BOTS anyone

[Cali]

I found this in the 1.5 patch

Players can now log in to two clients on the same computer.
Sounds like bot city to me

[Fhuul]

Nah, they just accommodating those nutbars who buy two accounts and dualbox 'em.

[Drakhon]

Bot programs are their own client (they don't use the real game client like we do), thus they were never burdened by the previous limitation.

Also, it's not really dual boxing if it's on one computer

[Scarr]

Don't you mean it's not really dual boxing?

Dual is correct since using 2 accounts, but since only one computer is required...

Boxing is actually a transitory term, not so much meaning multiple computers anymore, just defining that a process of controlling more than one instance of a game is going on.

I used to Dual Box, mainly when one computer was barely able to play a game. You couldn't get enough performance out of a single computer or "box" to play multi clients with reliable stability.

I still am not decided on what my opinion is on boxing, whether client based on the same PC or using multiple computers. Games in the past offered up obvious advantages but some recent games made it pretty obsolete and wasteful.

In DDO, I would dual box and run 2 clients on 2 machines because of how the quest system worked. I could use one account to keep a dungeon open as I "solo'd" the content with my main character. In other games, it came in handy in the form of buff bots, transferring items between characters, spying and monitoring zones for boss spawns.

As far as Aion goes, if two clients can be ran on the same machine it would help out solo type players that want to run a tank/healer combo I guess.

[Drakhon]

I placed the emphasis where I meant it to be. You are not using two boxes, thus it is not dual boxing, but you are still using a box. Of course, "boxing" in this context doesn't really have any meaning on its own.

Multi-boxing is something of a legacy term from when the only effective way to do what's being described was to use multiple computers* that has remained in usage to describe similar (but different) concepts, as you've indicated. In reality, there is little functional difference between the two at this point - most people that seriously use multiple boxes also use some method to allow them to not have to switch controllers such as key replicators or KVM switches. That doesn't make it a correct term, but I'm not sure there is an easier one and certainly not one that will easily usurp the one currently in use. In the end it's a question of semantics and so I used the old winky face method to indicate lightheartedness.


*This was actually the case with Aion until some patch after 1.0, obviously, based on the thread topic.

[Fhuul]

Well for those of us with reasonably powerful PCs who could run multiple game clients on various MMOs, we've always just said "dualbox" to avoid confusion.