By Jim Rossignol on October 12th, 2008 at 9:23 am.
VG247 spotted this one on Ripten: a guy on the Dual-Boxing.com forums who plays with 36 WoW accounts, across eleven PCs.
It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule. Not bad considering I’m looking at it like it’s a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft.
And I thought my three simultaneous Eve accounts were excessive.
12/10/2008 at 09:33 Ryx says:
Holy.. good…
My GOD.
12/10/2008 at 09:34 cliffski says:
Why not just… play an RTS game then? That is effectively what he is doing.
Would be a tad cheaper…
12/10/2008 at 09:36 feffrey says:
With eve it could be justified since you can pay your subscription with game money, but wow? why??????
12/10/2008 at 09:54 Klaus says:
What’s the point of playing then?? And to be perfectly honest, when I saw the picture I thought this was some military headquarters.
12/10/2008 at 09:59 Arnulf says:
This is absurd!
if there ever was a way to make WOW unpopular, then this is it
12/10/2008 at 10:03 Southpark says:
this reminds me of the southpark episode
“how to kill someone who has no life”
12/10/2008 at 10:04 Ging says:
I just can’t understand the viewpoint of $5711 a year being not bad for a hobby!
Sure, there are more expensive hobbies than WoW, but for the normal person that’s like, bowling once a week and not flying in the redbull air race championship…
12/10/2008 at 10:04 Klaus says:
Actually, I think some of the other WoW players in the Ripten thread are doing that all themselves. They’re pretty malicious, especially the one comment where some guy says he wants to murder the player.
I haven’t been that unnerved on the internets, in some years.
12/10/2008 at 10:04 Kadayi says:
With that many accounts you’d think Blizzard would cut him a discount….
12/10/2008 at 10:13 c0wb0ys7y13 says:
If he must to play a horrible game, at least hes playing it right.
12/10/2008 at 10:27 Indian says:
Soloing a raid…. what’s the point of that?? We all know there are extremists in the world, but this is going to far. Get a life.
12/10/2008 at 10:59 Thiefsie says:
Poor, poor soul driven to do that.
12/10/2008 at 10:59 Koopa says:
Never understood the need to solo a multiplayer game.
12/10/2008 at 11:14 Leelad says:
Magma totems either side of drek with a cheeky 36x earth shock for anyone who makes it in…one way for horde to win AV in the 70 bracket!
12/10/2008 at 11:15 kuki says:
If it isn’t a fake, that guy is simply sick. I thought that people who has 2 or more accounts are “stupid”, but i seems I need to change my judgment scale :) This is absurd.
12/10/2008 at 11:17 andrewdoull says:
Think of this as more of a 7337 gamer challenge – you know, like speedrunning Half-Life.
12/10/2008 at 11:20 Lorc says:
Sod snap-judgements and stereotypes – this is an impressive undertaking.
Why do it? Because nobody else has done it and to prove that it can be done. The world is a better place for having people like this in it.
12/10/2008 at 11:26 HellFire says:
And……. he has a copy of Everquest as well! Wow!
12/10/2008 at 11:31 Rob says:
@Lorc
Other people have done it, in the thread itself a guy with 50 boxes is linked.
If he enjoys it without prejudice to the enjoyment of other people who can’t afford the setup nor the time then more power to him. If he manages to macro sufficiently well to raid one of the level 70 10 men or 25 men dungeons at level 70, or level 80 dungeons at level 80 then I will indeed be in awe.
12/10/2008 at 11:36 Carra says:
$5711 in subscription costs per year
Sure and the cost of all the hardware / electricity.
Even if I wanted a setup like that, I simply can’t afford it ;)
12/10/2008 at 11:40 Xilnold says:
I don’t really get the people calling him a loser with no life.
If he has the money to support it, and he enjoys doing it, who are we to judge? I see nothing in the article about him doing it 24/7, just him doing it in bulk.
12/10/2008 at 11:42 ZenArcade says:
NNNNEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRDDDD!
12/10/2008 at 11:44 Pod says:
It’s a sad sad day when RPS links to Ripten.
re: The topic. Does it give him 36x more fun? Or is it diminishing returns and he’s only on about 12.8x the amount of fun a single person can have?
12/10/2008 at 11:52 CakeAddict says:
What a waste of money.
It’s not like you can actually manage a 36 man raid by yourself, you’ll need a several heads with brains and a lot more arms with multiple hands attached to it.
The levelling is doable with /follow but I really can’t see what he is gonna do with the accounts after that…
( gotta be a pain in the ass to yust equip all those chars )
12/10/2008 at 11:53 Vivian says:
@Lorc
No it isn’t. Thats like saying the world is a better place for having a man who can fit 10 50p pieces up each nostril.
12/10/2008 at 11:53 Aftershock says:
I laughed when i saw he uses trackpads.
Then i marvelled. He can’t possibly effectively control them all independently, at the same time..
12/10/2008 at 12:00 Vanderdecken says:
“Magma totems either side of drek with a cheeky 36x earth shock for anyone who makes it in…one way for horde to win AV in the 70 bracket!”
Now that really was another language. I think there may be a level of geek above myself.
12/10/2008 at 12:02 yns88 says:
I see where this guy’s coming from.
Take a mundane, low-interaction game and play it on two computers simultaneously, and it starts to actually become kind of fun. Play it on four at the same time and it becomes a balancing game. After that it’s just a challenge to see how far you can go and still manage.
If it weren’t so fucking expensive I’d play three EVE accounts at once; as it is, I have no real interest in MMOs.
12/10/2008 at 12:07 The Hammer says:
I’d see him as more likely to defend Frostwolf Graveyard, personally! :D
12/10/2008 at 12:13 kwyjibo says:
What a cunt, no other explanation.
12/10/2008 at 12:14 Aftershock says:
@Vivian
If you really enjoy pushing 50p pieces up your nose, and it makes you happy, then do it. The world is better for having another person who can be happy without it being at someone else’s expense.
12/10/2008 at 12:18 Arsewisely says:
It’s an interesting spectacle, if ever so slightly creepy. It’s an embodiment of one of my gaming pet hates though – when it becomes an excercise in mathematics, economics and precision management. I hate it when people basically become robots cus they know the game inside out, and exactly how to play it with maximum efficiency. Where’s the fun in that? There’s no soul to it. I had a housemate who did exactly this and I could never beat him at Wii tennis. The git.
12/10/2008 at 12:19 Vivian says:
I can see how its not worse, but how is it better? What benefit does it have?
My friend Jim actually COULD fit a 50p up his nose, it was frightening.
12/10/2008 at 12:39 Pete says:
Honestly, and I say this as a WoW player, you have to be a special kind of freak to enjoy and justify this. Damn.
12/10/2008 at 12:47 Sum0 says:
Oh no, the angry internet men strike RPS!
Yeah, it’s a little weird, and the guy could be doing better things with his time, but I don’t hate him.
12/10/2008 at 12:53 sana says:
He could’ve done something better with the money.. like sending it to me..
12/10/2008 at 13:13 Leelad says:
Been trying to find a vid the that Jap guy who Multiboxed Karazhan solo.
That’s more impressive i’d say, He had all 10 accounts across 2 PC’s how he managed tanks, healers and DPS using key cloning software is mindblowing.
12/10/2008 at 13:28 dash says:
There are hobbies and there are also unhealthy addictions…
This one is a former and this guy seriously needs help.
12/10/2008 at 13:29 dash says:
ehm i mean “later” lol
12/10/2008 at 14:02 Rob says:
@Leelad
I agree that that’s more impressive and is something I’d truly like to see, if you can find the link.
12/10/2008 at 14:08 Lim-Dul says:
Geez – it’s his money and stuff – don’t judge him by the amount of money he’s willing to spend. Also, nobody knows how much he plays the game – I’m pretty sure it’s less than some people with just one account.
Also, the fact that he spends so much money must mean that he has a job and some form of normal life – again, not something many WoW can boast with.
The only thing I find very, very weird is that WoW is a massively MULTIPLAYER game. I’m not a fan of WoW in the first place but when you take away all social interaction (because you’re playing with yourself – pun intended) then it really becomes incredibly crappy.
12/10/2008 at 14:11 ADamnFox says:
Yeah, screw this guy for enjoying himself, AND for spending his time and money the way he wants to!
Grrr! Etc.
12/10/2008 at 14:22 Fat says:
How is playing 36 characters at once any ‘sadder’ than playing 1. The guy is quite possibly loaded and the subscriptions might be pocket change to him, in which case he’s not really sacrificing anything to play so many toons.
Plus it’s the challenge, getting all that stuff working together and then getting used to running all those toons around and working in sync.
Some people are sad, but it’s not generally the ones who spend money they already have on a game/hobby, it’s the ones who judge them because they either have no interest in it, or no money/time to do it themselves.
12/10/2008 at 14:38 Matt says:
I guess not getting drops in Kara does things to you…
12/10/2008 at 14:50 Chris says:
Reminds me of playing in chess simultaneously along side 15-20 other players many years ago. Why not i say. Remember its people like this that find new play styles and what not:)
I would like to see far more wide spread misuse of games.
12/10/2008 at 14:57 Ergates says:
The hostility displayed towards him is just basic bigotry – “I don’t understand it therefore I hate it”.
You can make the “waste of money” and “why do it” arguements about any hobby. Why play computer/video games at all? (surely and argument that anyone gamer has encountered at some point). Why build a scale model of the Titanic? Why paint pictures of flowers?
@Vivian: It’s not the act of inserting 50ps into the nose that makes the world a better place, or the end result of 50ps being in a nose either. Firstly, It’s the fact that someone is happy from doing something that is harmless to others – happiness is good, the more of it there is, the better the world gets. Secondly, it’s about variety. It’s the spice of life, and the more of it there is the better – if everyone enjoyed exactly the same things the world would be a duller place.
12/10/2008 at 15:07 Kommissar Nicko says:
It’s like an orgy. Why buy one hooker if you can buy 36? Sure, you can’t possibly do anything with 36 hookers, and this guy clearly stated that he actually fucked ONLY eight hookers, and using complex software, programmed the other 32 to do the can-can. At least he’s getting traction out of the rest rather than having those damn lazy hookers sit around.
Lazy hookers.
12/10/2008 at 15:54 DigitalSignalX says:
My father spends about 5k US$ on model railroad equipment and various trips to related events. Pretty sure no one would come close to the degrees of insults ppl have for this guy.
Making a combination of WoW and parallel computing a expensive, time consuming hobby is just someone else’s flavor of obsession. More power to him.
12/10/2008 at 16:05 Vivian says:
@Ergates
I absolutely promise you that if everyone enjoyed playing 36 characters at once on WOW then the world would be an almost unbelievably duller place.
12/10/2008 at 16:11 Nick says:
At least he’s not spending it on crack or sending it to the IRA.
12/10/2008 at 16:24 Okami says:
I am angry that there are persons who do things in the privacy of their homes that don’t harm anyone but don’t fit into my world view.
12/10/2008 at 16:39 Vivian says:
Jesus fucking allah, will everyone stop trying to out-PC each other? What, are there girls in the room or something?
12/10/2008 at 16:55 Noc says:
It occurs to me that “hobbies” tend to be “wastes of money” almost by definition. And that this, at least, is a man presenting himself with a project and a logistical challenge. If we’re talking about giving people credit for doing interesting things and taking it away for being boring, this man gets MORE credit than your average WoW player, and almost infinitely more than your average Lineage player.
Why? Because instead of mindlessly paying money for the privilege of being allowed to run on a virtual treadmill, he’s taken the grindery and made a challenge for himself out of it. “Fun,” when you get right down to it, is about learning new skills and overcoming new challenges . . . so this guy set out on a project that involved overcoming the logistical challenges involved in this.
It’s not about someone being so obscenely obsessed with WoW that they’re spending $5000 a year to do WoW more efficiently. It’s about someone having an idea and tackling a logistical challenge. Like any hobby, when you get down to it.
I fail to see what’s wrong with this. And I don’t even like WoW.
12/10/2008 at 16:56 The Hammer says:
Yeah, that’s technically what Ergates said.
I only wish I had that kinda money to blow! I wouldn’t spend it on what he’s doing, but hey!
12/10/2008 at 16:57 Zyrusticae says:
@Vivian:
Um, you missed this part: “Secondly, it’s about variety. It’s the spice of life, and the more of it there is the better – if everyone enjoyed exactly the same things the world would be a duller place.”
12/10/2008 at 16:58 Ergates says:
@Vivian – true, but the important word there is “everyone”
And when something like this elicits responses like “What a cunt, no other explanation.” it’s hard to let it slide.
Maybe we should be less reasonable and just say “LEAVE THE GUY ALONE OR I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU WITH A BROKEN POOL CUE” but I doubt that would achieve the desired result.
12/10/2008 at 17:03 LEEDER KRENON says:
most people that play WOW are like this to be honest. bunch of fucking weirdos. play a real game.
12/10/2008 at 17:04 BeamSplashX says:
He could rent out that space to every spy movie. Just put on some DEFCON screensavers and…
Wait, that probably IS how he pays for it.
12/10/2008 at 17:07 Wildbluesun says:
That’s cute.
I go out with guys like that.
Seriously. A guy putting dedication and passion into something, no matter how lame and sad it may appear, means that he HAS that dedication and passion. Which can be easily re-routed into a woman.
12/10/2008 at 17:14 The Hammer says:
@Wildbluesun,
How about the dedication and passion of being an Angry Internet Man?
12/10/2008 at 17:17 firefeenix says:
@LEEDER KRENON
Would you mind quickly defining what a “real game” is?
12/10/2008 at 17:30 Mystic Smeg says:
Thats an awesome setup for high speed internet porn.
12/10/2008 at 17:42 Klaus says:
According to the article writer, he already has a wife, which is bound to make some more people ANGRY!
I find the ‘evil’ commentators more amusing, I don’t like psychobabble and the like, but it’s like almost every comment screams “WHY IS HE HAPPY, WHEN I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE!”
12/10/2008 at 18:02 Zaptrack says:
Imagine playing tf2 on that set up.
scout rushes just got a whole lot scarier.
12/10/2008 at 18:06 Jojo says:
it’s not a question of ‘why?’ it’s a question of ‘why so many?’. There are more enjoyable things to spend 5000+ dollars on a year. like crack.
12/10/2008 at 18:39 sigma83 says:
Why all the fucking judgment? People! Do you know what you’ve done? YOU’VE SUBSCRIBED TO THE MEME. YOU’VE JOINED THE MINDLESS UNWASHED. YOU HATE WOW BECAUSE IT’S COOL TO HATE WOW, NOT BECAUSE YOU HATE IT.
We’ve got to learn to think for ourselves! /life of brian
12/10/2008 at 19:08 Calabi says:
Well I for one………… dammit cant think……brain is becoming unwashed…….. must…resistt…coolness………its too late have lost ability to think.
That is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Does he have 36 different personalities to go with them? Does he get into arguments with himself over what to do? Does he then just go with personality 33, Leroy Jenkins?
Does he brag to his friends(other personalities), he has a guild, an army at his fingertips?
12/10/2008 at 20:00 terry says:
That is not a genuine WoW player, I see no cheetos or socks filled with excrement.
12/10/2008 at 20:13 Big Fat Bramley Apple says:
People don’t respond well to greed. I wish him luck attempting to leave the store with 30+ expansion packs, under the hateful eyes of a hundred hyped and empty handed WoWfags.
12/10/2008 at 20:31 sigma83 says:
*gives up*
Where be the moderation?
12/10/2008 at 20:50 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
There are more expensive hobbies than this. Not many, though.
And… er… good for him. I guess. For a certain mindset, thus must be pretty impressive. I think.
12/10/2008 at 22:10 TheDeadlyShoe says:
13/10/2008 at 00:39 brog says:
Guys, guys. You seem to be missing the part where this is awesome. Where I come from*, we respect people who pull off crazy feats with no practical value. I detest WoW, but this is impressive.
* An imaginary land.
13/10/2008 at 04:26 D says:
Pros:
- If it makes the guy happy
- Crazy feat with no practical value
- Makes the world a better place
Cons:
- Unfair for competetive pvp (money > skill)
- Trivial challenge (requirements: money)
- Has nothing to do with parrallel computing whatsoever
- No risk of physical harm (like most crazy feats)
- Does not actually make the world a better place
Recapped.
13/10/2008 at 05:20 Krupo says:
I’m surprised that Chris is the only one who compared it to ‘multi-chess’… though then again, in that case you’re playing against multiple people, here you’re just manipulating multiple computers.
Wild.
The “re-route to women” commend was golden though.
13/10/2008 at 09:23 Cataclysm says:
Someone has far too much money and far too little of a life. – and this is coming from someone who enjoys WoW (and now WAR).
Its also extremely pointless as the maximum you can have in 1 group is 5 and you cant use a “Raid group” to do Non-Raid group quests.
Multi-boxers use methods of /follow so 35 characters following 1 would mean 31 of them will be getting no experience points and the 5 would get very little due to doing no damage (as the 31 will do a high % of the damage).
Sooooo, the point i’m trying to make is its most likely a lie.
13/10/2008 at 09:34 Xilnold says:
People, people, what the hell?
Really, I don’t see anywhere in the article that he plays 24/7.
He might play as little as an hour a day.
Just with 36 characters.
13/10/2008 at 09:51 Rocktart says:
A posted on the same forum last July about his 50 box set-up which he shares with this girlfriend.
Looks more oraganised than the guy with a pile of laptops.
http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=498
13/10/2008 at 12:57 araczynski says:
interesting, definitely makes me feel much better about MY gaming hobby practices :)
13/10/2008 at 13:06 MacBeth says:
Terouting all your money and spare time into women wouldn’t necessarily be any more productive or admirable… (though it would receive much more general community approval)
Even if he was spending all his time and money on well-planned and effective charity work, ethical research and improvement of the lot of all that lives and breathes on the planet, it *still* wouldn’t change the fact that we will all be dust in a million years time, so give him a break, yeah?
13/10/2008 at 16:06 dhex says:
Terouting all your money and spare time into women wouldn’t necessarily be any more productive
depends on his stance on prophylactics, no?
13/10/2008 at 21:30 Scandalon says:
Impressive. Scary. Maybe a good example of how WoW doesn’t require much thought/creativity?!? (Not that most games do…) The haters are just jealous. $5000/year for a hobby? That’s, like, chump-change for a lot of hobbies. (Ever owned a horse? Flown aircraft? Tournament paintball? Heck, been around serious outdoorsmen?)
13/10/2008 at 21:31 Scandalon says:
(Where’s my edit button?)
Dhex – you are my new hero.
14/10/2008 at 13:34 Faux says:
I love how people say things like “there are more expensives hobbies, not many though”, what? Is gaming the only hobby you know?
Snowboarding, mountain climbing, motocross, down-hill mountainbike, etc, etc. All WAY MORE expensive. The cost of gear + transportation + air plane tickets + mountain passes + fuel…. Adds up to a lot more than $5000 a year. Just a single helicopter ride when trying to do some snowboarding can cost you $1000.
25/08/2009 at 00:34 Psychopomp says:
Wow, this thread is fucking disgraceful.
You people should be god damn ashamed.
05/09/2009 at 00:06 Serondal says:
Is this any more extreme than playing that thing where you can fire live bullets at the screen ? Or that dude that has the protection screens the size of a wall to play Arm-A