A player who used 16 accounts simultaneously in WoW Classic was banned. However, not for multiboxing, but because he accepted payment to annoy other players.
How did the player annoy the others? Tinyviolin69 played 16 WoW accounts simultaneously in what is called multiboxing. In multiboxing, a player controls multiple accounts at the same time and thus manages multiple characters. Classic multiboxing has been banned, but without special “broadcast software,” it is still allowed.
In the case of Tinyviolin69, it was an army of priests. Priests have the power to remove world buffs. These world buffs are important, especially in difficult raids like Naxxramas, to conquer them as quickly as possible.
Tinyviolin69 now used his 16 priests to remove world buffs from other WoW players with a dispel. This is annoying because it can be quite tedious to obtain those buffs. Although there is a way to store buffs with the overloaded chronoboon, not everyone activates the buffs directly in the raid.
WoW multiboxer loses his 16 accounts
Why were his accounts banned? In fact, removing world buffs is allowed; it is a standard game mechanic – just like multiboxing. However, Tinyviolin69 was removing the buffs for payment. A person offered him 3,000 bits (Twitch currency), which translates to about 32 euros. For this, he was supposed to remove the world buffs from certain players with his priest army while leaving him alone.
Unfortunately, he showed on Twitch how he carried out this task and loitered in Orgrimmar and places for world buffs to remove the buffs from other players. This annoyed the players a lot. He then received the 3,000 bits live on stream and thanked for it. In another video, he even follows the generous donor and comments on him in a promotional manner – without giving him a dispel (via Twitch).
After Tinyviolin69 was reported, Blizzard looked into the incident and apparently discovered that he was paid for this action.
What penalty followed for him? Blizzard banned his priest army last Sunday. In a video, it is even shown how he gets kicked from the game and the ban message appears (via Streamable). It is not certain whether the ban was related to this action, as Tinyviolin69 had been somewhat toxic in the game and insulted others. However, it seems logical, even though players in WoW Classic have already been banned for bad jokes.
How did the player respond to the ban? Tinyviolin69 reacted to a reddit post by the player tooxie11, who reported on the incident. Tinyviolin referred to tooxie11 as “Crybaby” and blamed him for the ban (via Twitch). He now wants to get in touch with Blizzard, as he considers the ban unjustified.
Why is this hard for the player? Tinyviolin69 had a subscription for all 16 accounts. A subscription costs up to 12.99 euros per month. With 16 accounts, the player had to pay roughly 210 euros per month – or earn game time through gold in World of Warcraft by converting WoW tokens into game time.
Tinyviolin69 has thus invested a lot of money or time into his WoW activities. Whether and when he will get his accounts back is unclear.
Multiboxing is controversial. In the MeinMMO article “Multiboxing in MMORPGs like WoW – Is it fair or like cheating?” we explain why.
