Recruit your best friend …  YOURSELF!

In the 1st article we outlined the basics of the RAF program.  In this article we will explore the ways to exploit the program for maximum DOMINATION.  Some of these setups may be beyond you and/or your computer’s abilities.  It is up to you to choose the one that best fits you and enjoy the free extra xp.

Let’s start with the basic Acct setup as this is the same regardless of how you use the program.  You will end up having 2 accounts with this program, the Veteran account and the Recruit account.  The veteran account is your main account that you want a new alt on.  The recruit account is a free account you are just using to gain extra XP with.  Now lets get down to business.

1. The 1st step is to send YOURSELF a recruit a friend email using the warcraft website.  Just log into the veteran account (via the Blizzard web site) and send a RAF invite to your email address.
2. When you receive the trial offer email follow the email instructions and in no time you have a free 10day trial that is tied to your main account.  This is what can be called a disposable account. After the 10day trial, you may never use it again. Now the fun begins.

Log onto your veteran account and roll up your desired new alt.  Please keep in mind that the trial account is Vanilla WOW, so no Draenei or Blood elf quest zones are available for questing with the trial account.  You can make one of those on your main account if you wish, but the pair will not be able to use those starting areas.

Character pairing tips.

• If you make a melee based toon, I highly recommend a Shaman for the trial account if possible, but honestly any healer class will do quite well. I like the shaman because they can just drop a few totems which will buff your primary toon, then sit there ready to heal if needed. Again, maximizing benefit for least amount of work.
• If you make a caster toon, then you will probably want a melee class for the trial account. If you’re not planning to dual box, then any old toon works on the trial account as it is just going to pop up when needed.

Now that your accounts are set-up and you have rolled your toons lets discuss working the pair.  We covered Multi boxing in a previous Casual Corner article.  Make sure you read it, it covers the basics of the Multi boxing style of leveling, and nothing changes when using it for RAF.  Well nothing other than getting THREE TIMES the XP per kill and quest!

It is realy just that simple. In no time at all your new alt will be level 20 and into the fun levels, or better yet all the way to lvl 60 and ready to hammer outlands into submission!

Now I know your all asking, well what about the toons on the trial account? You have options for those toons.

• If you really want those toons, you can always pay to move them to your main account.
• Or if you want to push and get maximum boost you could turn the trial account into a full blown account, which buys you a full month of bonus XP mayhem and opens the door to RAF your way on to lvl 60 on both accounts.  An added bonus of the recruit account being a full account is that now you can trade between toons to make sure they are both geared! Plus after those 60 levels you then have 30 free levels on the trial account to hand out to another toon on the veteran account WOOT!

One last tasty RAF leveling tip;

Leap-frogging Levels:  When dual boxing try to keep the recruit toon’s lvl slightly ahead of the veteran account toon. This can let you leap-frog the veteran toon a level at the last minute before hitting 20. When the recruit toon dings to 20 and the veteran is just a hair short of 20 the recruit can gift the veteran toon a level! BAM your lvl 19 that was 99% to 20 is now 99% to 21 YEEHAA! Then turn in that last quest on the veteran and catapult into 21 in style! This also applies to lvl60 if you decide to convert the trial account into a full blown vanilla WOW account.  Get the Veteran account to lvl59.99 and then gift it a free level!

You can do similar when your gifting levels to your other alts.  Before you start gifting levels, get the verteran account alt as close as possible to going Ding THEN grant the levels.  That way you are working for cheaper lower level XP and buying your way higher into the gifted levels.

I am not a power leveler by any means.  But this system really makes power leveling possible for even the most casual WOW player, and you could soon find yourself with a fleet of 60’s ready to sprint thru outlands. At one Point in a single month I ended up with a total of six lvl 60 toons, two pairs I ran up and then a pair of toons on the veteran account that were already lvl 30 and were granted free levels to 60!

Something to  watch for

Blizzard recently did a sale on vanilla wow, it was $5.00 for the full base game, including the free 1^st month.  For $5.00 you had yourself a power leveling tool good all the way to 60! Sadly, this was a 2-day sale and is over, but keep your eyes open, you never know when they will do it again, and pricing for the base game should only drop as they release Cataclysm.

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>

Leveling the Hardcore Casual way

In the last few years Blizzard has made numerous changes to the “low level” game to help get players into Northrend as quickly as possible.  XP is lower per level and quest rewards are increased, leveling a toon has never been faster.  Add to that the Recruit-a-friend (RAF) program they implemented back in June 2008 to help push players into TBC content and we have an Altoholics paradise!

I am going to share a little set-up I have found quite useful for getting toons past the often tiresome lvl 1-mid 20’s, FAST.  I am talking 1-20 in a single day of relaxed playing, or a single evening after work if you use Gavin’s guide or know the start zones well.  The best part it is FREE! This article will focus on the lvl 1-20 program.  It can be adapted to help all the way to lvl 60 as well, but more on that later.

Many players do not truly understand or appreciate the RAF program.  They do not realize it can be a leveling tool; they don’t have any friends to recruit, so why pay attention right?  A few of us Milk it for every level it is worth! To begin lets cover a few key points about RAF:

• The RAF invitation includes a FREE 10day trial account for the “new player”

• Once the offer is accepted the accounts are linked for 90-days, well past the 10-day free trial (more on this later).

• This trial account is a Std trial account; it can’t trade, buy in AH, and is quite limited due to past abuses.

• The trial account is Vanilla WOW, with no access to Blood Elf or Draenei starting areas.

• When the linked accounts are partied together they both get TRIPLE XP for EVERYTHING that is not grey to them. That means mobs AND quests, but they must be partied to get the bonus.

• Each toon can summon a toon from the other account once per hour.

• For every 2 levels gained by the recruited account they can gift a free level to a lower level toon on the veterans account.

• ALL bonuses stop at lvl 60.

• After 1^st paid month on recruit acct, the veteran acct gets a free month.

• After 3 paid months the recruit account can gift one Zhevra mount to any single toon on the veteran’s account.

As you can see the benefits are quite large, and well worth exploiting.  Now that I have outlined the base program for all of you I will throw some teasers and tips out to you to get you thinking about the next article.

• Holidays;  Blizzard is now giving xp for the holiday quests, the RAF program triples this too, so take advantage and get some easy triple xp! The recent Pilgrim holiday was a a perfect example and I actually double dipped. Those that follow DYS read about how easy it was to get 1-300 cooking skill for a few gold, but each quest kicked out 3x XP using RAF!! As a toon in my teens I was seeing 3500xp per quest!

• Traveling: The free hourly summon ability is extremely handy. It works not only with the new alts, but all toons on both accounts.  What I found worked well was having the toons hearthed to different places.  Like one in Org and one in UC. Need to travel to TB or Org for a quest turn in, hearth the toon there and summon the other toon.  Need to head back to UC for training your undead priest, hearth him home, train and then summon him back.  Need to run to the next FP or quest point?  Log onto a bigger toon , fly there, then summon the other toon to you.  Log off the big toon, onto the new alt and use the trail to summon him.  Bam, in minutes you safely made the journey. I actually used that to get both toons every FP in both continents when they were only lvl 20 over the course of a week.

That’s all for now, see what trouble you can cause and as always DOMINATE.

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>

In my previous article we shared a fairly common player type: the Alt-o-holic.  At times the pull of this addiction becomes so strong that simply playing one alt is not enough.  The altoholic finds themselves wishing to play multiple toons at once.  Well we, at Dominate, are here to help!

I want to introduce you all to an extreme form of Altoholism called Multi-boxing.  In the past this was typically called Dual-Boxing, but has in general changed to Multi-Boxing.  Seriously, once you have 2 toons running, why stop there! ?

Some of you that have been playing the game for a while have probably had exposure to Multi-boxing already.  Those that have experienced it on a pvp server arena, or battlegrounds most likely shudder just at the mention of Multi boxing.  This is because you are one of the thousands of victims of this cruel form of Darwinism, a true “Peace thru superior firepower” solution to pve and pvp.  For those unfamiliar with it let me paint you a picture before we go any farther.

Imagine being on a pvp server and innocently running out of Booty bay to go kill some Pirates.  You look around to make sure nobody is close to gank you, all is clear so you begin casting on a mob but suddenly about the time your spell hit it’s target POOF you are dead.  Wait, what just happened?  You spin the camera around a there stands 5 shamys all waving at you simultaneously.  You rub your eyes thinking your seeing things, they all move in one motion, maybe it’s a glitch because your pc is overheating…  While you sit there wondering what happened you whatch them all mount up and run off.

No you were not imagining it, You just got Multi Boxed!  Don’t despair, even the best player can’t overcome the sheer firepower that can be thrown out by a master Dual boxer.

Basic Set-up

There are various ways to set-up your computer(s) for what is called Multi-boxing.  That is, running 2 or more sessions of WOW at the same time. These will typically fall into one of four basic formats.

1. running multiple computers manualy
2. running multiple computers using keystroke clone software
3. running wow multiple times on one PC manually
4. running wow multiple times on one PC using keystroke clone software

Multi-boxing is a subject that can and does fill entire websites.  The set-up, macroing and software variations are far beyond what can be covered here.  For real detailed information, help and up-to-date set-ups I highly recommend visiting http://www.dual-boxing.com and http://www.multiboxing.com they have everything you need to know about how to get set-up to dual box like a pro.

• I have always in the past  used the 1st option listed.  It can be cumbersome to control and may not maximize output like the story example above, but it offers the benefits of tackling quests that require more than one character without having to look for someone to party with.
• For the last month I used option 3 with two WOW windows and I click back and forth.  Not very efficient and tedious to use, but I was up and running within seconds of logging on both toons.  There really is no “set-up” other than tiling your wow sessions like shown.
  
• Just this week I have begun the trial of using keyclone software, and while it has taken time to get going, now that I am figuring it out, it is the best way to go by far and worth a few days of research and set-up.  Having all your toons locked together and casting/healing/targeting with one keypress is jus thte best way to go.

Character pairings

The combinations and ways of pairing your Dual boxing toons are about limitless, and vary greatly based on the player’s desires and playstyle.  Usually dual boxers fall into one of two styles.

• Pure firepower
  This is a group like the one I mentioned earlier. Typically they are caster classes and rely on sheer dps to knock down anything in their way in one cast cycle, or 2 if the target is much bigger or elite.  Some people will mix caster classes like mages, priests, shaman, and warlocks, others will stick to one class.
• Balanced group
  These players will stick with two maybe 3 classes in their little party.  The group will typically have a melee toon and play more like a classic group meleeing mobs down, healing etc.  Shaman are a very common toon in these as they offer offensive casting, totems and healing in one class while still retaining some armor for defense, druids and paladins are also a great choice.  My preference is to run a Retribution Paladin lead with shaman in tow.  Plate armor and solid dps backed up by heals and caster dps plus totems..

Since I was a manual Multi-boxer in the past, I typically ran a Balanced group format.  My favorite pair by far has been pali lead and shamy follow.  The pali as we all know is a very strong solo class, add to that the shammy with totems, heal and offensive spells make a nice strong team.  Once they get up in levels they get reallt strong.  Consecrate, Chain lightning and Magma totem make a Brutal AOE grinding package from an early level.  I have run a shamy & Priest pair lately, and while strong, it does not compare to the Pali/Shamy

Now that I have a keyclone package working, I am experementing with the multi caster format and have a mage/priest pair up to lvl 6.  I know it is not much, but I have never leveled a mage past 20 so it is a start!  Talk about power though, it is something that cannot be appreciated until you try it!!  Now I am debating on making another pair of toons to try 4boxing for the 1st time.  However that requires additional accounts, and I will be covered in another article!

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>

Welcome back folks, we’ve got another budding author that has an interesting point of view to share with us, I’d like you all to welcome Wicked to our writing staff, go easy on him. -Agorg-

The Alt-o-holics’ Casual corner.

The time comes once in a while for us all to reflect back on our past and present and realize the sort of player we are and what we wish to be.

Hello. My name is Wicked, and I am an Altoholic.

The game of World of Warcraft has made exponential changes and advances since its early origin’s in November 2004. While patch 3.3 was looming menacingly over our heads, some people were scrambling to get toons leveled up, geared up, and tweaked to be ready to Dominate the new instances.  With good reason, each expansion and big patch has changed the various classes and their roles in the game, and at times it can be learning the game all over again, some people hate it, I happen to like it. You see I am a member of the vast legion of players known as: The Altoholics.

Some players live to raid. They get a single character to level 80 then spend every single moment online devoted to getting it better geared. They endlessly grind reputation, earn badges, farm mats and all the other mayhem associated with obtaining better gear. Their out of game time is spent tweaking stats in spreadsheets at work trying to find the best combination or gear or rotations to dominate the next raid.

Other players just get in game to hang out with like minded friends, do a little questing, and just generally have fun. They often do not have any particular goal in mind for their playtime beyond that simple pursuit.

Then there are the Altoholics. We are those guys that seem to play all day and night for days on end, yet only have one or two quest geared 80’s to our names. No fancy epic or badge gear, maybe not even a single epic flying mount. We rarely raid, yet we are always online playing one of countless toons.

We are the people that complain to blizzard that 10 toons slots is just not enough. Seriously how can you have one of every toon and still follow Gavin’s Advice of having a banker and mule with only 10 slots? It’s preposterous!

A typical altoholic routinely spends no more than a few days or a week on the same toon. The reasons for this can be as varied as the character names. A few common ones are;

• Some people toon hop because they are following DYS’s advice of never leveling outside of rested XP. That is probably the BEST way to maximize leveling efficiency in the game outside of the RAF program, more on that little gem in another article.

• After a time toon hopping like this players often fall into another trap as it were, though it really is more of an addiction. Who doesn’t like to go ding as often as possible, it is seriously addictive!!

• Others just flat get bored very easy. A Few days playing the same toon and we run by another class and go “Oh I have one of those, wonder what his rest xp and trade skills are like?”

• Some of us hop toon when we find guild mates, or friends of almost the same level. Or We hop to and alt to help another player or guildie and stay on the toon for a while afterwards

However at the root of every altoholic is a true love of this game universe that Blizzard has created for us. It brings us back for more until we fall asleep at our keyboards, and then has us daydreaming about it all day at work/school. It is the reason we fork out $15.00/month regardless of the economy. The love of the game has us searching for the next toon to play when we feel the tingle of boredom creeping in. The love of the game has guilds like Dominate resurrecting and reinventing themselves as outlined in Agorg’s Lifecycle of a guild article . The love of the game has altoholics like myself paying $25.00 per toon to change servers and move all of our horde alts to Fenris to join Dominate. Their format for the guild just makes sense, and any true altoholic can’t ignore a good guild when they see one.

Keep your weapons handy and, as always, DOMINATE

Alts are cool, chicks dig scars, DOMINATING is eternal.

Wicked of Dominate
<Fenris>