

This quickly becomes impractical with an increasing number of computers, so a keyboard demultiplexer may be used, which sends the signals from a single keyboard to several computers or virtual machines on one computer. Players may also use multiple computers, each with their own keyboard and mouse. Multiboxing may be as simple as running two instances of the game on one computer (each logged into a separate account) and switching between them. While multiboxing, the player does not necessarily have to spend time looking for a group to join in an adventure with, but rather can repeatedly participate in content without the risk of someone leaving in the middle of the encounter. Rather than require the collaboration and cooperation of multiple human players, people who multibox instead rely upon themselves to control multiple game characters and utilize their own abilities as a replacement for human cooperation. Many people find the additional strategy of multiboxing to be very challenging and, with those additional efforts, very rewarding.

Overall, Multiboxing can be considered a play style choice. Sometimes it is a matter of convenience, having permanent access to a character that can buff, heal or resurrect the main character. People may enjoy the additional challenge it can bring, as well as being able to tackle more difficult monsters by themselves.


In 2018 The Mud Connector listed 955 MUDs of which 605 allow multiplaying. On MUDs (the predecessors of MMORPGs) multiboxing is easy to accomplish on a single machine using a MUD client, and the practice is generally called multiplaying. Often, the number of accounts used is reflected in the term used: dual-boxing or two-boxing for two characters, three-boxing for three etc. Multiboxing is considered to be difficult to do well without practice, as it involves adapting to problems in real-time. This can either be achieved by using multiple separate machines to run the game or by running multiple separate instances of the game. Multi-boxing or multiboxing refers to playing as multiple separate characters concurrently in an MMORPG. For the media audio equipment, see Mult box.
