There have been people who have asserted that it is humanly impossible to control that many accounts, and that therefore he must be cheating. Evidence was provided to the contrary. Now, anti-boxers are effectively moving the goal posts. Not only have they failed to provide evidence of wrong doing, but now they demand evidence that no wrong doing has ever occurred.
No. You absolutely do not need to be wealthy to multibox. I don’t know if you’re being serious, or hypebolic, but this a bad way to bring up a good point.
Okay, so multiboxing can cost extra money, which can prevent some individuals from doing the same (either because of current financial difficulties, or they live in a country with crappy wages).
Now, the problem isn’t actually with sub costs. I certainly don’t pay RL money for all the subs and MCT’s. I trained alphas up for free, and scrimped and saved for the initial plex and ships that I would need. And now, I use the isk I make from multiboxing to pay for everything. So, as far as software is concerned, there need be no additional cost.
Hardware is a different matter. Now, Eve isn’t a very demanding game, which means that you don’t exactly need a 2k dollar gaming rig in order to be able to run 2 accounts. But that still doesn’t change the fact that, generally speaking, you will need more expensive hardware the more accounts you run. This fact will indeed prevent some players from being able to do the same.
So, is multiboxing fair if it’s something that not everyone can do? Honestly, I think the answer is yes. Not everyone can fly a titan, but that doesn’t make it unfair for people to fly titans. What’s important is that there are counter play options. And the simple fact of the matter is that multiboxing is easily countered by making friends. Assuming equal player skill, character skill, and ship cost, 2 real life players will have an advantage over the guy who dual boxes 99.9% of the time (yes there are rare exceptions). And that advantage just increases more and more as the number of accounts increases (i.e. 20 swinging dicks will have a huge advantage versus one neckbeard that is multiboxing 20 accounts).
So no, I really don’t think it’s unfair. That being said, I am concerned about perceptions of fairness, as that is an issue that can drive players away from the game. So, does that mean we should get rid of multiboxing, or limit multiboxing to 4 or even 2 accounts? I’m not so sure. Obviously, it will make some people happy, but most Eve players don’t seem to consider this an issue. Moreover, it will definitely piss off a lot of the more hardcore players, most of the solo demographic, and a lot of content creators (i.e. FC’s who scout for themselves). Not to mention what it would do to CCP’s bottom line. Thus, getting rid of it would probably do more harm than good.
Hm. I should have made a poll from the get go. I guess I’ll just create a new thread with a poll asking how people feel about multiboxing, and link it back to this thread. It’s not ideal, because I don’t want to split the discussion, but I also want to get a decent sample size. Anyway, I’ll provide a link in a few.