Mission Impossible: Multi-Boxing in
Vanguard

by Shayalyn

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I once knew a man from...no, not
Nantucket; this guy was from Canada. He owned a network and online
gaming center somewhere in Alberta. He played EverQuest obsessively,
and among his friends he was a bit of a legend. Why? Because not only
could he dual-box, but given all the computers lined up along the wall
at his gaming center, he could tri-box. He could’ve quad-boxed if he’d
wanted to (he had four accounts), and probably did a time or two just
to prove it could be done. He would sit on an office chair and roll
from one PC to the other, tanking with his beastlord, firing heals and
DoTs off with his druid, and using the enchanter for haste and mana
regen. I never saw him in person, but I imagined him looking like the
Wizard of Oz, scurrying around at the controls, pressing buttons and
flipping switches. “I am the Great and Powerful...” You get the picture.



I have other friends who prefer dual-boxing in EQ and World of Warcraft
(among other games) to playing a single character. Their rationale is
that they can solo well by two-boxing a tank and a healer; and that
playing a single class is boring. At least one of my friends won’t play
a game in which he can’t dual-box because he finds playing a single
character tedious.



Developers don’t seem to have a problem with multi-boxing. Why would
they? To discourage multi-boxing would mean to discourage players from
having more than one account. From a business standpoint, it just
doesn’t make sense to want to limit players--why settle for $15 when
you can have $30? But what about from a gaming standpoint? What does
the ability to dual-box, even to the point where some players prefer it
to playing a single character, say about the combat mechanics of an MMO?



Doug “Eldiroth” Cronkhite of Sigil Games Online, Associate Game
Designer for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, had this to say about
multi-boxing:



“In Vanguard, I seriously cannot
see anyone multi-boxing and playing their class well. Furthermore, I'm
convinced that people will find the combat so engaging that they won't style="font-style: italic;">want to multi-box. There [are]
just too many things you'll want to be doing to worry about another
computer. Put simply, the days of watching TV during combat are over.”



Cronkhite seems to discourage multi-boxing. Yet, does Sigil care if
players have more than one account? Of course not. Does Sigil care of
people want to try multi-boxing? Again, probably not. But it would
appear Sigil does care whether players find the combat in Vanguard
engaging, and to that end they’ve endeavored to make a game where
players will be far too busy playing to want to try and divide their
attention between two computers, or even between the computer and the
television.



Traditionally, the protective fighters, or tanks, have the least to do
in MMO combat. While things certainly can get hairy for a tank in
certain situations, there are may other situations where tanking
involves little more than attacking and watching the hits add up until
the monster dies. Vanguard aims to change all that. By taking a look at
how Vanguard’s combat works for a tank class, you’ll get an idea of why
dual-boxing may be nigh on impossible, and why you’ll want to actually
be focused on your single character.



Here’s an example of Vanguard combat:



The tank engages his enemy by leading off with a damage chain opener--a
special immediate attack that hits the mob and triggers a chain of
events that, when followed, can lead to a high-damage finishing attack.
Let’s assume the tank has a weapon with a 4 second delay between
swings. He has exactly 4 seconds to plan for his next attack. He uses
his perception skill to see what the enemy is doing and sees that it is
using a claw attack. Nothing major to worry about there, so the tank
triggers his bridge attack, which advances the attack chain. At the end
of the 4 second delay, the bridge attack lands and begins the next
round.



Now, let’s say the tank is taking time out to swig some Mountain Dew
and grab a handful of chips before his next attack begins. He
absent-mindedly triggers his finishing move to end the chain, and only
then glances at the monster’s queue. Ah, crap! The mob is using Devour,
a high damage attack. This requires a defensive move. The tank quickly
breaks off his attack chain and queues up a defensive special attack.
Whew! The special landed first, followed by the monster’s Devour
attack, so the tank was able to mitigate most of the damage. The tank
loads up another opener. All this takes place in a span of 4 seconds.
And this describes just one combat scenario, not the whole of combat
mechanics in Vanguard. (Credit for this description goes to Vanguard
Silky Venom’s Book of Oloh, which
contains some early beta descriptions of combat.)



Given this combat mechanic, its easy to see why multi-boxing won’t be
practical in Vanguard. My multi-boxing friend would probably moan about
this, but I’m of a mind that when a game involves engaging combat that
keeps me busy (so that I’m not multi-tasking watching TV and eating
chips...although there’s always room for Mountain Dew), that’s better
than being able to play on more than one computer at a time any day.



Should game developers care that players multi-box? I doubt they need
to worry about the act itself (although some multi-boxers are also gold
farmers, that’s a different topic altogether) so much as what it
signifies. If a game is so mind-numbingly simple that a person feels
compelled to play two characters at once just to keep the game
interesting, then perhaps there’s something fundamentally lacking from
the game itself.

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