Boxer Hate Discussion

Boxing/third party programs in EQ, for some, is a controversial subject. (The following is only relevant to servers where unrestricted boxing and third party programs are allowed.)

Let me be frank with all of you. DBG is well aware precisely which boxers are using third party programs. The macro commands are typed straight into the chat bars. Having said this, in this thread, let us move on beyond debating whether boxing/third party programs are permissible to use in Everquest. We already know they are. As long as the player is sitting at the keyboard and actively playing while they box with third party programs to assist. It is not a problem. No disciplinary action will be taken against that account.

The reason I'm creating this thread is because there are times when I teamup with single/duo players, trying to help them with quests, grinding, farming, kills, etc...And I instantly regret it as the conversation quickly devolves into me being lectured on why boxing or using third party programs is 'wrong' and 'unenjoyable', as it doesn't harmonize with the ranters personal philosophies. Regardless of if I'm manually boxing, or boxing with third party programs, these sorts of uninvited lectures happen more often than they should. These aren't once in a blue moon experiences.

For those who are unaware, there are single/duo boxers who angrily rant at 4+ boxers on why they should not be having fun playing a video game in a way that is most enjoyable to them. This happens in both voice and in game chat. Much of the time these rants are incorreherent.

I compare these interactions to a low income individual lecturing a wealthy individual on why being rich is immoral, depressing, and a general miserable experience. The irony exceeds level 9000. If the haters actually knew the truth, which they don't, then they would realize how ridiculous and foolish they sound from someone on the other side. And yes, wealth can be compared to multi-boxing in the sense that both are correlated with controlling varying degrees of power.

Lately, I've been struggling to bite my tongue in order to prevent myself from unloading on these ranters as their viewpoints are based in ignorance, inexperience, and it appears jealousy. As it is significantly more difficult to successfully box a group of 6 (or more) with the help of a third party program than it is to play a single/duo box manually. And why do people think there is only a single way (more specifically, their subjective and prefered style) to play Everquest?

I'll state it clearly: If you have a grudge, or harbor negative thoughts and feelings against multi-boxers. Please refuse all help from them in the future. (IE. That epic mob finally spawns. If you can't gather enough single/dou/manual players. You don't get the kill). Stop buying the items being offered at a reduced price due to an increase in supply. (IE. Currently YAKs sell for 900p on Rizlona while a KR sells for 7000ish Plat.)

If any other boxers want to share negative experiences. Please feel free. The purpose of this thread is to share perspective with the box haters.

I have boxed on live & on Ragefire but most of my boxing experience is on Phinigel TLP.

I have not yet heard anyone complaining about boxers when they are the type to invite players in, in general most of those players are grateful to have a group & get XP or progression done, that said I am an officer in my guild & generally well-liked here so my experience is perhaps a little insulated as a result.

Where I have heard criticism of boxers in the past is where they never invite players into their groups, even when asked if someone might join them, none of those insular types still play on this server as far as I am aware though and generally most of the boxers are only too happy to let one or two other players tag along for the ride so long as they don't mind that the boxer is working on some goal or other.

I enjoy helping catcher-uppers get in shape, get geared & maintain a bunch of mules that carry spare gear etc for just that purpose, seeing them catch up & start raiding again is reward enough, even though the ones who stick around are the minority.

So I can't say I have seen too much of the boxer hate at all, very little in fact & this is on a Truebox server.

I didn't read anything past this because you obviously do not have a grasp on how this software works if you think typing them into the chat bars doesn't mean they are being intercepted by the 3rd party software and not actually being sent anywhere other than your local pc.

Stop locking down camps and let people play the game. A LOT of players don't want to buy their equipment at the commonlands tunnel. I don't prefer playing with boxers because *usually* in my experience they play each character like they're half afk.

My experience, for the most part, is literally the opposite. Because playing a single character in EQ is relatively trivial, I’ve found solo players to be less attentive, watching twitch, netflix, etc, whereas boxers dedicate their entire focus to the game because they are controlling muliple characters. We’ll even get into conversations about it. Upon being asked why they don’t box, they’ll say things like “I don’t have the attention for it” or “I like watching dota while I play.”

For me personally, I pull a mob, my shaman immediately slows and my monk immediately starts attacking, which could not possibly be done more productively by 3 individual players.

For the record, I’ll happily group with both types of players, I just thought it was humorous that we had opposite experiences.

My experience also is that boxers seem to be more 100% attentive when I have grouped with them on Phinny, and Aradune now. Tell responses seem delayed at times as they are juggling between chars at times.

To clarify also, I am a single-char player, I dont even play alts haha - I think 2-boxing is hard (Tried on phinny for a lark, sucked at it) and also playing any other than my one-char for me breaks my immersion (I also play 1st person, so not the real min-max efficient player!)

When I'm duoing my enchanter and cleric in Hate on Aradune, I don't even want to get up from my PC because with my luck my charm will break and my pet will kill me. Boxer issues...

I don't know a single boxer who doesn't save macros to their eq ui and place on their hotbar. And you are absolutely ignorant if you think dbg is incapable of intercepting this information. I've ran my own personal private servers. I've seen firsthand what data is contained in packets and can be detected.

Precisely this. Rizlona is a wasteland with only 4-5 players, each 72-boxing to sell raid loot to each other for kronos. It is absolutely impossible for a normal player to accomplish anything under any circumstances because a bot raid sits on every named spawn point at all times. If you transfer, you will be miserable. Stay away! DO NOT COME HERE!

TBH boxers are usually a stronger X man team then multiple players playing the same classes.

When I control the cleric I have learned exactly when my warrior needs that CH to start, vs a patch. Makes for better mana efficiency. MobX requires the CH to start at 40% while mob Y requires it to start at 60%. Granted not the steepest learning curve, and a good cleric will figure it out pretty quick.

My clerics heal starts the SECOND my enchanters charm breaks because I start it when the audio trigger for charm breaking fires.

I know exactly which mobs to mez on the chanter because I know which mob my warrior plans to engage first.

I am not saying there arent bad boxers out there, because there are. I am not saying that every solo player out there is inferior to a box team. However, when you play a box team you are doing a couple of things.
1. Cutting out delays that are due to communication. ex. CHARM BREAK- cleric has to read it, register it, then react. No two humans will react as fast as a boxer in this situation. This is probably the biggest most glaring advantage.
2. You know your toons, see CH example above.
3. overall better cohesiveness. I know what needs to be mezzed vs what the warrior plans to engage first.

See Weebles101 example above also, lots of solo players are doing other things while playing their one toon. I would bet for 90% of players EQ is not engaging enough in the early expansions, so they are doing something in addition to EQ. (watching tv, playing another game, etc.

Thus far Rizlona has been a great experience for me, granted I box, but my interactions with other boxers has yet to be negative.

As a toxic boxer I like to take my 50 Druid around helping random strangers in the lower level spots while playing the Cleric I main in raid.

When not raiding I have been known to take a DRU/CLR/ENC/BRD to go help new guildmates who only play 1 get caught up a bit since they jumped off the Aradune ship.

A lot of the rest of the time I spend leveling new characters and if spots need filling I usually fill them with guildies.

Cause toxic Riz boxer.

Let it break, Mez, pee, profit.

Boxing has always been a plague upon EQ.

It has caused completely unbalanced expansions because solo quests were tested by boxers.

It has caused player to player interactions to become non-existent on some servers. It has greatly damaged the social fabric of EQ.

It has made it much harder for single account owners to find people to group with. Servers have a maximum capacity, if half of the server are boxed character, the opportunities for single account owners to group is diminished by half.

It has caused rare drops to be permacamped instead of dynamic groups where players leave and enter the group.

It has caused issues with the economy, where those permacamped items are sold by boxers and krono farmers by massively inflated prices.

When all is said and done, and EQ gets finally shut down, it will be partly due to boxers. Many single account owners have left EQ because of boxers.

1. People have always boxed in EQ, Its never really been a big disruption back when it was just 2-5 boxes, the software that enables masses of characters to be run is the primary issue.
2. You're complaining about a symptom not the disease, declining number of players on each server caused people to move to boxing as an alternative of sitting around for hours waiting for more people to show up (because they never did).
3. This is 1000x not true, and you're use of the concept of "max capacity" as a factor in why people don't get groups, or how "the opportunities for single account owners to group is diminished by half" - This entire bullet-point is nonsensical.
4. News Flash - Rare drops were more or less perma-camped prior to the explosion of boxing, I know some young folks don't remember what trying to get any value camp in Guk or Seb was like back in 1999-2000, but it wasn't easy, and very rare were they ever open, frequently contested. Also I haven't been on a single server where it wasn't possible to gain one of these camps.
5. The market determines what the prices are, they're sold around the point of equilibrium, few people will pay more than an item is worth, as they're not going to stand there and try and sell at a point that is unfeasible (possibly they will hook a sucker occasionally), Everquest tunnel trading is a good example of a free-market economy. Not everyone could afford to buy GEBs back in 1999 either.
6. If there were not boxers and krono traders - EQ would have been shut down a long time ago.

Boxing is a side effect of the design of the game. When populations drop on servers and putting together groups takes too long, people break down and box because they don't have time to put together a group on a low population server.

If the game shuts down, it won't be the fault of boxers, it's quite the opposite. Boxers have held this game afloat for many years or else people would have just left for other games. If the game gets shut down, it won't be the the fault of the boxers, it will be because people who make this game drove it into the ground.

This thread is pretty much pointless. Boxers have their server, and people that prefer no boxing have theirs. The reason box lovers hate the separation of the 2 Server types is that not as many people play on box servers. (Surprise)

If the overwhelming popularity of true box servers or p99’s population over the past 11 years didn’t teach you people anything idk what to say.

And boxing is cheating. The game was never designed for someone to roll in with more power than 6 grouping players. It creates an environment where you have 1 person running around with too much resources & leverage which isn’t good for the economy or content that 6 individual living people (more or less) want to work together on. Go cheat and become powerful in some other game. I find it funny that they always want to play on the servers that are the most populated- with rules against boxing.

People boxed back

Boxers existed in the beginning. Using straw man arguments to make it seem like everyone boxed back then no problems whatsoever is garbage. Boxing was RARE. And people that did it were only boxing 1 account since it was almost unplayable running 2 clients on one machine. Having 2 computers even more rare. Boxing was rare for the first few expansions to the point where it was hardly noticeable.

Aggression is a fear response triggered by a perception of attack. People who hate boxers likely feel they have been, or will be attacked by them in some way. This all-encompassing hatred of boxers is a generalization though, ignoring the fact that jerks come in all flavours. Sometimes, fear may be turned inward in the form of envy (not having the ability to do something that others can do, for whatever reason).

There are good and bad examples of all kinds of people, players, and play styles. Just because one person does something poorly or behaves poorly doesn't mean everyone who fits into a similar category is going to behave in a similar manner. This applies to aggressors and targets.

If someone doesn't like what I do, or how I play, I check first with myself to determine whether I have behaved offensively or wrongly, or if it could be interpreted that I have. If I have, I try to clarify misunderstandings and/or make an effective apology. If I have not, then the other person is probably being abusive, so I'll walk away and let them keep their toxicity to themselves. Sometimes, I will let them know why I'm walking away, sometimes not.

We can't control what other people do or think, but we can control how we respond. Understanding why people behave aggressively helps us determine how we respond. Whether their fear is rational or irrational, it's their issue to deal with, not ours. There will always be aggressive people out there, and some of them are pretty toxic and well worth avoiding for our own wellbeing.

Nope, we're pretty happy having our own server away from garbage like this.

I'm not sure this statement is really accurate. If a boxer is playing 6 and more effectively playing than 6 individual players is that really a design problem, or a player skill problem? I don't think saying "the game wasn't designed for this" when someone is playing 6 characters within the confines of how the game works is a fair assessment. There are tools to make the playing of those characters easier, sure, but is that making them doing things that they weren't designed to be able to do? No.