First off, the official FAQ:
Do you bot?
No
Do you sell accounts?
No
Well then surely you must sell gil.
No
Then what's the point?
Having a full party at my disposal at all times opens up a lot of possibilities for both progressing in the game and for farming gil; doing 6-man BCs and getting the entire loot pool to myself and being able to do mission BCs without having to get a group together are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things you can do with six accounts.
"Wow you must wipe your ass with money" -some guy I met in passing in Rolanberry Fields
The base subscription fee for FFXI is $12.95 per month, and factoring in about ten mules amongst the six accounts, totals up to a little over $90 per month after taxes. Is this a lot? Depends on who you are, but I'm not made of money either (and certainly don't wipe my ass with it) and have learned to cut back in other areas to pay my fees. Alas, poor liquor, I knew him well.
What's your power bill like?
Fortunately, the local power company has rather reasonable rates, and my bill was around $35 before I started this and now sits at around $50 a month. Not too bad at all in my opinion.
"Well ok at least I have a life"
Sure thing, we'll just stipulate that I'm a 30-year-old virgin who lives in my mother's basement.
Now, to move on to how it all started. I was going to do the Fenrir fight with a good friend of mine when the local RMT gang popped up and started doing the same BC. We were like lolrmt but what were they doing there? After a few seconds it clicked that they were farming the BC for the gil reward: 15,000g. That's not a lot, but multiply that times 6 and do it every day.. that'll add up quick. I looked at my current setup- I had 4 monitors, 4 computers, and enough spare parts left over from upgrades to build another. I already had 3 accounts active for powerleveling and such, and could easily reactivate another old one I no longer used. This meant I would need:
2 monitors
1 computer
2 new accounts
and I would be able to fire up six copies of FFXI at the same time.
"But I can just fire up 6 copies of FFXI on one computer" you might say.
Surely if I had 5 guys on autofollow running around, I would get reported regardless of what I was doing, so it had to be legit. 100%. This meant no Windower, no third-party software to control keys and automate tasks. Nothing. I was definitely going to be under the magnifying glass over at GM headquarters, so I needed to have my bases covered and completely clean. A quick Google search on "multiboxing" turned up the great community over at dual-boxing.com, and I began doing my homework.
The first thing I needed was one of these:
VIP-848-BC 8 port PS/2 Keyboard Multiplier / Multicaster
In a nutshell, it allows me to hook up one keyboard and have every key I push on that keyboard sent to all of my comptuers at once. Typically I control my "main" with my trusty Nostromo n52, and control all of the others with a separate keyboard that is hooked into the other five. It is done completely in hardware, and no "third-party" tools are used nor required for it to work. I just put one hand hovering over the alt, ctrl, and 0-9 on the keyboard, and put the other on the n52, and I'm good to go.
The rest was trivial; just build some computers, mount a few LCDs on the wall, and presto! The circle was now complete. The only additional piece of hardware I needed was a PS/2 port replicator for my laptop, since I was running the PS/2 version of the Vetra (USB is rather unreliable from what I've read). Well, that and a boxload of cabling.
After all was said and done, here was the end result:
I gotta say, it took lots of planning and even more effort to get up and running, but I'm damn proud of how far this project has come since it was but a twinkle in my eye.
Am I any less "legit" than other players? Some will argue that since I can sync everything almost perfectly and not have to worry about lag or communication issues that I have an unfair advantage over others. But I assure those who believe this that although multiboxing carries with it many advantages, there are just as many disadvantages to counteract them. To cite a simple example, if there is only one monster to fight, having six guys zerg it as opposed to trying to solo it with one character is very advantageous. However, there is no way I would be able to handle fighting six different mobs on six different characters, even if they were very easy kills. It's just not possible to divide my attention up six ways. Also, if anything goes wrong, it will often result in a full wipe, when a party of six separate individuals would be able to handle the situation without much difficulty.
NOTHING is automated, and every action any of my characters make is initiated by a bona-fide keypress by myself. I can't stress this enough; there is absolutely no "botting," no automation, and nothing shady going on. I think that the fact that I've been reported on numerous occasions and yet still play reinforces this fact.
Although the information regarding it is centered on WoW, there are two great pieces of reading that I wholeheartedly recommend for those who are not familiar with how multiboxing works and how it is different from botting and other unsavory activities:
FAQ for Non-Multiboxers - Dual-Boxing Wiki
Myth and Fact - Dual-Boxing Wiki
My favorite excerpts are:
So what are you, a bot?
Multiboxers are typically offended when being confronted with such a nefarious accusation. However, since you're new, I'll let it slide.
All of the abilities a multiboxer can do are built right into the WoW game. No actions are automated, and everything that each character is doing can be traced back to an action made by the player.
Then how can you be all synchronized? I mean, there's no gap in time for you to alt-tab between windows?
That's because we use this thing called a "keyboard multiplexer". Sometimes it's emulated, in the case of software multibox solutions. Sometimes it's fancy hardware.
Now, there are many ways to do this, but in the simplest form, envision syncing a single wireless keyboard to multiple wireless keyboard receivers. When you press a button on the keyboard, it will be sent to all computers at the same time.
I'm not afraid to admit that I am offended when people say I bot. I've put a lot of work to get all of this hardware working, and even more work to actually be able to play the game compentently controlling six characters at once. And I assure anyone that this all involves a lot more than just mashing buttons to execute macros. I've been called just about every name in the book, as have some of the other multiboxers I've met. If you believe that for some reason multiboxing is inherently "wrong," then you're entitled to that opinion, but just because at first glance we may "look" like RMT doesn't mean we are.
I hope I've provided a look into what I do and why I do it, and please feel free to leave questions or comments below or to contact me in-game.
-Kenzo of Ragnarok
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