It has been an interesting day with the team progressing slowly from the starting area into Bloodhoof Village. Roughly six hours it took from level 1 to level 10 with the team. Usually you can get from 1 to 10 in ~ 2 hours.

Why does this take so much time? Well, do you remember your first days in the starting areas? Remember, the starting areas mostly consist of kill quests where you need to kill x types of mobs, or pick-up x parts of mobs that usually not drop on every kill. Killing quests not really is an issue. Five shamans throwing a lightning bolt or an earth shock will usually put an end to every mobs’ existence with just one shot. I even tried mobs four or five levels higher than my little family, and it worked out well.

Pick-up quests though… hurt a lot. Grab a big backpack and additional bags, and bring drinks, food, and time. It seems that the drop rates for quest items in groups are only 2/3 of 1/2 of the usual rates. Where it takes one kill when playing solo, it takes four or more in a group for everyone to get the quest item. After a few trials where I was slowly getting sick by the window and character switching for each quest item, I decided to switch loot over to free-for-all mode.

This improved things a lot. At first, the random window switching for looting disappeared, I now could loot for each character step by step, toon by toon. That improved things a lot, less time wasted. After a while I noticed, this also helped with experience gain. Due to the higher amount of mob kills, I was back into the standard experience frame for the quests I did, and did not lag behind by a level or two. So now my quests are not red but all yellow which I think gives just the right amount of experience to level.

I logged off around half past nine in the evening, when the wife demanded my attention, with my experience being half on the road to level 11, and parked Ivida, Ivide, Ividi, Ivido, and Ividu in the Bloodhoof Village inn. Since I’ll take a little break to focus on a few other tasks now, they should get two or three days rested bonus.

Only slightly related… it did not last very long, until my team was discovered. Once I reach level 6 and entered the plains of Mulgore people noticed the five Tauren running around and one shooting things. It did not take long until the General chat was hit by messages like

[1. General:] WTF … how many Ivid… are there?

[1. General:] F*ckin’ multicheaters!

Of course, followed by the usual reactions towards multi-boxing, half being amazed, the other half decided to page a game master.

Have you ever noticed how many different eye colours and face variants there are for Tauren characters? Then add fur colour, horn style and colour and you will end up with lots of different styles where tiny details might make the one little thing to delete your character and start from scratch.

Thus my confession comes with easy heart: yes, I have tried out four different team styles until I finally decided on how the Stompers should look like. Once of the main aspects to consider was the role-play aspect. Playing on a RP realm should very likely lead you to create characters conforming to the RP policies, and thus I sat at home and realized:

Hey, I will be a multi-boxing role-player!

Does this sound weird to you? It did not to me. But let’s see a picture instead of all the reading.

Aren’t they a bunch of shiny Tauren?

To quote the inscription on the [item]Blessed Prayer Beads[/item]:

“A friend in need is a friend without beads.”

Or in this case, he should just have the Goblin mail services sent a letter to the Stompers, Inc. which is how I decided to name my little team. By the name you might have guessed, it will be a team made up by Tauren characters. I have created five female Tauren shamans. Wait … female you say?

Why no big men? Come on! Have you ever been waiting around the Arathi Basin battle master in Shattrath with a bunch of male Tauren warriors, shamans, druids, etc. around? Nothing but shoulders to be seen and not a single pixel of the battle master.

Being a polite person I decided to choose female characters instead. They are smaller and their shoulder pads are not that over-sized. Thus let me introduce you to my all new team and it’s members. Hereby I proudly introduce you to Stompers, Inc.

• Ivida: she will be the pack’s chief in charge, mainly because she has been created on my account that has both Collector’s Editions activated, thus you will very likely see Ivida running around with a Mini Diablo or with a tiny murloc baby that listens to the name Lurky. Ividia looks pretty impressive, her black fur and the green eyes make for a good match.
• The stomping damage crew aka. Ivide, Ividi, Ividji, and Ividu. As you may notice they do share hair style and eyes with Ivida, but all have different horns and fur style. Still they are what you expect from a Tauren female. Creatures bound to the force and will of nature.

A crew shot will follow soon, as my new 22” flat panel display will arrive tomorrow morning. A shiny Samsung 226CW display shall enter my home office room very, very soon. Did I mention that I’m pretty much excited by the dimensions of that beast?

Look forward, as we’ll soon start leveling the team up to 70. I’ll try to detail the whole process as much as possible, to make it easier for multi-boxing newcomers.