Blizzard finally puts stop to infamous WoW exploit ahead of Shadowlands

A new Policy update for World of Warcraft could put and end to one of the oldest and most annoying exploits in Blizzard’s world-famous MMO: multiboxing.

For those who don’t know, multiboxing refers to when one user plays across multiple accounts simultaneously. It can be done a variety of ways that we won’t get into here (that would be an article in itself), and over the years various software, macros, scripts, and even hardware has been developed to make it as easy as possible.

The advantages of this are immediately obvious. In need of a healer or tank? Instead of grouping up with completely random people, you can just run the dungeon by yourself with multiple accounts!

Not as fun? Sure isn’t, but it is extremely efficient.

The players who use this exploit are also extremely annoying to go up against in PvP or if they pop up in your favorite material farming spot. Fighting or competing against one person can be bad enough, but try it when that other player has an entire guild’s worth of toons at their disposal.

On November 3, Blizzard officially announced that “the use of input broadcasting software that mirrors keystrokes to multiple WoW game clients will soon be considered an actionable offense,” which means you can now get suspended or even banned for doing it.

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“We will soon begin issuing warnings to all players who are detected using input broadcasting software to mirror commands to multiple accounts at the same time (often used for multi-boxing),” Blizzard wrote.

“With these warnings, we intend to notify players that they should not use this software while playing World of Warcraft.”

Like we mentioned, these warnings will eventually escalate to actions on your account, which can include suspension and a permanent closure of the player’s World of Warcraft accounts.

“We strongly advise you to cease using this type of software immediately to maintain uninterrupted access to World of Warcraft,” Blizzard warned, so if you do keep on using the exploit, at least you;ve had a fair warning.

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This is all happening as players are gearing up to start playing the Shadowlands expansion and Naxxramas raid in Classic and will definitely force some people to reevaluate their playstyle. You know if Blizzard is threatening to ban users with multiple accounts, they aren’t messing around.