Is boosting an alt banable now?
- Thread starter theexigo
- Start date
polo
New Member
Depends on your setup.
If you just got characters on follow and one character is doing the boosting, you won't get banned since its not against their terms of use, and you would win your appeal. When it becomes a bit of a grey area stroke dodgy is when you start to control multiple characters at once. Blizzard takes a huge disliking to automation and streamlining the process of multiboxing.
If you're looking to multiplebox and want to be able to control multiple characters at the same time then you need to take great precautions to ensure everything you're doing isn't against their terms of use.
Things to avoid:
Software: Using things like Hotkeys is one of the easiest ways of getting busted, yes it has a legit uses but when you go opening 5 WOW windows, Blizzard know, they also get notifications when windows become active, let me explain by this, when using windows, only one window is ever activated at one time, there is call commands within all software to know when a window is active, or inactive, when you have 5 WOW windows open, Blizzard know when you have 4 inactive, and 1 active, if using Hotkeys to active windows for example, You bind the keyboard numpad 1 to activate WOW1 and numpad1 and then bind key numpad2 to do WOW2, and numpad3 to do WOW3 and so forth, when you go spamming the numpad activating different Windows open, this is a redflag, Blizzard will see rapid windows are becoming inactive, active at greater than humanly possibly, while many people have appealed such bans and been successful with such setups, I have then see them to get banned again, and become unsuccessful.
If you're scrolling from Window to Window, and simply pressing one keyboard command at a time, its unlikely if you get banned, and if you do, its pretty safe to say you would win your appeal. Ask them to check the active windows, and key presses.
Hardware:
KVM
Using KVM switches that have a SYNC option to send commands to multiple computers at once is a HUGE NO NO! its very easy to detect and a fast easy way to get banned.
Programmable Keyboards with Macros
Using things like programmable keyboards to send a series of commands upon one button press, e.g number 1, sends key press 1, waits 2000ms and presses 2, key press 1, will result in a ban, in fact, its something you can get banned with 1 character let alone 2, 3, 4 or 5.
Natural Mindset
You need to have a "natural" mindset approach, my setup I use 4 NUC's all different brands/models, and each have their own HID (Keyboard/Mouse), I then use wireless numpads to control them, because you only have 2 hands, your limited to how fast you can do things, and everything looks more natural, varying delays between keypresses, the duration of the keypress, and the order of the spells is always different. I have never been banned but if I was to get banned, I would easily be able to appeal it and shown them that I am using 5 keyboard devices.
Programmable Keyboards
You can use programmable keyboards but great caution needs to be taken and you really need to know your stuff, I looked into this and yes it can be done, but you must do it right. You need to understand natural keypress deviation, what this means, when a key is pressed, each keypress is held for a different amount of time, for example you could write your name, lets pretend its "Andrew" The letter A will be held differently than letter N, and D, and so forth, there is an acceptable deviation before one character input becomes 2 letters because the key was held too long, this is processed by the operating system, and WOW also has this information, espeically more so if its a mechnical keyboard. The other automation is series of spells, this is by far the most serious offences and its extremely easy to detect, but extremely hard to avoid detection, you need varying key presses durations, and rotating spells, but too much randomness is also bad.
Hope this helps!
flux1
Legend
The Multiboxing TOS is intentionally vague so they can just ban you with it if they want. I know several multi-boxers that still play today even with software setups but keep a low profile to not get reported and are fine. Also know a few that got banned several times over since the TOS change.
Its basically roll the dice and pray you dont trigger enough reports for the auto system to ban you.
Its basically roll the dice and pray you dont trigger enough reports for the auto system to ban you.
cletus
Member
This is relatively simple but there are some strange corner cases that aren't obvious.
First and foremost, multi-boxing IS legal but input broadcasting is NOT legal. This means, pressing a key and having it sent to multiple clients at once. That got banned back in 2020 or so.
For context, if you queue with an XP-locked toon in your group you get a 95% XP deubff. This was added in BFA so you couldn't (easily) powerlevel people. So if you an an XP-lcoked friend queue, you will get 95% less XP. If you queue solo and end up in a group with an XP-locked toon, there is no XP penalty.
Second, and this is relatively new, Blizzard seems to have decided that bypassing the 95% XP debuff is a bannable offense (although a bunch of what were permabans seem to have been reversed). This is a grey area as Blizzard has made no official statement on this subject.
How do you bypass the XP debuff? Search around and you'll find a macro you can use. But you can also use the group finder separately to end up in the same group and Blizzard SEEMS to have taken a dim view of even that.
So, corner cases. There are two main ones:
- If you queue with a level 20 F2P/Vet toon who can't gain XP, there is no XP debuff. That's completely fine;
- If you queue with a level 70 on an account that does not own TWW (so 70 is max level) there is no XP debuff. This too is completely fine.
orcgazmatron
Veteran
THIS :
& I would avoid queing with other players, just to stay out of sight.