Thread: Dev please comment: Multiboxing in Moors allowed aor not?

Okay we have a player on Gladden that like to run 6-8 BA's at the same time.

It was my understanding that using the program to coordinate the attacks of all of these Ba's at the same time is a violation of the user agreement.

However when I reported this tonight I got

11/13/11 09:46 PM

While we understand that the act of multi-boxing, especially in the Ettenmoors, is not very sportsman-like it is not considered a violation.

- +Phoenix+

Is this for real? It is your policy that one player can instantly kill anything in the game by multiboxing and that's okay?

Unless the program interfaces with the Windows API and not LOTRO binaries, its pretty much ok unless used for unattended macros.

The players that do that find themselves playing alone often, not many people admire Multi-boxing like that in the moors

Get out the popcorn and wait for the first time a freep multiboxer to meets a creep multiboxer...

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

Originally Posted by Mystarr

Okay we have a player on Gladden that like to run 6-8 BA's at the same time.

It was my understanding that using the program to coordinate the attacks of all of these Ba's at the same time is a violation of the user agreement.

However when I reported this tonight I got

11/13/11 09:46 PM

While we understand that the act of multi-boxing, especially in the Ettenmoors, is not very sportsman-like it is not considered a violation.

- +Phoenix+

Is this for real? It is your policy that one player can instantly kill anything in the game by multiboxing and that's okay?

People have been multi-boxing in Turbine games since 1999 when their first game launched. It has always been allowed in all their games. What Turbine does not permit:

1) Automation. Going to sleep and your computer is playing 1 or more characters.

2) Modifying their game software.

If you want to play six characters at once under your direct control via hardware and software support, that is fine. I would love to see this guy with six Black Arrows meet the fellow on Meneldor with the six Hunters.

You want to multi-box in the Moors to increase your rank via farming Infamy or Renown by killing your own characters. You can do that too. There is a character on Firefoot that is been farming this way. He is now Rank 13 from killing his own characters.

This totally devalues the effort required in the moors by individual players though ( the store items did do that already). It means that the only way for all to achieve parity is for all to do this. My take, stay out of the place until they decide to level the field to prevent this sort of thing. It's far to easy to abuse with a ranking system. Guy logs in with 5 accounts, sets up his little control program, then grinds them all up to max rank. IMO that's cheating, but Turbine has spoken. The only way to win at that is not to play the game.

Shrug as others have said if the person is PLAYING all the accounts and not macro scripting them then more power to them.

The one thing LOTRO shouldn't allow is creep/freep on the same server , its a no-no in any serious PVP game for cross-realming and general cheating enablement but then LOTRO isn't really a serious PVP game.

Even without cross-realming people still will get together on vent and organise to 'farm' each other for renown. It happened in DAOC, it happened in WAR and it happens in LOTRO. Again, most people seem to know who those sorts of folks are and discount them. All pretty moot anyway now you can just P2W as a creep and buy everything for $, rank is irrelevent. If it wasn't for the gating on the armour freep side , rank would be irrelevent freep side too.

Multiboxers are free walking infamy/renown. Kill the head and get all the other nom for free, you can get 1k infamy in 20 secs with a bit of luck and the correct strategy. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, but all in all, they are not more annoying than a hunter DFing...

Originally Posted by Yula_the_Mighty

You want to multi-box in the Moors to increase your rank via farming Infamy or Renown by killing your own characters. You can do that too. There is a character on Firefoot that is been farming this way. He is now Rank 13 from killing his own characters.

I'm sorry, but that is NOT authorized. The guy just got lucky he never got caught.

Op why not just gather a few friends (wouldn't need many) and just farm his BAs for a while. Lots of free renown for you and eventually he'll just give up and go back to leveling 7 freeps at once ^^

Originally Posted by Tullaian

Shrug as others have said if the person is PLAYING all the accounts and not macro scripting them then more power to them.

Excuse my ignorance, but, isn't it true that for one player to cause 8 black arrows to shoot at the same time, they must have some kind of automated way to do it? Allowing them to click one button which sends the command to all 8 archers? This is somehow different than using a script or macro to achieve the same goal? How could you satisfy the rule that you must be "playing" all accounts when all you needed to do was use one click to make all accounts use a skill?

Originally Posted by enginekid88

Excuse my ignorance, but, isn't it true that for one player to cause 8 black arrows to shoot at the same time, they must have some kind of automated way to do it? Allowing them to click one button which sends the command to all 8 archers? This is somehow different than using a script or macro to achieve the same goal? How could you satisfy the rule that you must be "playing" all accounts when all you needed to do was use one click to make all accounts use a skill?

Not being very well versed in multiboxing, I think that the part I bolded is what makes it still OK. It's not an automation but a command-splitter. The same command is shared to several accounts yes, but it all originates from a person sitting at a keyboard, not a bot running the game on its own.

Originally Posted by Korrigan

I'm sorry, but that is NOT authorized. The guy just got lucky he never got caught.

Umm yes it is. Nothing in the CoC states otherwise.


Multi-boxing has been complained about for years. Nothing has, or is going to be done. Improve and murder the boxer, I've killed a six boxing hunter on my server solo, they really are free points.

Originally Posted by WitchKingsSeventh

Umm yes it is. Nothing in the CoC states otherwise.

I'm pretty sure dual logging to kill your own characters over and over again to gain honor/infamy without risk is forbidden. It's forbidden in all other MMOs with PvP too, and if you are caught, you risk a ban.
I'm sure a Turbine official reading this can confirm or infirm it (would be nice, thanks).

Originally Posted by Korrigan

I'm pretty sure dual logging to kill your own characters over and over again to gain honor/infamy without risk is forbidden. It's forbidden in all other MMOs with PvP too, and if you are caught, you risk a ban.
I'm sure a Turbine official reading this can confirm or infirm it (would be nice, thanks).

Then you are wrong. Yes (almost) all other MMO's forbid it, but not Turbine!

Originally Posted by Korrigan

I'm sure a Turbine official reading this can confirm or infirm it (would be nice, thanks).

Originally Posted by Unixbomber

<3

/words

Originally Posted by Bels_illuminati

Op why not just gather a few friends (wouldn't need many) and just farm his BAs for a while. Lots of free renown for you and eventually he'll just give up and go back to leveling 7 freeps at once ^^

Unfortunately its not always that easy to magically get 8 more people to show up in the moors. In fact its usually the other way around. The people that were out in the moors playing get frustrated and leave.

--------------------
I could swear a dev had posted that this sort of play in the moors was not allowed, but I don't remember who or when. In general, I think anything that allows one player to one shot kill another player is unhealthy for a PvP environment.

Do we really all have to multibox to play on a somewhat even footing in the moors?

Can a dev explain the reasoning here?

I'm starting to lose complete respect for Turbine here and will definitively think twice about playing any future games they are responsible for. They only seem to consider ONE thing; money! And money only. Everything else is not of their concern it seems.

Originally Posted by stoffi

I'm starting to lose complete respect for Turbine here and will definitively think twice about playing any future games they are responsible for. They only seem to consider ONE thing; money! And money only. Everything else is not of their concern it seems.

Realistically it's not surprising considering they're competing with companies like blizzard, Bethesda, and bioware. I've had multi-boxing experiences in pvp a handful of times, and though they're unfortunate it's not like I expect or demand swift retribution to someone who's basically paying 6 subs to do what one can, it's not entirely different from using the store in the P2W context. Funding for future content, in a polite way.

of course it s allowed... they won big money with them... and we all know turbine is all about money, they dont care about the quality of the game...

Does Turbine actually make money off of multi-boxers? Aren’t they mostly lifetime accounts gathered from people who no longer play?

Okay multi-boxing in PvMP is really getting out of hand.

There is a guy on Gladden that 12 boxes reavers. Still no comment from the devs... Seriously!?!?

It is fairly common to see people running around with 2-3 extra toons in tow.

I see this as a SERIOUS problem for 2 reasons

1.) Anything that allows one player to one shot kill another player in a PvMP environment has to be fixed!!!
When 12 reavers swarm you or 6 BA's all shoot you at once its pretty much instant death. Can any dev seriously think this isn't a horrible idea in PvMP?


2.) I have been in creeps raid where the freep raid out-numbered us noticably but the freeps had the outnumbered buff!?!? Why?
Too many multi-boxing creeps logged in farming for boxes in the delving etc...


Seriously, Kelsan or whoever else is working on PvMP can you please publically address this issue?

Originally Posted by Korrigan

I'm pretty sure dual logging to kill your own characters over and over again to gain honor/infamy without risk is forbidden. It's forbidden in all other MMOs with PvP too, and if you are caught, you risk a ban.
I'm sure a Turbine official reading this can confirm or infirm it (would be nice, thanks).

I remember WAY back in 07 or 08 when Orion spoke about not approving of self-farming or even fight clubbing with arranged fights/farms. He commented (and I'm paraphrasing based on my memory of something typed 4+years ago) that there was a disconnect with the developers intent and the customer service bandwidth and that it was impractical to properly police these issues.

Since then I've seen ZERO official commentary on these issues. AND it's been shown time and time again that people going to EXTREMES with this bahaviour have not been banned.

One can only assume that it's allowed. People who do it are losers IMHO, but it's not being enforced by Turbine so they feel empowered to go ahead and keep doing it.

Frankly I just wish they'd perma account level ban the WORST of offenders, hopefully that would at least scare people into thinking there MAY be consequences for their actions.

But the complete apathy Turbine has shown pretty much encourages this terrible behaviour.

Originally Posted by enginekid88

Excuse my ignorance, but, isn't it true that for one player to cause 8 black arrows to shoot at the same time, they must have some kind of automated way to do it? Allowing them to click one button which sends the command to all 8 archers? This is somehow different than using a script or macro to achieve the same goal? How could you satisfy the rule that you must be "playing" all accounts when all you needed to do was use one click to make all accounts use a skill?

I understand the ToS to cover this. some may argue the semantics, but pressing 1 button to fire off 8 skills is automation. I have no problem with multi-boxers if there is a keyboard and a key press required for every account. I'd suggest Turbine re-evaluate their ToS if its worded in a way that allows someone to script out actually controlling multiple accounts with a single keyboard/mouse. Most games allow multi-boxers... its the automation that they forbid. And its quite obvious that many of the multi-boxers are spamming skills via a unified interface to pass commands on to all toons.

Can someone educate me as to exactly how they do this? How do they log more then one char at a time? Im a non tech person so the dumbed down version is fine. I mean do they have 8 PC’s running or something?

Originally Posted by Thorgrum

Can someone educate me as to exactly how they do this? How do they log more then one char at a time? Im a non tech person so the dumbed down version is fine. I mean do they have 8 PC’s running or something?

They just run multiple versions of the client on one computer. Now that you can creep on free to play accounts you can just:

- Make as many extra free to play accounts as you want.

- Make a creep on each account.

- Fire up as many copies of the client as your pc can handle without exploding.

- Use some program to send commands to all the clients.

- Walk around the moors like a God.

they won't comment, its in the same boat as self farming both are technically game breaking as they use unorthodox methods to achieve a goal, because of the unfair advantage given as fruit of using said methods. It really isn't much of a stretch to pull these things into the current CoC, its really just up to Turbine who has the final say in its interpretations and judgement.

They've made it clear in their silence thats its perfectly fair so don't hold back, roll with 10 guys are your back and blow stuff up or just kill creeps/freeps from those accounts to your hearts content and get rank 15 in a year, Turbine says its fine with them although a pretty decent portion of the playerbase whom it directly affects will not look at you with the fondest of lights.

Originally Posted by Mystarr

They just run multiple versions of the client on one computer. Now that you can creep on free to play accounts you can just:

- Make as many extra free to play accounts as you want.

- Make a creep on each account.

- Fire up as many copies of the client as your pc can handle without exploding.

- Use some program to send commands to all the clients.

- Walk around the moors like a God.

Its the "send commands to all the clients" that I dont understand. Is it like a script that we used to have in the IRC days?

Originally Posted by Korrigan

I'm pretty sure dual logging to kill your own characters over and over again to gain honor/infamy without risk is forbidden. It's forbidden in all other MMOs with PvP too, and if you are caught, you risk a ban.
I'm sure a Turbine official reading this can confirm or infirm it (would be nice, thanks).

Just wanted to point out that Turbine does not have a problem with this. The aforementioned player (a warg) has boasted about it on these very forums, and for the record he's r14, not r13.

But I do agree it's stupid.

Very hard to kill, HUGE reward. Certainly worth the challenge I'd say (beating that challenge probably involves grouping up).
I've never encountered a multiboxer on Lotro, so I can only speculate.

Originally Posted by Mystarr

Okay multi-boxing in PvMP is really getting out of hand.

There is a guy on Gladden that 12 boxes reavers. Still no comment from the devs... Seriously!?!?

It is fairly common to see people running around with 2-3 extra toons in tow.

I see this as a SERIOUS problem for 2 reasons

1.) Anything that allows one player to one shot kill another player in a PvMP environment has to be fixed!!!
When 12 reavers swarm you or 6 BA's all shoot you at once its pretty much instant death. Can any dev seriously think this isn't a horrible idea in PvMP?


2.) I have been in creeps raid where the freep raid out-numbered us noticably but the freeps had the outnumbered buff!?!? Why?
Too many multi-boxing creeps logged in farming for boxes in the delving etc...


Seriously, Kelsan or whoever else is working on PvMP can you please publically address this issue?

I know what your talking about I seen this guy running around!

Originally Posted by Mystarr

There is a guy on Gladden that 12 boxes reavers. Still no comment from the devs... Seriously!?!?

I love him too Merridan. From my experience with boxers on Gladden is that they come out to grind dp (rip). I've only seen the 12 boxer kill a freep once and normally he just shows up to show off. However, if that has changed then that is very sad, some people know no bounds.

As for the comments about ganging up to bring him down, that is non-existant on Gladden. If a boxer shows up, the other side logs.

We will likely see more boxers attacking players since commendations only encourages that. What does Turbine care though? Since WB bought them they have done nothing but milk every opportunity for money. We all hate on Turbine but I'm sure having a major corporation breathing down your neck makes you money mad.

Originally Posted by Thane9

I remember WAY back in 07 or 08 when Orion spoke about not approving of self-farming or even fight clubbing with arranged fights/farms. He commented (and I'm paraphrasing based on my memory of something typed 4+years ago) that there was a disconnect with the developers intent and the customer service bandwidth and that it was impractical to properly police these issues.

If this is the case then turbine customer support needs to re-evaluate. By publically saying they do not consider it against the rules to mult-box in the moors they are opening the flood gates. People see other people flagrantly multi-boxing with no downside. Turbine doesn't consider it against the rules... So people think what the heck... Where do I sign up? It snowballs. The longer Turbine lets it go the harder it is going to be to do anything about it.

On the other hand, If Turbine customer support publically stated it was a bannable offense and then enforced a few cases it would dry up quickly. Most people wouldn't do it if it was clearly stated that it was not allowed and they knew they were risking a ban if they did it.

How about it Turbine customer support? I'd really like to hear the official reasoning on this issue.

Originally Posted by Mystarr

If this is the case then turbine customer support needs to re-evaluate. By publically saying they do not consider it against the rules to mult-box in the moors they are opening the flood gates. People see other people flagrantly multi-boxing with no downside. Turbine doesn't consider it against the rules... So people think what the heck... Where do I sign up? It snowballs. The longer Turbine lets it go the harder it is going to be to do anything about it.

On the other hand, If Turbine customer support publically stated it was a bannable offense and then enforced a few cases it would dry up quickly. Most people wouldn't do it if it was clearly stated that it was not allowed and they knew they were risking a ban if they did it.

How about it Turbine customer support? I'd really like to hear the official reasoning on this issue.

It's been 5 years. Something tells me their official reasoning is "no comment".

Originally Posted by Mystarr

If this is the case then turbine customer support needs to re-evaluate. By publically saying they do not consider it against the rules to mult-box in the moors they are opening the flood gates. People see other people flagrantly multi-boxing with no downside. Turbine doesn't consider it against the rules... So people think what the heck... Where do I sign up? It snowballs. The longer Turbine lets it go the harder it is going to be to do anything about it.

On the other hand, If Turbine customer support publically stated it was a bannable offense and then enforced a few cases it would dry up quickly. Most people wouldn't do it if it was clearly stated that it was not allowed and they knew they were risking a ban if they did it.

How about it Turbine customer support? I'd really like to hear the official reasoning on this issue.

Sure it is unsportsmanlike-like, but do you really have to get mad about it? You're like the only one really complaining. Boxing is like free renown. Just have a lm, or champ with you. Problem solved. But really, all this sounds like is you died in a pvp zone and r really mad about it. I mean, this argument isn't going anywhere. May as well drop it now.

Originally Posted by MagneticThor

Sure it is unsportsmanlike-like, but do you really have to get mad about it?

In sports, unsportsmalike behaviour will get you thrown off the pitch...

Originally Posted by Sertsac

In sports, unsportsmalike behaviour will get you thrown off the pitch...

Not all sports...

Besides, this is a game. Live a little.

We have a multi boxing spider, with a WL at lead on Brandywine. Funny thing is, he thinks anyone who insults him is a troll.

Originally Posted by MagneticThor

Live a little.

I have lived quite a lot and intend to go on doing so for the forseeable future, thank you very much.

As someone who boxes at times, I thought I'd give my two cents. I considered staying away from this thread as I'm sure I'll get a lot of hostility for my point of view, but thought I'd just take the heat and share my opinion. I will box on creepside with 3 spiders with a toon from my main account as my head (4 total). Generally I would farm the delving for stones with my wl at the helm, and with the introduction of lootboxes, I thought I'd knock out map quests on the 3 creep classes I didn't have all good maps done on creepside, while having the opportunity for lootboxes to drop at the same time. Two birds, one stone.

I don't go out seeking pvp, I just do it for the pve (Farming stones [formerly] and map quests). That pve, occuring in a pvp zone, can often end up with me crossing the paths of freeps. In my experience, none of the freeps that encountered me while questing, had any trouble blowing me up in the middle of their npcs. Thus, I have little sympathy for any that are killed by me whilst boxing.

Now, keep in mind, my boxing occurs during slow hours (generally early afternoon) and is focused on pve. I completely understand and can agree with the complaints against those that box during primetime and actively seek pvp. My reasons for boxing: convenience. I don't do it to ruin anybody's fun. I just do it because it was easier to acquire consumables and do map quests when there was no real action going on and nothing better to do.

With that said, as Merridan pointed out, if the Devs were to say it's not allowed and a bannable offense, I would most certainly stop.