Ye Old Boxing Debate

Seems there is a lot of random hate for playing more than one account these days.I would like to point some things out.

Pros:
No need to interact with people (can play EQ solo)
No need to ever be looking for a group (saves time)
No need to share equipment, ie. need/greed/random (saves time)
Ability to support raids with much needed low density classes (great utility)
Ability to support group in or outside of in order to enhance the group (great utility)
Ability to do multiple things at the same time, ie multiple easy quest camps for epics etc. (great utility)
Each account pays some sort of subscription fee if gold status (good for company)
Each account boosts server population numbers, gold or silver status (good for company)
Each account has the possibility of using marketplace goods and services (good for company)

Cons:
No need to interact with people (can play EQ solo)
Ability to potentially block players from content (use of box not always required)
Ability to add damage per second to a raid to race/steal kills (use of box not always required)
Ability to gather goods and resources at a faster rate (can potentially lead to real money transfers)
Ability to use throw away accounts to grief others (shady deals, lies, training creatures, etc)


This is the list of pros and cons I could think of for now, please add to if you wish.

The take away from this analysis, for me, is that boxing has a lot more overall pros than cons. In fact most of the cons are due to players actually being grief givers. Players than get enjoyment from giving grief to others or players that are negatively blocking other players either for grief or for real money transfers.

The best way to stop real money transfer players is easy, "Don't buy the goods and services." Without a market to cater to, they will wither and die. Now, as for grief givers, well unfortunately these players are cancers to games as well as to normal society. How can we stop grief givers? I don't have the answer to that and I don't think it possible. Sadly, there are here, and at best we just have to try and ignore them and hope that enough reporting of their actions will bring about some forced disciplinary actions.

My Final thoughts are this. Stop thinking of Ragefire/Lockjaw as the only examples of Everquest. There are plenty of live servers and other Time Locked Progression Servers that would suffer greatly without boxing if enforced the way that many been crying over on these forums. Sure players that box or bot can cause harm, but they can be a positive force as well. Evil people will do evil things, stop trying to change everything just to "try" and take away tools of evil people.

Sorry I went a bit long winded on this. Have a nice day.

edit: PS: The time and effort it takes to get a new character from start to current end raid content ready, plus doing important old world quests and achievements is quite large. Boxing is a tremendous help in overcoming this issue. With current Live Server and old TLP Server play styles and populations, it is quite difficult to get a lot of players to progress or help you progress. Everquest is a huge time investment, and Classic through Gates of Discord are bad benchmarks for judging current Everquest gaming.

The people that don't like it are the ones that don't box.

I once said on here, sometimes I don't want to talk to people, I just want to play EQ. I then got flamed for not wanting to talk to people in EQ.... I pay my subscription, so if I don't want to associate with people why should I have to? You pay to play how you like, let me play how I like. I like to box, love to raid.

There's an app for that.

Additional Con:

Boxing prevalence, and really it's about third party programs more than boxing itself (because without them the more accounts the harder it would be to play them), causes a player to be able to be self-reliant, and as a result, it removes the reputational aspect of the game- previously a player would have had to care about spawnganking/KSing/etc in order to have a reputation that would not prevent getting groups/guildinvites.

I don't see how 3rd party adds to the current list of cons that I laid out. Whether or not you use a hardware or software to enhance you game play experience, it will always boil down to how that player plays. The software/hardware may make it easier for these evil players to grief others, but the problem is really the player not the accounts. Also, these issues (which are important ones) are primarily on the Classic - Gates of Discord era Everquest, due to the easy game mechanics. I highly doubt the same level of grief can be done after instancing and more difficult mechanics.

these 2 are iffy for me. the first you can consider any player able to block content. if my group wants to camp a named and another group has been there all day, whether 1 person playing 6 accounts or 6 people playing 1 account, this could be considered blocking my group from content.

and the 2nd has no requirement of boxing, you can have an alt account to grief and they never have to be online at the same time. i do however understand that boxing can make both of these cons easier - but i see them as a PnP issue for the fact that you are allowed to do both and not as a boxing issue.

did you not see the (use of box not always required)? or maybe my consistent rehashing of "players that grief?"
Also, boxing a separate account to grief can make it more anonymous while also possibly keeping the ban hammer from hitting the main account (although DBG does log your IP when you log into any accounts)

by iffy i meant didnt belong on this list. if you are making a pro/con list why would you list a pro/con that was not reliant on the subject? neither are restricted to boxing, not by a long shot. boxing does make them easier but again they are a direct result of the PnP we have. if we had a respectable PnP neither of these would be an issue.

and i specifically said an alt account not an alt char. you dont need to box a separate account to grief. you can simply log out your main account, log in the second one and grief. if instead you meant allowing people to have multiple accounts and not specifically boxing -which i read as playing multiple toons at the same time- then i could understand this being on the con list.

i am not against you here just saying that a terrible PnP is cause for a lot of the boxing woes, and would make the con list shorter still if we didnt have a near-anything goes rule set.

I agree, but I added them anyways due to the overwhelming comments focusing on "alts/box/bot" that do this. Even though we both know the truth is that its the Player and the PnP (or lack of) at fault.

And yes I did mean Boxing as having multiple accounts, not always playing them together, at the same time or on the same computer. Sorry for the confusion. And again I will agree with you about the PnP. The root of all the problems is how players act, not specifically what tools they are given/have. I understand the dilemma that DBG has with staffing and ability to correct issues of personality. I applaud them for at least trying. Hopefully people will see the bigger issues and come up with solutions that benefit the game as a whole (live, old tlp and new tlp) rather than focusing on just their very micro-aggressive problems.

I box because it's honestly boring playing one character.

I played a necro for 10 years...got boring, switched to something else and it was just to easy.

Started dual boxing, moved to three...few years later I usually box 6-8.

It's difficult. More challenging, certain raids are very difficult...try 3 boxing the Trial of Foresight...

I honestly don't know if I could play just one character...But if I did I think I would go back to necro.

You cannot box a group on current raid content (or even recent raid content) on live servers. The only raid content you can box in everquest is either really old raids on live with characters that are far, far overgeared and over-leveled for it....or raids on TLP Classic content

Your raids are too easy on TLP. Too easy, too elementary, and that's why they are box-able. You should ask for more complicated raids.

And boxing dungeons isn't an issue because they are instanced, so your box isn't taking away other people's drops. If you want to solve the problem ask for more complicated raids and/or instanced content

I 3 boxed raids from PoP on up everything thru DoN and would have continued doing it if I didn't quit.

Saying it's not possible is just naive. With audio triggers and dual or tri monitors, it's not that difficult.

You should try Performer event.

I find boxing from HoT to TDS sometimes difficult for many raids (not all). Emote compliance can be brutal. even DoDH Dreadspire was not fun to box for me.

I'll 3 box anything. I could 3 box mythic blackhand while it was current.

I meant one or a few people boxing a raid. Sure people can box 2 characters now even on live, maybe 3. I meant boxing a full group, or boxing a 20-of-the-same class group

edit: yeah, I specifically said "boxing a group" in my first post that you quoted (had to check to make sure). Meaning 1 person box a 6man group on a current or near-current raid. Go for it

One of the best things to happen to TLP was harder classic raid bosses (not the first implementation). A lot of players on Live think that people were drawn to TLP (other than for nostalgia) partly because you guys can't handle anything other than the easiest, most basic content. You can't handle classes complicated with 40+ bindings of activateable AA's, discs, clickies, etc. That you can't handle complicated positioning and emote strategies.

You can't handle something you can't zerg down with 50+ of the same class all executing the same single action I don't think this, just that some people do

LOL. After quitting for almost 2 years, I logged into my raid toon earlier this week and just looked in awe at my UI. How the hell did I traverse all that during raids. I had more clickie hotkeys than I do total hotkeys on my current TLP toon.

It's 15 years of bloat. The game needs a massive slimming down like WoW did. If your game has more than 25-30 total abilities (including all AA's, spells etc), then you're doing it wrong. Start merging some abilities or everyone will quit when it starts getting ridiculous to play.

Sadly not a single designer actually plays Everquest, so they have no idea how their ideas of new awesome AA's they can keep adding every expansion is destroying the game,

Dzarn (new AA dev for now) said his goal was to reduce keys used without losing power, hopefully this extends to more then just AA though!