ISBoxer:Lax

This page will describe Lax's configuration for multi-boxing World of Warcraft in detail, with screenshots and video where appropriate. It is under construction.

World of Warcraft

Addons

• Auctioneer
• Cartographer
• Combuctor: This bag mod combines all my bags into one window, and adds a Search box as well as ability to filter by item rarity, and also adds a colored background showing the rarity color of each item. The Search box is invaluable while multi-boxing, because I can enable Repeater and type in the search box to find a specific item on all of my characters. Filtering by item rarity is also extremely useful in many situations, including vendoring, disenchanting, and mailing items to an auction mule. Combining these two features is also very useful -- I will ship cloth and leather to my auction mule by filtering by Common (white) rarity and searching for cloth or leather, for example (so as to not include grey, green, or blue items that happen to have cloth or leather in the name). The colored background for each item in the bag window is great for quickly finding the right type of item without filtering.
• Deadly Boss Mods
• Jamba: Jamba is an addon designed for multi-boxing. ISBoxer provides features that integrate with Jamba to simplify configuration, such as automatically synchronizing the Jamba member list.
• OpenRDX (Brethren Raid Frames): This Unit Frames addon does it all. But most importantly, Click to Cast combined with a sorted party window. My use of this addon will be described in the Healing section of this page.
• Overachiever
• PallyPower
• Quest Helper
• WinterTime

Video settings

I keep all video settings at minimum, except for View Distance. View Distance is up a little bit on my main and possibly one other character, but minimum on the rest. I rarely need to play as the other characters, and when I do, I usually don't need to see that far on that window. If I do for some reason, and I can't switch back, then I simply turn it up as needed. There is no need for pretty graphics when multi-boxing -- performance is paramount.

Hardware

System Specs

My system is overkill for the job, but here's what I've got:

• CPU: 2x Quad-core Intel Xeon E5345 2.33GHz
• Hard Drive: Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10,000RPM SATA
• Motherboard: Tempest i5000PW (S5382)
• Power Supply: Turbo-Cool 1000W
• RAM: 12GB Kingston KVR 667
• Video: BFG 8800 GTX OC2, 768MB
• Operating System: Windows 7 RC1 64-bit

If you're looking my specs to get ideas for building your own rig, and it scares you, here's all you need:

• CPU: 2-3 accounts? Dual core. 4-5 accounts? Quad core. This is the most important piece. You want it fast, but it doesn't need to be the fastest. I usually look for the fastest CPU before the price starts jumping at a ridiculous rate per increment.
• Hard drive: Not vastly important. Some people swear by Solid State Drives (which are not yet as high performance as they are said to be). If you get a drive with platters, you want 7,200 RPM minimum, not 5,400 RPM.
• Motherboard: Whatever will support your CPU and Video
• Power Supply: Whatever is compatible with your hardware and can provide enough power
• RAM: 4GB is plenty to run 5 copies of WoW. Other games may require more RAM. To have more than 3GB of RAM, you MUST run 64-bit Windows.
• Video: This is pretty important, like CPU. You want it fast, but it doesn't need to be the fastest. It doesn't even need to be the newest generation. In fact, buying 1-2 generations old is acceptable these days unless you are looking to play Crysis.

Input Devices

Logitech G15 Keyboard

Logitech G15 Keyboard (yeah my keyboard is dirty, so sue me)
Single Class (Shamans)	Multi-class (Death Knights + others)

The basic premise of my G15 layout is to use the bottom keys for the most commonly used actions, middle for general combat utility, and top for rare usage (usually non-combat). I try to stick to similar actions for each key between character sets, so my AoE key for example will do Death and Decay with my DKs, Hurricane with my druids, and so on -- targeted AoEs. Many of the buttons have alternate functionality if I press CTRL and/or ALT, for example with my Shamans, the DPS key does not have my healer attacking unless I hold CTRL, and if I hold ALT it will cast Chain Lightning (with CTRL+ALT including my healer in the Chain Lightning). Likewise, other keys will do Round Robin unless I hold CTRL.

Gameplay

Movement

(describe usage of auto-follow, and being able to use mouse and/or keyboard to move as a matter of convenience -- hand positioning)

Combat

(reiterate hand positioning, with focus on combat)

Healing

(describe click to cast configuration, and repeater region)