Dual Boxing a NO GO...For now

We don't tend to endorse specific software (who knows what might be added in the next release). Window management software and key replication (although not automation) are both allowed however.

I don't expect you to endorse anything, I just want to make sure I'm not doing anything that would be considered frowned upon. I'm new to this, lol. As if you couldn't tell.
I know the people on these forums are awesome and give great advice, to them I am very appreciative of. We all enjoy the game, and some are quite knowledgeable about the ins and outs of different ways to enjoy the game. So far, returning has been much better thanks to everyone here.
Although, you do work for SOE, so if anyone knew(not saying no one else does)...you'd be the one.
Since, you commented I figured I'd take the opportunity to ask/clarify. I know boxing is okay, but methods of boxing I'm still learning about. I figured the safest way was to just run to instances on two accounts and alt-tab between the two.

I've learned a lot about computers today.
Thank you for your input.

Once again thanks to all!! You guys have taught me a lot and given me a ton to think about today.

Are you running the game from external storage? Might cause slow loading, but probably not to the degree you describe.

That's what I always loved about eq, they present you with a world, characters, and you go on your own adventure. I think it's amazing you can create more than one character and play them together. It would be a shame if they took away the tools to make that easier for those who want to use them. I've been maybe a month and I've noticed it has become more of a solo game with the exceptions of assistance from guild mates, raids, and other events. Really though lvling has become time to ones self lol. So I understand the need and concept of boxing. Especially if you're playing long term.

If any of that makes sense...?

Yea it makes sense roughly, I simply have a real problem with a game telling me how I'm going to set up my controls, I simply will not play such a game in fact. I will never go back to alt-tabbing, that is a deal breaker for me.

Although they seem to be trying to make up a composite deal breaker right now, every patch and beta update I see makes me want to give up just a little bit more. That is not a good customer retaining strategy, to have bad news in each and every update.

Sounds stupid right? The laptop I have doesn't have a lot of memory. I remember back in the you had to have so much memory or that's how it was explained to me at the time, so when I decided to come back that's all I remembered, thus eq was loaded onto the hard drive. I hope I'm not an idiot for doing that?

No edit button...

Back in the day that's how it was explained to me.

I

I have only been back for about a month after being gone for over a decade, so...everything is different and new to me.

A few things that may also help.

Use and resize the windows.
Drop the rez, im using 800 by 600 but that may b too small for some folks.

As for as 3rd party programs, I use AHK (Auto Hot Key), I have it set up to let me use the num pad + and - in place of having to alt-tab.

Interesting...thanks

This is borderline criminal in my book...but I digress.

I'm not familiar with any of these programs, I assume that the ones that are okay to use are the ones just make it easier to box. What is the difference with this one that makes it illegal to use or borderline criminal to you?

EQ runs just fine in windows 8 no hoops to jump through dont listen to the FUD it works exactly as it did in win 7. SSD offers absolutely no improvement in EQ i have tested it several times 7200RPM vs SSD (Crucial M4 hooked up via sata III) with 4-6 concurrent clients running Having clients on different drives helps a lot but using an SSD offers nothing over 7200RPM disks. The only thing you will gain any real noticeable improvement from is faster clock speed, provided of course you have enough ram. GPU horsepower can help if you are running something seriously outdated or integrated graphics but clock speed on the CPU will be the biggest contributing factor.

SOE started blindly banning people that run VMWare on the computer rather than checking if the user was running EQ inside a VM (virtual machine). Thus...people that use VMWare for a legitimate purpose were uninstalling the program they paid for so they can play a game.

Cheaters apparently use VMWare to help them hack the data stream for EQ.

VMWare lets you run a virtual computer on your real computer. So if you wanted to run a Windows XP computer on your Windows 7 computer VMWare would let you do that just fine. For example, some people I know will run 30 Windows servers on one physical computer for troubleshooting and training purposes. Since SOE has decided that VMWare on the computer (not EQ running in a VM) is illegal people have had to stop using VMWare for other purposes.

It is sad that cheaters are abusing the data stream via VMWare and SOE thinks that means VMWare is a problem...many Mac users would use VMWare to run Windows programs on a Mac. This was ended when VMWare was labeled as 'bad' by SOE.

There was a thread or two on this topic in the past.

Never used Windows 8...hopefully never will...but is it 8, 8.1, or 8.2? There are differences and they may or may not matter for running EQ.

EQ does not use a GPU much at all compared to other games. But it is still better to have a dedicated video card in general.

SSD hard drives do in fact have an impact on EQ. The load times are faster...the logging, parsing, GTT/GINA, are all impacted by SSD. This isn't a EQ only improvement...it is the overall improvement on disk performance. In general, if you can run SSD hard drives then do it...you will never want to go back to a 7200 RPM hard drive...ever. To claim absolutely no improvements is disingenuous at best.

And then to claim that CPU clock speed will have the most impact come right after...and is laughable. Get that 3.4GHz CPU over that 3.2GHz CPU and notice things moving so much faster. LOL...laughable.

The biggest impact to improving EQ performance is network speed.

But the point of the thread isn't to debate personal desires for 'best' tech...it is to help the OP get a computer that will work well for playing EQ.

Thank you for explaining that to me. I can understand both sides of that. I don't understand why people want to cheat so bad. I don't see the point in it.

[Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] and WinEQ are fine. They don't automate anything, you still have to be at the keyboard to make the characters do anything. If you add software which automates something (ie target and send in pets) then that is illegal (with or without [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] or WinEQ).

We use [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software], it's a bit of a job to set up because of all of the options but it's worth it. We used to use WinEQ. My wife is disabled and plays on her laptop as well. It's 4 years old, and it was an older model at that time (heck of a deal though). She also has harder time running two instances and we are good at optimizing. Sometimes there is just not much to be done. Lots of RAM is really important, I agree with 8GB of RAM and a decent video card. She does get it generating a lot of heat, especially since she is in bed most of the time. So we have one of the trays, which raises it a bit and lets the heat dissipate. That helped a lot since the system will slow down if it gets too hot.

Good luck!

I can 2 box using my wife's Chanter with the following setup.
P4 3.4G Hyperthreading
4g Ram under XP-Pro 32 bit
Nvidia 7600GT with 512 memory.
I just use windows and run the 2 instances.
I pop chanter up to Tash, Slow, DoT, and throw in the pet and a Nuke.
Then back to Rat to slice and dice. Pretty easy.
-Rat

If you have windows perfectly optimized, and nothing else running, especially antivirus, you can make amazing things happen on a super low end machine.

Im using:

AMD Athlon 2.4ghz CPU(Single!)
2GB Ram
2 120gb Harddrives
Nvidia 8800GTX with 1GB on-board Ram
Outdated motherboard
Dual 17" Monitors
Windows XP(prefer due to less system resource usage)

3-Boxing, I run one instance of everquest full screen on the left monitor, on the right i run 2 instances of EQ splitscreen vertically, all in windowed mode. Runs Flawlessly.

So i think it's more about perfecting the optimization/setup your using.