I started boxing EverQuest in May of 2000. I ran Warrior/Ench, wife ran Cleric. I had a Pentium II 400 MHz with 128MB RAM with 3dfx VooDoo 3 graphics for the main system. Then a Pentium II 300 MHz with 64MB RAM and RIVA TNT 2 graphics. Both using 17" IBM CRT monitors. On separate desks, no less. I remember boxing only too well.
I'm mega interest in ISB, but haven't used it in the past, was always too afraid of it being detected, and thus banned somehow, even if I wasn't doing anything that by my personal definition wasn't illegal or an advantage. Or if it wasn't detected somehow by the EQ Ninjas, that a player would notice how well things are going for me, know what to look for, and go into hater-mode and report me. -- too much to lose with my accounts... i have like let me go look on my excel sheet..... 11 accounts .. .first 7 of which created 99-2002, then 2 more in 2008, 1 more in 2010, and 1 more in 2013. -- I haven't made a new account since 2013. They all had old school alts, who were boosted to free heroic level 85 toons, at the release of Heroic accounts back in ... i think was around 2012? I'd have to go look. -- anyway, makes for a ton of options on buff bots... with all classes made and spread out, and port/xloc bots, CoTH bots, and just ya. I always have too many options. -- Anyway. Great info sharing in your post, and I'm not familiar with the Fellowship exp thing, I need to go get smart on that. I think, with variations, my usual fun mode is something like... Warrior/Knight/Ranger (not Monk cause snare) as my main window, on my front screen, and best geared etc. --- then a bard melody bot, and then 3rd bot is either Shaman/Enc for buffs/slows/haste or a Cleric bot. --- which then leads to 3 Rogue mercs or 2 rog mercs and 1 cleric merc. If I can convince myself that 4 bots 2 mercs or 5/1 or 6/0 makes for more fun strength and fun plus new experience, then that opens up fresh ideas. I don't know. Mercs are so low maintenance, and i would never have a bot be melee dps since I would end up being annoyed that they are "too far away" over and over again, or all the work I would have to do with positioning on my main pulller/tank. That's why I wrote in another thread, a few weeks ago, about how I'd love to see QoL improvements in the game, or a 3rd party that does it for you, so that your melee bots are always in range etc. (Like I gave the example Dark Age of Camelot as far back as 20 years ago, at release having /stick for fighting, not even meant for bots. Just always keeping in range. Back to the ISB, ya, it seems to be more of an issue in these forums for TLP or whatever, and because of True Box, boxing to me will always be live/test server thing, and TLPs will always be a old school, just play 1 account retro-throwback thing. Thanks again for the detailed reply, and I'll read up on Fellowship.
I commented on that a few weeks ago, because I think some may actually have not even been around when the term was "two boxing" because who could afford more than 1 computer, and computers couldn't run EQ back then, internet was still dial-up for many that first year, and nobody ran more than 1 instance on 1 computer, especially since things like WinEQ was outlawed, and EQ itself didn't have windowed mode, and well all that stuff, since the game was never originally meant to be 2 box. By 2003, I had 1 decent pc, and 2 "good enough for eq" and while I didn't use 3 monitors on my desk, I had those old school monitor and KVM switcher things...let me go look, that was way back like i said... 2003. --- Ya, stuff like this, but whatever they had 20 years ago --> https://www.amazon.com/KVM-Switches/b?ie=UTF8&node=13983771 But obviously, that time has come and gone. Except for people trying to get around True Box on TLPs. Who are using multiple hardware, or I imagine the people who are boxing more than 6 accounts and thus makes sense to have more than 1 pc, and more than 2 or 3 monitors. As for the Wizard bot squads, what was the name who made it famous.... Sam Deathwalker I think? Man it was amazing what he was able to do, and he spent a lot of money with his setup doing it, but people were angry! haha, I remember reading stuff from the haters. Especially using Manaburn which people were calling for nerfs.
Separate desks?!?!?!?! Haha, I've had huge Corner/L-Shaped desks since those days... even as i type now.. I can't imagine not having a big corner desk, and definitely couldn't imagine operating 2 desks, I guess they were side by side and you had it setup decently for you.. oh and setups like you had with the wife were great, the only thing is... dammit if/when they quit,, or you want to play and they can't or dont.
I had the two desks arranged in an 'L' shape. Not terrible, not ideal. But I made it work. The [ex]wife is gone. Ever-searching for greener pastures. Boxing, for me, is out of pure necessity. As I took on additional life responsibilities the need for me to suddenly be AFK for indeterminate amounts of time forced my hand. I had to either quit or find another way. Since I already boxed 2, I thought why not 3? Then 4, then quickly came 5 and 6. What I learned is boxing 6 gives the biggest, fastest payoff.
Inner space boxer is probably trivial to detect and they don't attempt to hide it. To my knowledge zero people have gotten suspended, warned or banned over it since it provides zero automation ability by design. If DPG changes stance I'll probably be first on the list of people to get hit, so consider me a canary in the coal mine.
Hopefully the OP/TC got his answers he was searching for with the repeated emphasis on "serious boxers", because I derailed it a bit in the last few posts looking for tips on how to box-better. That said, I don't want to derail it even further making it all about ISB/3rd-Party... and I don't know how long this "thing" has been going on in the forums, but since I returned in April to ForumQuest, it's been a hot issue about ISB (Edit: well all 3rd party i mean), so I don't really know. So many threads closed due to it, but again, it's my ignorance on that stuff there. I think this time, if I don't stick with Vaniki and/or go try Mischief/Thornblade -- then when I do the box thing on Test server, I'll read up hard on ISB, and find out what exactly it can offer, and to the best of my ability, figure out what I have to lose, and how much of a risk it is. It sounds .... wonderful. But, just replying/talking out-loud, don't let me set you up for any pro-ISB or whatever comments that will get this thread locked with hate and debate by others who are lurking. Thank you Tucoh!
I do not use ISB but want to for the QOL. Currently I box 6 but I like to simplify things a bit and drop an account to add a healer merc. I box war/zerk/zerk/shm/bard and it's an amazing group. The 6th has a bst on it for buffs and swap out on rare occasion for the shammy or a zerk. The reason I do this is for simplicity. I play with 3 monitors and one desktop which is pretty decent but not super hardcore specs. Middle monitor is always my war. Right monitor are my two zerkers Left monitor bard/sham/bst (mostly buff bot) All of the accounts are laid out on the tool bar below so I always load them in the same way so I can easily click with the mouse which one I want. I pull with bard and try to get the mob in the right spot with war, slow it, adps stuff, autoattack melody/bard stuff, move to zerkers to chew it down quickly. Rinse and repeat. I am NOT able to do the hero missions in ToL unfortunately but everything else I can. I completely understand that ISB is the way to go and it would make my life 1000% easier but there are two things that prevent me from doing it. One, I can't figure the out with a 3 monitor setup and two I'm scared to get banned. Yes, I read Tucoh's post and yes I've seen the post from a dev saying its ok to use. I guess it really boils down to not understanding how to set it up.
6box sk, sham, and 4 BLs on 7 year old Asus laptop with 32GB memory. This group gives me pulling, tanking, agro control, mob push/pull for positioning, group healing, 12 targets x 4 BL synergy every 30 sec, group dicho x4 every 60 sec, and alliance x 4 every 60 sec. I have 4 attack buttons(attack0 to attack3) in the EQ Actions window that each end with /timer 300 to know which BL has synergy and/or alliance ready. I keybind all keys on 4 different hotbars to numpad0 to numpad3 matching the attack buttons mentioned above. Each BL does the same set of actions and let's call these 4 hotbar actions ABCD. attack0 is ABCD attack1 is DABC attack2 is CDAB attack3 is BCDA I use a programmable keyboard (Corsair) and mouse (RedDragon) that aids in alt-tab and sending the same key to each EQ instance in a specific order. I play the SK 99% of the time, using the 4 attack buttons along with other keys to burn, rebuff, group heal/cure/invis to coordinate background toon actions. I would happily pay Daybreak if they would make EQ more box friendly. The primary problem is the main window of EQ is a DirectX window and you need to activate that window to send keys to it using most key pushers. I believe ISB is using DirectX APIs to push keys to all instances of EQ in broadcast mode. I do not use ISB nor M(*), so my solution requires sequentially activating each EQ window and pushing the same keys. If I were to play 12 toons, the delay to return back to the SK would be too long so I cannot play more than 6 ideally. If EQ had a built-in way to broadcast keys, you would quickly see massive boxers.
Yes, I got my answers. 1. people told me how much they box, so it seems like 6, anything more is just to test the potential 2. Kinda pointless because 6 box doesn't really push CPU or GPU so wont know how people manage resources if they don't box a lot where its pushing the resources and they have to decide what to manage. One or two people provided good answers to this too though. 3. Apparently can't hotkey ingame graphic settings nor can hotswap the file. So basically if I box 12 and I want 9 of them to go into lower settings I have to click buttons and drag and drop for long time. The reason for going lower settings is because I care about longevity of my PC, so I don't want to be pushing 70% CPU/GPU/ etc. for long periods of time 7 days a week. Only time I need CPU is if I'm moving and boxes are following me. I don't need tips on moving. I don't need tips on how to play the box. I was looking tips on computer resources management while serious boxing. So my mobo, cpu, etc. don't get melted/degraded from playing this game, pushing it to its limits.
