WoW players demand action as “multiboxing” problem rages on
BlizzardMultiboxing through third-party software in World of Warcraft is still appearing throughout the MMO and players want Blizzard to take more action against people exploiting the game.
People have still been finding instances where a group of WoW characters are moving in tandem across Azeroth completing quests and claiming rewards.
Though this has been in WoW for years, it was just recently that Blizzard decided to take a stance and prohibit the practice.
In 2020, the WoW devs updated their policy on input broadcasting that prohibited players from using third-party software to control multiple game clients at the same time, known as ‘multiboxing.’
u/I_used_to_smile via RedditA year later, the player base is still regularly seeing multiboxing in the game and feels like Blizzard aren’t doing much to uphold their decision.
“I’ve just stopped reporting them,” one player said. “Done it for months and still see the same players doing it, s**t doesn’t get done so don’t make the effort to try anymore.”
The company explicitly said multiboxing would not be allowed anymore and would start handing out suspensions and even perma-bans if problematic players continued to do it.
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But a challenge to sift out boxers lies with the game’s anti-cheat software, Warden, which might not be able to detect it in the first place.
“Only if it’s a software solution doing the input broadcasting,” user ‘anengineerandacat’ explained. “There are hardware solutions that can do it too. Technically speaking this would require a manual audit as Warden won’t be able to catch hardware broadcasts.”
This means the devs are basically relying on player reports to find abusers but even that has its complications.
While using third-party softwares isn’t allowed anymore, WoW players still have all the freedom to log into multiple subscriptions and control each account manually in a way that’s very similar to multiboxing.