The Setup

Well, to dispell any myths about multiboxing, you do not need multiple comps to run multiple instances of WoW. I personally don't have that kind of upfront cash to spend, so I go with a software solution. Here is my typical setup.



Nothing too fancy as you can see.

For the specifics, I have the following specs for my PC:

Hardware:
2gb of RAM
Nvidia Geforce 7900 GT w/ 256mb of RAM
Generic 80gb 7200rpm Hard drive IDE
Maxtor 200gb 7200rpm hard drive IDE
Envision 19" widescreen monitor (left)
Dell 19" widescreen monitor (right)
Onboard 10/100 NIC

Software:
Windows XP Home (set to horizontal span)
WoW + Expansion x2 (physicly installed)
Keyclone

And that's about the meat of what I use to play 5 copies of WoW. With this setup I can play with my main character with near max visuals, while my other 4 alts are all at thier lowest settings and capped at 15 FPS. I generally get 30-60 FPS on my main, except in major cities or places with a lot of NPC's. I haven't tried dialing down my main's graphics yet so there is still room for improvement.

On the software front, I don't have any mods to assist me with anything. In fact, I don't have any mods at all. The vanilla interface has done it's job well enough for me these past 4 years that it doesn't warrent a replacement in my opinion.

Now, why only have 2 copies of wow installed as apposed to 5, or just 1? Well, with 5, that's 5x the storage space and it increases the load time for each instance of wow exponentially. I tried this origionally, and zepplins/boats became my enemy. When it finished loading me to the other continent, quite often I had to make a mad dash off the vehicle because it would be already on it's way back! Not fun.

Having everything out of one folder wasn't too great either. Sure, load times are a breeze now since everything is loading from the same folder.However, all of your visual/sound/interface settings would also all be shared. Fine if you have everyone at the same settings, but my main has different settings than my alts, so I would either need to reset him each time, or reset my alts, depending on what my comp wanted to save when exiting. So I use 2, one for my main's settings, one for my alt's settings, and I get the best of both worlds.

Lastly, lets talk about keyclone. Keyclone is a simple 3rd party program that does one simple yet essentail job for any multiboxer, it broadcasts keystrokes to all instances of WoW. Without this, I probobly wouldn't be multiboxing. For $20, it's a damn bargin. It is incredibly simple to use and install, basicly just unzip it and go. It will automaticly detect any WoW's your running within seconds of startup and start broadcasting keystrokes to them only if your currently using one of them. This means I can open a web browser and surf the net and not have to worry about my keystrokes going to my toons. It also doesn't require any scripting knowledge, or have any scripting elements to begin with, so I don't have to worry about slipping into the botzone trying to make a legitimate script to broadcast yet it end up bieng something against the EULA.

So, that's all I use to play 5 toons simultaniously.