Boxing

[Throttle]

Well, here is how I would apply logic to the matter.

Boxing was possible on Live. It wasn't common at all in the beginning and few had the means to do it, let alone considered the possibility, but that is irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion. What is relevant is that at some point well before EQ was considered a dying game not worth playing, some people boxed. Once computer technology started to develop at the insane rate that it did in the early 2000s, two-boxing became a possibility for just about anyone, and it was common knowledge that some people did this. It was no longer a case of most people not knowing it was possible or not being able to run two instances of the game, and I would venture to claim that there was very few people who wanted to box but could not do it due to the monthly fee. In other words, almost anyone who wanted to box could do so.

The prevalence of boxing grew as the game started to lose players. From expansion to expansion, more and more players started boxing two or more characters. It was directly proportional to the size of the playerbase, and when the playerbase was so healthy that noone had to box due to population-related limitations, very few did so. Once that was no longer the case, more and more players did.

For all intents and purposes, an emulated server is the exact same thing as a Live server where the playerbase has dwindled to whatever size the emu server is. If a Live server has a population that fluctuates between 100 and 300 players throughout the day, you will find a lot of players boxing because they see it as a necessity. When there are three or four clerics online within your level range in the entire game, the gameplay must necessarily be different from what one would find on a server with 5000 players.

People will want to two-box when it becomes necessary. When it isn't, few will do it. There was a time when it wasn't necessary, and few did it. It then became necessary, and more people did it. This is a fairly rudimentary level of logic: if this server's gameplay environment was such that noone felt the need to two-box, few would do it. If it was allowed, the frequency of boxers would be directly proportional to the amount of players, and in the unlikely but theoretically relevant case that the server grew to the size of a Live server in the early 2000s, one could reasonably assume that the prevalence of boxing would diminish to the level that it was on such a Live server. Perhaps slightly more common since this is free to play after all, but with a lesser impact on the game as noone would be able to box three or more characters like they could on Live.

In other words, if Project 1999 allowed two-boxing it would be exactly as common as the game warrants it, no more and no less.

Addendum:
Before you step up to dispute the proposition of two-boxing, take a moment to consider a few things. Do you disagree because of some personal perception of how the game should be? In past experience, has boxing proved to be such an obstacle to your enjoyment of a server that you would disallow at the expense of the players to whom it is a necessity? Is your personal preference more impotant than those players whose gameplay is compromised by this rule? There are some, like me, who do not play on this server because two-boxing is not allowed. Is that better than the alternative?

Someone (Tantalar) once said that two-boxing players were infringing on his gameplay. I say that there can be no greater infringement than excluding potential players, or compromising the gameplay of existing players, by disallowing them the means that make the game playable for them. His statement may have been valid if we were discussing whether or not to place an epic weapon vending machine in each city for those who couldn't bother doing the quest, but since boxing was entirely possible and not that uncommon on Live, and has been a staple feature and proven necessity throughout EQEmu history, I would argue that a different reasoning is necessary.