What is Multiboxing?  In short, its the art of operating multiple copies of WoW simultaneously from one keyboard.

 I know what your thinking :

1. WTF how can you do that
2. How on earth could you possibly keep track of multiple characters?
3. I gotta see this to believe it.
   
4. Hey, this cant be legal, bliz is gonna ban my ass.
5. Holy shit, that might work - Hes driving 5 mages at once, firing at once, DAMN!  but who....where....um....my brains gonna explode!

Congratulations.  That exactly what I thought when I saw it.  So lets start at the begininng.

WTF How can you do that?

There are many ways to have such a set up.  The first requirement to any of these setups is multiple wow accounts.   You will be logged in to many characters at once, which is not possible with characters on the same account.

OPTION 1 : Multiple Copies of WoW on the Same Machine

Using this method, you simply run multiple copies of WoW on the same machine, and have some piece of software installed that sends  every key you press on the keyboard to all windows at the same time.  (No mouse clicks in most cases, just, keypresses)

Advantages :

• No special key duplicating hardware or keyboards needed.
• Doesnt take up much space.
  
• You can see all the WoW activity on your screen.

Drawbacks :

• You need a hefty machine.  Wow can take a lot of resources, and unless you have a powerful box,  you cant run more than one copy.
• You need a big and/or multiple monitors.  Sure you could run multiple windows at 320x200, but you couldnt see a damn thing like that :)
• You need a lot of RAM - This is part of the first item, but is worth mentioning.  Even a slower PC with a lot of ram can run multiple copies of WoW.

To broadcast your keystrokes to each of the windows that you have open at once, you need a key broadcaster.  I use a program called Keyclone https://solidice.com/keyclone/index.html .  Its not free, but its pretty cheap.  And it has lots of features that make it worthwhile IMO at $20.  Some of the features are :

• Will allow you to choose which open windows on your system it sends keys to.
• Allows you to have a dont-pass list (Keys that wont be passed to another window)
• Allows you a hotkey to press which will temporarity suspend key broadcasts.
• Allows youto clone keypresses to another machien across a network (Need another copy of keyclone)
  
• The Maximizer feature (Really cool) - It shows you a box representing your screen, and you can draw squares in that area representing your wow windows.  You can then tell it where to find WoW on your machine, and every time you start Keyclone it will start x copies of WoW, resize them to what you had in your little diagram, and get it all started for you.   Here is what I see when I start my Keyclone : 

•  When using the maximizer (Above) I can swap out the small windows with the big one by hitting a key I define (Like F1, F2, F3) so I can focus on it, then switch back again.  Cool!
• Also allows a round-robin keypress broadcast.  It will take each key you press andsend it to one window at a time, in a sequence (Like a castsequence between windows!)

OPTION 2: Running a separate copy of wow on different machines

If you have lots of PC's hanging around, this one is for you.  I personally have 5 machines here in my office,  but havent tried this one yet.  You would need a key broadcaster that could connect to another machine over a network (Assuming you had them on a network) or a hardware version of a keyboard multicaster.  I wont go into this in depth, but you can check it out on the Multiboxing Wiki.

How on earth could you possibly keep track of multiple characters?

Actually, its not the difficult when you consider that most things you do with your character are :

1. Navigate to something to kill.
2. Target something to kill.
3. Press a Key, Click Something again and again till its dead.

Navigation 

Well with Multiboxing,  you generally have 1 char that is your main.  Its the one you are looking at all the time, and focused on.  The other characters are on /follow, and will go wherever you go.  Need to mount up?  Map the SHIFT-A key on all your characters to mount.  Need to run somewhere?  Set your toons to follow you, and use the mouse to navigate your main (Or set your arrow keys to not pass to another window lest it break the follow).  

Follow 

Since so many things break follow, I usually have a key mapped specifically to follow the leader.  That way if it broke, run over to your dumb gaping toon, hit the button and woosh all your toons are commanded to follow you again.  

Aiming your toons

This is a tough one to get used to.  You have to get used to getting your toons to all face the same way through a well placed follow, a graceful running loop, or keys which spin your toons. 

Grouping

I also have a key that generically accepts group requests, quest accepts, Trade Windows, and popup boxes.  Hitting this button will just tell my toons to generally accept what I sent them.   Here is the macro I use for that :

						/script AcceptGroup();
	/script AcceptQuest();
	/script AcceptTrade();
	/script RetrieveCorpse();
	/script RepopMe();
	

 

 

Targeting

Easy.  I simply add a "/target focustarget" to the beginnig of any of my toon's attack macros.  This will always insure they are targetting what my main is targetting.

Now hard coding 3-5 toons macros with "/follow zipperhead" and "assist zipperhead" isnt very friendly.  What if  zipperhead live up to his namesake and dies?  Im screwed.  Thats why I use the focus target.  If you dont know what that is - Look it up, use it, be it.  It allows you to specify a secondary target which you can cast on without untargetting your main target.  So in my case, I set my focus target to be my "leader".  All my targetting and following is done to whomever is focused.  If zipperhead dies, I quickly set everyones focus target to cockblocker, and he is my new leader.  Everything still works! 

Kill Something

I love Macros.  Even before I was Multiboxing, I always had attack macros for every occasion.  With one press they would Fire an available trinket, Activate an ability, and fire a chain of sequenced spells based on what I felt like doing.  I always had these mapped to 1 key.  If you dont do this already, just sit down and make one - even if its a simple 1 spell macro (It has to be a macro so you can add the /target call).     Map all your toons to the same attack key.  When you hit it, all your toons will erupt in attacking glory to your target.

OMG, What about cooldowns, this one takes 4 secs on this toon while this one takes 2, my healer doesnt have dps spells, I like feeling up small cats.....

Look the world isnt perfect.  But to make you feel better here are a few things to keep in mind :

• You can leave some keys unmapped on some chars, so that they dont fire when the others do.
• Remember that keys you hit go to all windows.  If you are mashing 1 key every 2 seconds, some windows might ignore it (something on CD) while others dont, thats okay, its in your design!
• GCD (Global Cooldown) is different on every window (Obvious, but amazing how long it takes your brain to get that lil tidbit) I can hit a key to cast a fireball and .000001 seconds later hit a key to have my healer start healing the group if I set my macros up correctly.
• Nobody is going to judge you on how often you hit a key and caused a "Not Available" message.
• You will however be judged if you like to grope small cats.  C'mon man, thats just wrong.
  

I gotta see this to believe it....

Well there are lots of vids on it, I made one just recently after I started Multiboxing in Quel'Danas.  I usually Tri-Box my 70's for the daily quests, do em all at once, and kill things a lot quicker!  Have a look!

http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Videos

Hey, this cant be legal, bliz is gonna ban my ass.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with it.  Blizards TOS states you cannot do what a human could not, and every action has to be triggered by you.  All is in the GREEN with Multiboxing.  In fact, there are many sites and tidbits up there with conversations with GM's etc etc.  Take a look at  the post on Blizards own Forums, or check out the quotes on dual-boxing.com. 

Holy shit, that might work - Hes driving 5 mages at once, firing at once, DAMN!  but who....where....um....my brains gonna explode!

Yes it does, and its quite challenging to do.  Managing the dynamics of multiple characters at once is fun, and working out the different combinations of things you can do it a hoot.  You can 5-man heroics.  You can be your own island in PvP.  Yes, you can even do Arena.

Yes, You heard me.  There are quite a few people doing this in PvP.  The jury is out on how this works out, technically its not unfair, but it does put the other person against a very coordinated team.  I have not heard of many folks going far in a completely boxed Arena team, they mix it up (Like a 4-boxer, and 1 other guy in a 5v5) - But its an interesting dynamic.  Food for thought!