policy states that releasing “any real life information about other players or Blizzard employees” can result in a ban from the game. I guess they changed their minds on this one?
Listen up folks! The end is nigh. Really nigh. With the roll-out of RealID in World of Warcraft it is now utterly IMPOSSIBLE for me to shed the bonds of the real world and become my character. No amount of puffy shirts and awkward approximation of Shakespearean English will help either. Believe me, I have tried.
If my snark wasn’t apparent, I am not much of a role player. I am fine with other people doing the whole immersion thing, and I have admitted on this blog before that I like to imagine backstory and scenarios for my characters outside of what actually happens in the game. However, to me, the act of forcing ones self to act as if they are their character and they have no knowledge of the outside world seems awkward to me. It is an act that the game will not help you with. It is something that you have to willingly engage in. Whats more, normal people just trying to play and enjoy the game refuse to play along with your little act, ruining your fun. The bastards!
Am I the only person who feels like I can imagine the role my character plays, without having to become that character? Even in my days of playing D&D and other pen and paper games, while our characters had a personality, we never once felt the need to act like them at the expense of our real life personalities. When I play an MMO I enjoy the social aspect because I am meeting REAL people and playing a fun game with them. If you join my group and you are trying your best to stay in character I will come away amused and feeling like you are not all that stable of a person.
I bring up the rant about role play because there seem to be two things about RealID that have people’s knickers in a twist:
Concerns about privacy since it exposes your real name and email address.
It obliterates any remaining vestige of role play immersion and heralds the destruction of the whole of Azeroth!
Sorry about that last one, but you role players just love melodrama, right?
Scott Jennings, over at Broken Toys does make a couple of good points about how there is no opt-out and the only way to protect yourself is to not participate. While I kind of agree with that point, when I first started hearing people screaming about having their real name exposed, my initial reaction was that they could simply not participate and reject any RealID friend requests. The whole point, and hence the name REAL ID, was that this was a way of identifying YOU to your friends. Not the world, but a select group of people you know and trust. That said, I do think that this whole thing did need to be better thought out and certain privacy measures should have been implemented from day one. There is no real arguing with that point. In the end though, RealID is a completely optional thing. You can question it’s usefulness, but it is not like Blizzard threw open the account information database and put up neon signs to those credit card numbers linked to accounts with LOTS of juicy available credit. If you aren’t comfortable with someone knowing your real identity ( again, hence the term RealID ), then don’t accept their request.
However, what baffles me is how much people are up in arms over how RealID spells the end of immersion and role play in World of Warcraft. As best I can fathom, they are mad because sharing your RealID separates the you from the game. When you log in you are identified to your close personal friends as Joe Schmuck rather than Gnarlfist the Destroyer. It also exposes your entire character roster to anyone on your RealID friends list as well … so no more secret alts to play when you cant be cheesed to socialize with anyone you know personally. Ok, I can somewhat agree that RealID could use an option to hide certain characters from your RealID friends, or maybe a sort of incognito login mode that wouldn’t alert others to your presence. However, complaining that people on your RealID friends list will see it is “you” logging in as opposed to your avatar is beyond overreacting to me.
As I said above, immersion and role playing is something that you choose to engage in. Also, RealID is something that is 100% optional to you. If you really don’t want people knowing that you parade around as a Night Elf in your spare time, then simply choose to not use the RealID system. It is not a good fit for you, really. True immersion requires the participation of everyone around you. While this has never been the case, even on true Role Play dedicated servers, you and your group of role playing buddies can still role play your hearts out. Nothing about RealID diminishes this. If you are trying to tell me that you want the BENEFITS of real ID ( i.e. cross server/game chat ) without cluing people in to who you really are, then I would wonder exactly how striking up a conversation with your buddy playing Starcraft 2 fits in with the whole immersion thing.
The bottom line is that a total immersion Role Playing experience is something you make for yourself and it always has been. RealID does nothing to harm or diminish that, unless thou allowest it to-eth.
On Sunday night our weekly 10-man group finally did it. After about 4 weeks of attempts ( at 2 to 3 nights per week ) of attempts we have managed to down all bosses in Icecrown Citadel 10 man mode.
The Lich King fight is a ton of fun. It requires that everyone be on top of their game and know what is going on at all times. Healers failing to deal with infest is a wipe. A single player forgetting to move out for a defile ( and dropping it in the center ) is likely a wipe. On Friday we were missing our discipline priest and it was a night full of frustration, until the last attempt of the night when we had what was probably our best ever stab at phase 2. I think this gave us hope because when we came back on Sunday, we had a monster of a good attempt right off the bat. It was clear right away that everyone in the raid had finally “got” the dance of the second phase. We were making it into phase three by our third attempt and we knew that all we needed was a good clean shot at phase three to make the kill.
And so it happened: Last attempt of the night, we made it into phase three with everyone alive and everyone doing very well during the transition. One of our Warlocks was pulled into Frostmourne and failed, causing the Lich King to enrage. A small wave of panic shot through the raid since I needed to taunt off the other tank and possibly bubble if enrage became too much to deal with, however, I couldn’t bubble since I had already blown my Lay on Hands on the last round of spirits. With some nice taunt bouncing and having fantastic healers, we survived the onslaught. On the next round of spirits though, I managed to pull a lot of them and dropped dead. I thought we were going to wipe, but then I noticed that LK’s health was down to 11%. We had it. Seconds later the end phase of the fight happened.
It was an epic win, and after months of running with this group and working our way through Icecrown Citadel, it was well deserved. It reminded me why I love this game and why MMO’s are so powerfully good. This was a win not for me but for our whole team. Sorry for the lack of screen shots. I thought I had a few I was going to use but they all look like ass. I will look through my Fraps folder and see if it got any worth using and put them up in my flicker account (linked to the right).
If I never see another world event asking me to run all around every single zone in the game it will be too soon. Why do you think that Blizzard does this? I suppose the obvious answer is that they want to encourage exploration of often overlooked or abandoned zones, but they have us do this on Lunar Festival already. It is a necessary evil though, for Midsummer is the last world event I need to complete to earn the “What a long strange trip…” meta-achievement for the Violet Proto-drake. It has been a long year of clamoring to make sure that I completed every world event achievement necessary to earn it, but I am almost done now. I grouped up with my brother last night and together we went tearing off across Azeroth and managed to complete all the “honor” and “desecrate” achievements for Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, along with the achievement to steal the fires from the 4 Alliance capital cities. The only thing I lack is the Outland fires and I will be done … sort of. I plan on continuing on and getting the fires in Northrend in order to earn blossoms, that I can use to buy the event pet. … why do I do this to myself?
Doing the “Stealing the Fires” achievement was interesting. Normally, when an achievement sends me into the bowels of the enemy capital cities, I will go in naked so that it doesn’t cost me a bazillion gold in repair bills. This year, I was lazy. First we did The Exodar and I figured that I was safe leaving the armor on because The Exodar is, and always has been, a ghost town. Having had much success with The Exodar, we hit up the Darnassus flame next. Being that this flame was not located deep within the city proper, I again decided to just leave my armor on. No deaths again.
Later on when we made our way to Ironforge I guess I was feeling lucky because I decided to just charge in, full armor, and nab the flame before making a dash for the Deeprun Tram. There were two big snags here though. First, I aggroed many guards, on my way through the city to the flame. I was able to click the flame before they caught up to me ( Crusader Aura, go!) but very soon I was swarmed. I started blowing them up and with the help of my brother ( who plays a rogue ) they died, but this got the attention of a lone Alliance warrior who thought he would have at me. I guess he didn’t notice the high powered rogue at my side because within seconds he was little more than a smear on the Ironforge deck.
Last up was Stormwind and we were coming in via the Deeprun Tram. It took us a second to regroup and heal up before zoning out of the tram area and before we could head into Stormwind proper, who should appear before us but our little warrior friend, taunting us to go through and enter alliance territory. Both my brother and I were sure that he had reinforcement friends lined up on the other side, ready to chew us up to hell and back. Despite this, I still opted to leave my armor on and take my chances. Fully buffed, with crusader aura good to go, we made a dash through the portal to find … no one there. Quickly we mounted up and made a run for it. For a little while there was no one in sight, but then my brother caught aggro on an elite NPC on patrol and was dismounted. I joined in the fight to hopefully wrap it up quickly and remount before people figured out where we were. No such luck. A different warrior in PvP gear showed up. The fight began.
He was smarter and focused on taking out the wounded, distracted rogue first. My brother went down, but not before getting in some good shots. I launched into my brand of PvE specced Protection Paladin PvP, which pretty much is to try to constantly stay behind my opponent while frantically trying to maintain my normal rotation and hopefully remember to Hammer of Justice and Hand of Freedom when needed. It is not pretty and I am not good at it, really, but much like Shrek scaring Donkey across the bridge, it was enough. The warrior dropped dead and I mounted up in a hurry, and made a break for the city flame.
Reaching the fire I noticed that there was a Night Elf Druid in tree form ( healer ) and a Gnome Mage hanging out at the flame. At this point I was utterly stunned to have not suffered a single death on what should have been suicide missions into enemy territory and I was certain that I would be ganked to hell and back by these guys and all the other allies that were surely on their way. However, every dog has his day I suppose and I reach the city flame and click it, getting the quest item without a scratch. Of course I then immediately found myself under attack.
At this point I had completed the task I had come to do and even if I died, the mission was accomplished. I was ready and willing to accept my fate. But I felt something click within me. Looking down at the menacing, glowing, flanged mace in my fist and the sturdy shield on my back, my mind flashed with memories of all the trials that I had overcome to forge myself into the Paladin that I was. I had squared off against the most ghastly horrors that the frozen continent of Northrend could muster and I had emerged victorious. I had plumbed the mysterious depths of Ulduar and emerged victorious. I had even scoured the heights of Icecrown Citadel, eventually facing the Lich King himself … and I had emerged victorious. I am a Paladin, a righteous warrior of the light and if there is one thing that we Paladins do, it is to face our enemies without fear and trust in the light to see us through to victory.
The other thing we do is bubble-hearth, so I did. Arcturin the Paladin – 4, Alliance capital cities – 0.
Square-Enix saw fit to release a benchmark tool for Final Fantasy 14, something they also did for Final Fantasy 11 back before it launched in North America. On one hand, this is a good thing because it gives people a sense of where their PC stands in terms of being able to handle the game. However, it also can turn people away from the game since, if it looks like an upgrade is required, the cost of playing the game can jump up from $50 to $1550. It seems to me that pre-release hype for an MMO is critical to having good launch numbers. I may be talking out of my ass here, but it is rare for an MMO to launch weak and later pick up a bunch of subscribers. So making the barrier to initial entry as painless as possible seems important … at least in my mind anyway.
So, color me surprised to see that scores of people are running the benchmark and being told be Square-Enix that not only is their benchmark score too low to acceptably run the game, but that adjusting settings will not help. According to the chart, anything 2000 score and below is completely out of the question. When I ran it I scored a 1730 in high -res mode ( which was not even the native res for my monitor ) @1080p. I tried many things to eek out a better score and nothing helped. Now, my desktop is fairly old I suppose, as far as gaming PCs go. I bought it three years ago, and since then I have not had any trouble with any games I want to run. Sure, certain games run better than others, but I have played through Crysis, Oblivion, and more modern games like Dragon Age without any trouble. In fact, none of those games forced me to run at the lowest settings either and I played them all at my native monitor resolution ( 1900×1200 ).
The game isn’t even out yet, so it is probably too early to judge, but then again this IS official software from Square-enix. In effect they are saying “come packing this much heat, or don’t come at all”. Not exactly the best message an MMO could send out, in my opinion.
However, I suppose it should be noted that my PC at the time didn’t do overly stellar on the FF11 benchmark test and it ended up running just fine. Plus, despite scoring only a 1730, the demo ran beautifully. Hardly any stuttering and the FPS at least looked solid and smooth. Maybe this benchmark program is misleading. Either way though, deterring customers from even trying your game for lack of a super expensive gaming machine is pretty stupid for an MMORPG, which relies on easy access and large populations to thrive in the age of World of Warcraft.
A while back I was mowing the grass in my front yard with my iPod blaring in my ears and I was completely lost in thought about people, the characters they play in MMOs and how they see them. One thing that really separates single-player RPGs from MMORPGs is the notion that your character is the hero. With a single-player game you are the Hero by default. While some games present you with some sort of alignment tracking feature where you can be either good or bad, ultimately they story presented by the game revolves around you. With MMORPGs while your character may be exceptional in the world ( not everyone in Azeroth is rocking a full tier 10.5 set after all ), you are sharing the world and its story with millions of other people. What does it mean to want to be the hero in an MMORPG then, if everyone else if thinking the same thing?
It is easy to say that you can’t be the hero in an MMORPG, but that is not entirely true. The distinction is that your character cannot be the only hero of the story going on around you since it is shared by others, but, it is entirely possible to be a hero to the people you play with. In fact, I would argue that being a hero to your teammates in an MMORPG is a lot more real and precious than being the hero in a single-player RPG. In an MMORPG, the characters that your heroic actions affect are driven by actual human beings. Karen over at Journey’s with Jaye recently wrote a post about raiding differences between The Shadow Odyssey and the new stuff in Sentinel’s Fate and I think it is a fantastic example of what I am talking about.
The result of heroic actions in a single-player RPG is a cut-scene, and a “you win! Buy the sequel!” screen. In an MMORPG a heroic act can turn a raid wipe into a victory. Actual people will remember it and tell their friends, or blog about it. Hone your noob pwning skills in PvP and find yourself something of a legend to others that play the game. You will often hear people complain about MMORPGs, stating that they are boring, have no story, and/or are pointless. I think that they are not considering that MMORPGs cannot be judged by the same metrics as single-player RPGs. They are very different beasts that we play for very different reasons.
While single-player RPGs have a depth of story that MMORPGs lack, becoming a hero in an MMORPG is a lot more “real” than being a hero in a single-player RPG.
I am typically not known as the kind of player who dual-boxes. However, my desire to own the cool new rocket mount led me to look into the Recruit-A-Friend program that WoW offers. I took the plunge, created a second account, bought a 60 day game card online and paid the account up for a full 3 months. With the rocket mount acquired, it seems a shame to just let the second account go to waste, so I decided to begin forming pairs of alts on my main account coupled with a new character from the secondary account. Part of the bonus of Recruit-A-Friend is that, when grouped with someone from the friended account, the characters receive triple experience from mob kills and quest turn-ins. So far I have three teams going: A warrior/Druid team, a warrior/warlock team, and a double mage team. The triple exp is simple amazing and you will fly through levels so fast that the quests cant keep up and will turn grey on you. I have learned a bit about making the most out of this RaF time, so below I will share the tips I have. If you have any additional tips or suggestions, leave a comment!
If you can, play two instances of WoW on the same computer. The reason for this is that you can use AutoHotKey to duplicate your keypresses between the two instances, but also, being able to use one keyboard/mouse pair to control the games was nicer than having a second mouse and a laptop for the secondary character.
Make a /follow macro. This is simple. Just create a macro ( type /macro ) and for the script use: /follow characterName where characterName = whatever the other character is. I then put this macro on a button bar somewhere so that I can click it easily to get the secondary character to follow my main character.
If your main alt has heirloom gear or anything that boosts exp gain, take it off. The exp bonus stacks with the RaF triple exp and they will begin to out level the partner. If you get too far ahead it could cripple the exp gain for the duo. Besides, you really want the secondary account to reach 60 ASAP so that they can grant 30 free levels to your other alts.
THE fastest way to level is to have someone on a third account with a well geared level 80 character run your duo through instances. Level your duo to level 8 or so. Then have your high level friend take you to Ragefire Chasm. Run this place until you are level 14 or so and then head over to Wailing Caverns. Run through it until you are level 19, then head to Razorfen Kraul and do it until you are level 25. Next up is Scarlet Monastery. Run it until level 42 or so and then head out to Zul’Farrak until level 50ish. After this, head to Blackrock Depths/Spire which should be good until 60, but at this point you can also hit up Stratholme or any other high level instance. If you have TBC access on both accounts you can head to Outland at 58 and run through Hellfire Ramparts and reach 60 in a jiffy.
If you don’t have a high level friend to run you through stuff, or if you simply want to level without having to rely on a third person, I have found that it seems quicker and easier to make a duo where both characters are the same class. I am doing this with my mages and it is amazingly effective. The reason for this is because you can grab a piece of software like AutoHotKey, or KeyClone and your keystrokes from one instance of WoW will be echoed to the other one. If both characters are the same class, this means that both of them will cast the same spell. For my mage this is like having a second mage of equal level to me as a wingman always casting the same spell at my target. Double fireballs, frostbolts, etc. Things drop FAST. You just have to ensure that you keep the hotbar setups of both characters the same and everything will work out great. For the most part you just play the character as if you were soloing. You can read all about these pieces of software and pick up a handy AutoHotKey script for WoW at the wowwiki page. Yes, there are many other tools out there, including other free ones. AutoHoyKey was the first one I came across that was free so I went with it. Feel free to try others out though.
When setting up the hotbar of your secondary character, use macros that specify your target before casting the spell. For example, if you put Fireball on your hot bar for the 1 button, on the secondary character, for the 1 button slot you would create a fireball macro that did /assist characterName followed by /cast Fireball. The /assist tells the character to target whatever my main character has targeted and then the /cast casts the desired spell on it. This makes it so that you don’t have to constantly switch to the other WoW instance to target before fighting something.
PROTIP for MAGES: Avoid using Arcane Missiles. Using this spell will turn the character around to face the target and this turning will break follow every time. It might be possible to incorporate a/follow command into the arcane missiles macro to set the follow back up after using it, but I haven’t tried yet.
When you group up with your secondary character, make sure you set the loot rules to Free For All so that you can loot everything on the one character. You will still have to loot quest items on the secondary character, but that’s not too big of a deal. There are addons that can help with this sort of thing though, like JAMBA for instance. After I get more invested in multi-boxing I may look into JAMBA, but for now I havent bothered.
Thats about it for now, I think. My Mage duo is working out so well that I think that will switch my Warrior/warlock duo over to be a warlock/warlock duo. When I get around to shaman I will do the same. With double fire power and triple exp, you just blow through solo content like nothing.
