- Blizzard continues to struggle with third-party software multi-boxing
- The company may be too reliant on community reporting multi-boxers
- Blizzard cannot tweak Warden to catch multi-boxers automatically
Multi-boxing has been the cause of much pain to rank-and-file WoW players who have called on Blizzard to fix the issue once and for all. The solution doesn’t seem to be easy.
WoW Multi-Boxing Persists as Players Call for a Fix
Blizzard’s MMORPG World of Warcraft is constantly criticized by streamers and fellow players alike. And fans, mean as they can sometimes be, often are justified in complaining about certain gameplay elements just lacking. The game has become an echelon for how a successful product can get one too many things wrong.
The latest impacts gameplay directly as Blizzard has been struggling with keeping multi-boxing at bay. Multi-boxing is the practice of controlling several accounts at the same time. However, where the problems start is in the use of third-party software that gives the player(s) an unfair advantage, as they can execute all actions at the same time.
Automated software can also be used to “do runs” where characters farm up various in-game goods and currency that gives them an unfair advantage that eventually tilts the game economy because of the surplus they cause.
Now, people are calling on Blizzard to act. Multi-boxing is actually Blizzard’s own invention. While in the early days of the game, the company would ban it, the developers later said that anyone who wanted to could multi-box, a recognition of the rapidly falling numbers in the game.
Multi-Boxing On Again, Off Again
However, this only compounded the matter, making more players leave in the end, and Blizzard was eventually forced to reverse the practice. Blizzard did not ban having multiple accounts logged on per se, but rather the practice of having software that allows you to control them at the same time.
People have piled on the company not doing much to stop such practices. Many players have just stopped reporting the multi-boxers using that third-party software as it did not make any sense to. Repeat offenses would result in a permanent ban for offenders, and Blizzard assured, though.
But to be perfectly honest, whether this warning has been put into practice would be hard to tell. However, Blizzard is not perhaps entirely to blame. The game’s anti-cheat system, Warden, is partially getting in the way, as Blizzard would hardly want to get false positives and slap innocent players with penalties, disenfranchising the player base further.
Warden a Little Too Enthusiastic on the Job
According to one Reddit user, Warden is getting in the way in at least one way: “There are hardware solutions that can do it too. Technically speaking, this would require a manual audit as Warden won’t be able to catch hardware broadcasts.”
In other words, Blizzard may be a bit too reliant on the community to report the bots manually, but how can people tell who is multi-boxing via third-party software and who is pulling off an insane micro and macro to control all of the accounts manually? Without an all-seeing solution that is capable of putting all bias aside, the problem of multi-boxing continues, and both players and developers seem to be in a dead-end on the issue.
