Addon Spotlight: TwoBox Toolkit
by Sean Forsgren 
Sep 7th 2008 at 10:00PM
Welcome to a special preview edition of Addon Spotlight. I've been playing around with dual-boxing and wanted to shared this addon with you all, as it adds some great features for anyone running two toons. Rather than succumb to expansion apathy, I've been attempting to level my alts via the ridiculous XP bonus given to players who have recruited a friend. Besides, who doesn't want a new Zhevra mount for their Belf-about-town? Regardless, some savvy developers have come up with some mods to help the aspiring dual-boxer.This is the only in-game addon I use when I'm burning through the levels via the Recruit-a-Friend program. The developer has combined a lot of great little tools into the package. Once I started using TwoBoxToolkit I noticed a significant increase in efficiency when dual-boxing.
My best friend got married yesterday, so due to a lingering alcoholic haze, I'm opting to, once again, quote the developer's description and features list via WoWInterface.
"This mod provides a set of tools to help people like me who like to play 2 char at once. These tools are for the second char (bot). This mod uses the ACE2 library. All required libraries are included in this zip.
Features:
- Messages relay: Able to relay messages the Bot gets in Whisper,Party,Guild,Raid and transfer them to your main via whisper.
- Follow: The bot will follow you upon using the /followme emote on him.
- Sticky Follow: Follow will be automatically resumed when the fight is over.
- Follow warning: The bot will warn you if he stops following.
- Pass Loot : The bot will auto pass on loot random window.
- Buff Warning: The bot will warn you when he loses a buff. (Duration for a buff to be warn can be set in options).
- Low Life Warning: The Bot will warn you when it health goes under a pre defined %.
- Low mana warning: The bot will warn you when it mana goes under a pre defined %.
- Mini map icon: With Options UI.
- Fubar compatible.
- Relay to channel : You can have the bot relay via whispers or a defined channel
Usage:
/tb : for the list of commands. Every command can be trigger on/off.
Setting your master is the first step to using this mod. Do so by doing /tb master playername"
TwoBoxToolkit may require some tweaking to fit in with your gameplay, depending on your setup. For me, I have worked hard to integrate my second character as fully as possible, so the constant whispers that my second character's follow was broken became cumbersome. However, getting whispers about auto-quest accepting and relayed messages has quickly become a must-have when dual-boxing.
A couple of other features just plain come in handy; automatically passing on loot, sticky following (auto-follow after a fight) and auto-accepting group invites from players on your friends list or a designated master. Honestly, if you're considering taking advantage of the XP bonus from Recruit-a-Friend to level and an alt via dual-boxing, this addon will make your life much easier.
That's it for this weekend, folks. Next week we'll take a closer look at dual-boxing on a single Mac machine. Dismissed!
Are you an addon-addict? Is your User Interface a living work of art? Welcome home, my friends! Every week, Addon Spotlight profiles a different addon, brings you mod-related news and dishes out free addon advice. See out what's been said and done in the addon community by checking out past features or our addon and UI directory.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Steimel Sep 7th 2008 10:13PM
So... when you click the link, it referes itself as a "bot". I'm sure blizzard would love this addon. Quit being so lazy.
I've lost all respect for wowinsider now... way to go...
Chris Anthony Sep 7th 2008 10:29PM
/golfclap
But then, I'm sure you won't be back to read this message. Au revoir, young Steimel. You will* be missed.
* Offer void in reality.
Malkeior Sep 7th 2008 10:38PM
Except it's not a bot and why would it cause you to lose respect for WoW Insider?
vlad Sep 8th 2008 12:34AM
someone respects wowinsider?
interesting. once they give credit to all the sources on all the copies "news" stories i could see more people respecting them too. oh, and when schramm gets a few more brain cell's too :)
Jane Gray Sep 8th 2008 7:18PM
This mod DOES work for more than two toons. I would recommend turning off the low health alerts, there is nothing more annoying in the middle of a wipe than four whispers saying "I need healing" as you grit your teeth and watch all the health bars drop.
Anyone interested in learning more about multiboxing should go to dual-boxing.com and read the wiki.
If you ask questions without reading the wiki, I will kill you in your sleep.
ghostdad Sep 7th 2008 10:27PM
I'm using this right now and got a druid and shaman to level 20 in about 6 hours. It is really helpful and I would hardly consider it a "bot". You still have to do a majority of the stuff and it just makes dual-boxing a little easier.
HailCaesar Sep 7th 2008 10:29PM
It may be a bad idea that in the description it refers to your second account as a "bot".
CJrush Sep 8th 2008 3:29AM
It is a bit of a bad description, to me a bot is a computer controlled player who NOBODY can control/tell what to do.
Amaxe Sep 7th 2008 10:29PM
I would be wary about using this. It does seem to be closer to botting than the usual form of two-boxing.
There is no point power levelling to 70, buying a second account only to have it banned after all.
Malkeior Sep 7th 2008 10:39PM
You CANNOT be banned for use of an addon.
onetrueping Sep 8th 2008 6:40AM
Yes, you can. There are specific limits as to what addons are allowed to do, outlined in the ToS. Try reading them sometime.
crsh Sep 7th 2008 10:47PM
Plus Blizzard loves multi-boxers as long as it's all legit (ie. a single person paying multiple accounts and playing them, not account sharing). Makes me wonder if RaF really does anything beside increasing the number of multi-boxers.
Chris Sep 7th 2008 11:19PM
"Makes me wonder if RaF really does anything beside increasing the number of multi-boxers."
Just FYI, you can count me among the number of people who are using R.A.F. "properly".
I invited my Girlfriend, and she and I have been having marvelous fun.
Aaron Sep 7th 2008 10:52PM
To the masses of un-informed posters that will likely follow.
Dual Boxing and Botting are two very different things. In dual boxing, there is little to no automation, and the automation is for things like...
-following your main toon
-passing on loot
-accepting quests
-selling gray items (which tons of people do anyways)
There is NO automation of any combat or anything like that. All combat and character control during combat is done by the player. It actually takes a lot of skill and understanding of the game to pull of successfully.
I'm not trying to convince those out there that are convinced that boxing is against the spirit of the game but blizzard has given a pretty clear standing that they are OK with multiboxing.
Again, those who post saying something about this being botting should go do some reading before marking yourself as uninformed.
Oh, and if you decide to do this, make sure you own both accounts. It's against the EULA to use anyone elses account and it's pretty easy for a GM to spot that kinda thing if you're boxing with 2 accounts with different names.
Pidge Sep 7th 2008 11:14PM
Blizzard has stated time and again that they don't have a problem with multi-boxing -- *as long as characters are still directly controlled by the user*.
Regardless of the poor choice in wording by the addon creator, this doesn't do any "botting." It's just taking advantage of tools built into the game by Blizzard like the /follow command. I bet you could most of what the addon does with a set of macros. (If Blizzard really had any interest in preventing multiboxing, simply removing /follow would have a big impact.)
Despite all the hype, multi-boxing will not let most people run raids by themselves or make them PVP gods -- multi-boxing groups are too easily disrupted.
I'm positive the most common use is to move characters through the 1-70 levelling grind. Levelling a character in WoW is extraordinarily easy -- very much more a function of time than skill. The recent changes in XP earned from 1-60 (and soon 1-70), the new features in Recuit-A-Friend (triple XP, free levels granted, etc.), and Death Knights starting in their 50s clearly show that Blizzard is increasingly interested in moving players past lower levels as fast as possible. It's hard to argue that multi-boxing levelling is "lazy" but these other Blizzard-created solutions aren't.
Still I get there are always people who will feel better because they did things the "hard way." Hey more power to them I say! They just need to remember that the "hard way" isn't the only (Blizzard-approved) way.
diarx Sep 7th 2008 11:46PM
so anyone know whether this addon is 100% legal or not?
I thought having something so overly automated like this auto follow system would be against the TOS?
KneverMind Sep 7th 2008 11:50PM
/facepalm
Eternalpayn Sep 8th 2008 7:34AM
I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm actually. So I don't know whether to laugh at the poster or the downraters.
Jam Sep 8th 2008 12:33AM
Multiboxing completely ruins the game for everyone except the one doing the Multiboxing. When you are out questing on a PVP realm and another single guy comes along controlling 2-5 toons you are going to be owned. If he wasn't multiboxing he would be there with one character not a group. Sure people can group up and quest but that virtually never happens but on my server (Stormscale-EU) I see multiboxers in STV 5-6 times a day and I'm not exaggerating. Especially in the wee hours of the night.
They totally ruin the levelling experience for everyone else. And I know people will beat on me for saying so but I'm not the only one that feels that way. Sure its great to level yourself faster but don't you ever think about the other people who are gaming around you, how you bring down their experience by dominating mobs for quest items, ganking single chars with your zombie-army and other such bullshit?
Blizzard should make the /follow system have a cool-down to discourage over usage and make multi-boxing more difficult. All the multiboxers say how its a skill how its harder then single play. Really its not harder its easier, it has a steeper learning curve then single play, granted. But once you learn it everything you do in the game becomes easier because of how over-powered your little personal army is.
If you cant play an MMO with other people like it was intended then you might as-well be playing a single-player RPG.
Tiberius Sep 8th 2008 12:56AM
Yup, completely ruins the game for everyone! Especially on a pvp server!
Please - You'll get killed more often by non-multi boxers then you will by multi-boxers simply because *normal* people can't really afford the costs of 2-5 accounts, computers, keyclone etc.
I think I've seen a total of four people on my server that multi-box, myself and my fiance included. Those four people are totally breaking the game! Yuppers!
I fourbox on my server simply because it makes my island dailies so much easier (I don't get ganked) and typically I don't gank people unless they annoy me (i.e stealing mobs that I've dotted, or taking a berry that I'm quite obviously clearing to.)
- - -
2boxtoolkit is a wonderful addon and 100% legal for use in WoW.
I also highly recommend a program called keyclone (sends keystrokes to multiple clients either on one machine or Xnumbers of machines. Support for keyclone is also wonderfull.