It’s going to be a lot harder to multibox in PVP in Battle for Azeroth

You may be wondering what I mean by that title. And even if it isn’t something that affects you, you’re probably still curious about what exactly is happening with PVP Multiboxing in Battle for Azeroth. Well, the short answer is, something.

The long answer is a lot more informative, of course. People have noticed that when you enter War Mode on the Battle for Azeroth beta, /follow functionality is disabled. You can’t follow others while you’re PVP flagged, and targets engaged in PVP cannot be followed. If you’re a multiboxing player, War Mode will be significantly more difficult for you. Note — this isn’t them banning multiboxing players, but it does make controlling several characters at once a smidgen more difficult in PVP, as your army of alts will have to move independently of one another.

At present, this only affects War Mode — if you’re multiboxing in PVE, you should be unaffected. And yes, some players do multibox in PVE, as it makes gold generation a lot easier and allows for reasonable progression in PVE content like Mythic+ dungeons. The folks at Icy Veins have been rounding up discussions of multiboxing on the forums, although it should be noted that the posts in question date back to 2013 or before. It’s quite possible that Blizzard’s mindset on multiboxing has changed, but in general this seems more like it’s targeted toward botters than toward legitimate multiboxers.

It’s definitely going to impact multiboxers in PVP, though. Using /follow to keep your group coordinated is pretty much the only way that multiboxers can hope to keep up, since otherwise they have to micromanage more than one character at the same time. Since automation is frowned upon by Blizzard, using /follow means that a multiboxer only has to control specific attacks and spells on their separate accounts. It’s still demanding, but it’s fewer simultaneous decisions being made. With follow gone in War Mode, controlling more than one additional character is going to start feeling like you’re the keyboard player from Yes.

If you’re younger than me, translate that to trying to operate Vegnagun in Final Fantasy X-2, and if you’re still confused, take pity on my ancient butt and just assume it’s a lot of keyboards.

We’ll see if this turns out to just be a case where an attempt to curb botting hits others inadvertently, or if we’re looking at the first development in a series curbing multiboxing in WoW. Since it only affects War Mode, I feel like it can’t be a sign of a policy shift in general, but we’ll find out.