Multi-boxing on Everquest True Box Server is a little bit different than boxing on a regular live server or a TLP with a relaxed ruleset. Okay…it’s entirely different.
Where you can run as many characters and accounts off a single PC as your PC can run while on a live servers, the True Box Servers are setup to restrict and deny running more than one instance of Everquest on a PC.
Even trying to bypass these restrictions with a VMWare is not typically successful without some magic to convince the server you’re not on a Virtual Machine. The servers are setup to just explicitly deny all login attempts from a virtual machine. It will let you install and run Everquest but the second you try to connect to a True Box server you’ll get denied.
I’m not saying you can’t get around this, but why bother? Every time they patch or change something they might break your work around anyways.
That leaves us with having 1 PC per account.
Luckily for you, the most efficient ways to make this happen have already been discovered.
2-3 Boxing Setup
For a 2 boxing setup I typically like to have 3 monitors because I use one of the monitors for web browser, youtube videos, or just generally looking stuff up. However, the third monitor can be used for a 3 box or you can just use 2 monitors.
So to add extra computers to your setup, I always go with these HP Mini PCs, they have 8GB of ram and an i5 processor so they have way more than enough power to run EQ. They are also a very cheap way to add to your setup.
Then you’ll want a 2 monitor stand if you’re just going to go with 2 monitors and these are the monitors I continue to add to my setup for individual computers I add. You can also get a 3 monitor stand as well which gives you 2 monitors for EQ and 1 for browsing or an extra monitor.
3-4 Boxing Setup
For a 3-4 boxing setup you can use the tipple monitor stand above or get a quad screen monitor stand. I prefer to have mine squared off in a 2×2 setup but you can also get a 4×1 or put two of the 2×1’s next to each other to make this happen. You’ll also want to continue to pickup more mini PCs and monitors.
If you’re really serious into gaming then I do recommend at this point you go ahead and add my all time favorite quad input HDMI monitor. This monitor has 4 HDMI inputs and can split itself into a 2×2 picture in picture mode so you basically have 4 monitors in one. You can also adjust the settings to turn it back into 1 monitor or a bunch of other various settings. This is how I add more characters to my setup now, I no longer buy individual monitors because they take up too much space, I just get the 43″ monitor and set those side by side so each one can run 4 PCs.
6 Boxing Setup
There are two primary ways to get a good six box setup in place and from this point on to go from 6 to 12 to 18 or any number in between you can combine or continue to add this setup each time you need more PCs and characters.
Finally for the 12-18 box setup, I typically will run 2-3 of the big quad screen monitors which gives me 8-12 characters and then for the final six I actually have a really big 6 multi monitor stand that holds 6 27″ monitors in a 2×3 configuration.
Don’t forget to get all the mini PCs you need. If you think about how cheap these mini PCs are you can literally add 12 additional computers for the cost of one good gaming PC, so you can see why it saves so much money. Additionally, they use very little power, if you were to try to put a bunch of regular PCs in place instead, you would likely blow a circuit or have to plug them into different circuits from the power draw, not too mention they would take up a massive amount of space.
Accessories
I’m also really stingy when it comes to accessories, if you’re not going to be cheating or using a program like Synergy or Multiplicity to run all of these off one keyboard and mouse, then you will need a keyboard and mouse for each PC. I typically just buy these cheap combo kits from Amazon.
If space is an issue, which it usually is when you’re trying to setup this massive operation in a small space, you can go with these mini keyboard / mouse combos.
I put these gigantic mouse/keyboard pads on top of my desk and just start layering keyboards and mice across them.