Fusion Panda

Ok, I'm going to provide this link with the major disclaimer that I am extremely skeptical as to whether or not it's real.

However, for the sake of ridiculousness let's say it is - if for no other reason than the fact that this is SO outlandish that it could only be real.

Because, as Tom Clancy said, "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."

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In Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft, there's something that goes on which I never realized until today actually had a name, called multi-boxing.

This is when someone buys multiple accounts of a game like WoW, and then plays those accounts simultaneously, essentially playing multiple characters at the same time instead of just one.

Now, this is not totally new to me, I had, for example, heard of a guy named Xzin, who controlled a team consisting of one Undead (holy-specced) Priest and 4 Undead Mages, which he played all at the same time and used to wipe the floor with people.

Pretty cool, and I have to admit, I respect the guy for it, it sounds like a lot of fun, but keep in mind here that while perfectly legal as far as Blizzard is concerned, one account costs $15 a month, so he's paying $75 a month to do that.

WoW Insider had an interesting interview with the guy.

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Anyway, today I encountered (on WoW Insider and also Kotaku) some guy who claims to run forty-six simultaneous World of Warcraft accounts, he controls 23 and his girlfriend(!) controls the other 23. They run on 47 computers.

Just think about this for a second - 46 accounts means $690 a month simply to have the accounts, that in no way takes into consideration the initial software costs ($2300 for 46 game boxes and expansions) and hardware costs, like the monitors (seven in the photographs), cpus (47, including one server), or any of the other stuff that makes it run. He doesn't have hard disks in most of the computers in order to save on energy costs.

I don't even know what to say about this. I really, really want to believe that it's not real, that's just a good photoshopping job or a fake story, but I have a sinking feeling that it is in fact real.

You can read the whole deal, with explanations and lots of pictures, here.

Of course he says it started with Everquest in 2001, which definitely makes the story more plausible to me. And he must be fabulously wealthy as well, that's nearly what I pay in rent for God's sake.

current weather: Clear, 64, Wind: calm

Tags: amazing, ridiculous, videogames, wow
Current Location: 41.327N 81.601W
Current Mood: shocked
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