After ages of allowing it, Blizzard is taking steps to end ‘multi-boxing’ in World of Warcraft

Back in my day people could only afford to dual-box!

For years, some dedicated World of Warcraft players have been “multi-boxing,” a term that refers to utilizing multiple accounts and machines to play several (or droves of) characters at once.

In the before-times, this was commonly known as “dual-boxing,” when players would have two PCs (or a laptop and PC) next to them, allowing two characters to quest together. But over time multi-boxing became a cottage industry for gold farmers, altering the course of Auction House prices and in some cases, the open world experience. Now, Blizzard is taking a stand before the launch of the Shadowlands expansion.

In the innocuously titled post “Policy Update for Input Broadcasting Software,” Blizzard directly calls out “third-party input broadcasting software, which allows a single keystroke or action to be automatically mirrored to multiple game clients,” using the term “multi-boxing” by name. Blizzard says that this is now an “actionable defense,” and will start warning users before suspending/banning them if they detect this activity. They couldn’t have put it more plainly: “We strongly advise you to cease using this type of software immediately to maintain uninterrupted access to World of Warcraft.”

As someone who has played WoW since the start, this was a long time coming. Although I’ve known many people with multiple accounts, multi-boxing has always been sort of a grey area, and has gotten much worse in recent years (particularly during Legion into Battle for Azeroth) as software has made it easier to have armies of bots running around.

Policy Update for Input Broadcasting Software [Battle.net] [Image source]