When I started reading about multiboxing all I could think about was: what the hell will this require in terms of hardware? It took me almost two weeks with trying out various configurations and hardware set-ups in order to determine which route to take.
One of the primary decisions you will have to make is whether you do want to multi-box using multiple computers or if you do want to jump into this adventure using a single computer. This decision is not an easy one, so I will try to provide a few pointers for the multi-boxing rookies.
At first sight you will probably notice that you need multiple accounts for this whole thing to work. Buying new accounts is easy these days, the World of Warcraft battlechest is available with the original game and the expansion The Burning Crusade. The Good Thing#8482; is: it comes with DVD media, so you can save a lot of time on your first installation.
I am still not sure if you can buy accounts online as I could not find this option on the World of Warcraft Europe site. If you have any links for that, feel free to comment on this post.
World of Warcraft does have pretty low hardware requirements, which are meant to allow as many gamers into the world as possible. With the current requirements and the expected upgrade in the 2nd expansion Wrath of the Lich King a newly bought computer from 2006 should run the game well, even if you push the video settings to the maximum. Where the maximum would give you a view distance of approximately 50 yards and all possible details like ground clutter (aka. green stuff), buildings and non-player characters and flying objects visible very early. Plus shiny weather and nicely shaded polygons and character shadows.
Basically you can nail hardware requirements down to the following if you want to play without stuttering screens:
- 1.5Ghz CPU. This is sufficient. You can run full details with a single-core CPU like that.
- 1GB RAM: I played having only 512MB on Windows XP. With Vista available and sold on most new PCs, 1GB is the recommended minimum.
- Any 3D graphics card which comes with 256MB RAM. It does not really matter if it supports DirectX 10. DirectX 9 is fine, and the World of Warcraft graphics engine will not support DirectX 10 before a 3rd expansion gets released (which means not before 2009).
- A big hard disk. Preferably 160GB to 200GB. If possible a system with multiple hard disks. One for the operating system, one for each World of Warcraft instance.
This should work pretty well, if you plan to run multiple computers for your adventures. I have tried this with a slightly bigger system configuration. I did use AMD64 CPUs with 2GHz and 2GB RAM. Operating system was Windows XP, but Vista would work, too.
Now you may ask, why should you buy four or five computers for what ever number of characters you want to play? The quick answer: it is easier. Grab identical computers from your favourite store, install your Windows of choice, and install World of Warcraft with all available updates. Connecting these systems to be controlled by one mouse and one keyboard is done by hardware, and it’s less likely you could fail here.
To make life easier, I would recommend to have one monitor for each computer. A TFT display with 15” size will work well, you can run WoW with a resolution of 1024×768 on this display.
Now all you miss is just one keyboard and mouse, and a little Open Source tool named Synergy. It allows you to broadcast mouse and keyboard input to multiple systems connected over a local network.
If you combine all that, you will very likely end up with quite a few € to spend for your multi-boxing adventure, not to mention the space requirements. Thus I would recommend this route only for those who have the space and the money. Since I am an IT professional, I have had the hardware available and could try this route. The chance for failure indeed is lower. The price tag you ask? For me it was ~ 1.800 € for a total of five identical systems, as in Germany - where I live currently - you can buy a machine fulfilling the minimum requirements for as low as 200 € and a decent 15” flat panel display for ~ 150 to 160 €.
A description of the one system variant will follow in the next upcoming post.
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