The Man Who Would Solo a 40 Man Raid
This is NOT the story of those who made this video; it's the story of a mad-genius who watched this video and his plan.
Xzin, a World of Warcraft player, is contemplating graduating from "epic" to "ledendary." He already regularly pvp's by controlling 5 characters at once: one priest and four mages. I've seen one of his videos and I'm impressed. Note that he leveled them all up by controlling all five in instanced dungeons. Note that he has no tank, just mages and a priest. Xzin his his priest and his mages are Azin, Bzin, Czin, and Dzin. His guild: Army of Zin.
Zin is now planning to scale up his efforts to take down Ragnaros, the boss of Molten Core, all by himself. He'll need to buy 40 copies of World of Warcraft, by 40 monthly subscription fees (about $600/month), have enough computers to run 40 instances of the game, and use 40 monitors (most of them will be 8.4" monitors). He'll need a physical space that can accomodate all the equipment, and by his estimates, he'll need at least the equivalent of two T1 internet connections for bandwith, which you can't really get from residential dsl or cable. I'm guessing that the hardware and software costs will be more than $20,000.
This is also quite an interface challenge and micromanagement challenge. I think he plans to use one keyboard to controll all this and an assortment of (legal) macros. Just planning and executing a UI setup to accomodate this task is probably a full time job, in my opinion. Of course, he's already proven himself in controlling 5 characters at once in pvp and in instances, so perhaps it's just a matter of scaling up what he's already been doing for a year.
His gameplan premise is to have 35 of his 40 characters be mages, lol. He hopes that with high enough dps (that's damage per second for the jargon-impaired), he will be able to end the fight against Rag before the 120 second mark, when it gets a lot more hairy.
Xzin, to me, sounds like some kind of Batman character. I'm sure right now he's building his super computer setup deep in the batcave, illuminated by the glow of 40 monitors. He's wealthy enough that he can spend time and money on hobbies without being bound by the drudergy of the common man. His entrepreneurial spirit gives him the will to believe that "it can be done" and to actually stick with it until it happens. I don't know why such a totally ridiculous and silly thing should be so inspiring, but somehow, I think it is.
Incidentally, since it's proven extremely difficult to find anyone much of a clue who wants to pvp with me on ysera (horde), maybe I'll try the Xzin route myself on a smaller scale, lol.
Ok, for reference, here's the link to Xzin's post (those posts aren't saved very long though)
The text of his first post on the subject is below.
--Sirlin
Xzin said:
I posted this a little while ago and I wanted to get the take of the WoW community at large.For those of you who don’t like to take the time to read anything - I want to solo 40 characters at once. Meaning - I want to play an entire raid - by myself. This is not a statement about WoW - this is a challenge and I like challenges.On to the background:
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Q u o t e:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9024435764919244981
Rag has about 1.1 mil hit points, give or take a few hundred thousand. 35 mages, with buffs and decent gear and a 76 second kill = 14,473.68 dps. That means each mage is doing 413.53 dps, including resists, crits, etc. Not out of the realm of possibility with every major buff (Oxy head, ZG, etc).I wonder if I could solo rag with enough mages……..
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A bit of background. I solo 5 characters right now. At the same time. 4 level 60 Mages and 1 60 Priest on a PvP server. I have been doing this since release and I have been pretty successful with my setup over the last year or so. I pretty much destroy Alterac Valley fights but the whole time invested factor being the primary reason people advance in PvP is a very poor game mechanic but that is aside the point right now. Anyway -
I had a thought. I looked around and seeing that I already have much of the hardware, I thought to myself - what if I took it a step further and bought 35 more accounts and connected the computers needed to run 35 more accounts and I leveled up 35 more accounts to 60? A bit of a tall order but nothing outlandish. I leveled up at the same time, soloing instances all the way to 60. I can solo DM North (full tribute) as well as UBRS, most of LBRS, etc….. without any tanks - just mages and a priest. So I know this can be done, atleast leveling up 5 at a time, seven more times to get 40 level 60s.
This begs the question -
Could I actually “solo” 40 players at once? Would I want to? When I get some time off, I will most likely do so. Aside from details like the $600 per month fee and the hardware and networking requirements needed to perform said feat - I wanted to hear from the community about what you thought about this.
Note: I do not bot, I will of course NOT be using any third party programs, I have no intentions of selling or farming (nor would I make any money doing that anyway - and trust me, my time is worth far more than that). I doubt I would even PvP with this setup - it would be basically me soloing raid instances…. mostly just because it is a pretty unique challenge that I believe I can accomplish. Very few people multibox on a level that I do already, let alone take things to this level. So what about it?
What do you as a community think? Do you think I will meet great success or fail miserably? Any particular problems that I am not thinking about? Vael, Domo might be a tough fight, etc. Brainstorm with me - positive or negative I am interested in hearing what you have to say.
Xzin, Azin, Bzin, Czin, Dzin
May 30th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Dear Sirlin,
the font size of the quoted text is too small. Fix please!
Sounds very interesting. Micro to the max! (ok I’ll go shoot myself now…)
May 30th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
that’s crazy. He deserves a spot in guiness if he can pull it off.
May 30th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
That’s awesome. Though I wonder if simply renting out a whole internet cafe would be a cheaper option?
May 31st, 2006 at 5:07 am
I’m with you, David. I don’t know why this kind of thing fills me with so much joy, but it does. I love speed runs and self-imposed challenges of all kinds. Love Mongo Jerry and his fabulous Diablo2 naked punching sorceress and zero-kill pacifist runs. Love players who want to map out the farthest corners of gamespace.
It is almost an expression of scientific spirit, these things are like experiments that seek to uncover deep truths about the game. It’s like they are looking at the game as a math problem, and doing proofs. Of course this is just one way out of many to experience a game, but I think there is something pure and liberating about it. In a way there is something extremely *playful* about it! For Zin WoW is a toy, a challenge, a math problem, an engineering problem - does it go this way? does it go that way? what happens if I do this? gee I wonder if I can make it do X?
People often look down on optimizers, or min/maxers as power gamers who don’t stop to smell the roses, but I think in some ways they are being extremely playful on this higher level.
One of the things that is cool about what Zin is doing is the way he is carving right through the player to character identity relationship. This relationship is so deeply embedded into this type of game that we don’t even see it because it just feels natural, inevitable, but of course it isn’t. It’s one way among many to structure the player’s interaction with the game. It’s like he’s taking off the player/character helmet, the one that is welded so tightly to our heads, he’s just taking it off and sniffing around - hey there’s actually some air out here!
Go Zin!
June 1st, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Errrrrrrrrrrr …. good luck lol…
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:37 pm
[…] Read - The Man Who Would Solo A 40-Man Raid [Sirlin.net] […]
June 3rd, 2006 at 5:09 am
This should go down as one of the all-time amazing juggling acts of video game history. It makes me think that there should be a Guiness Book of Video Game World Records. I mean, ‘cmon… the processing required here??? I dunno’, maybe it’s actually easy or something.. FOR HIM.
I wish he’d do it on a stage somewhere. In Korea they have Starcraft battles on TV 24/7.. THREE CHANNELS OF IT. I think Blizzard should sponsor this guy in his endeavor.. though that might throw off the cool underground feel of the event.
Gives new meaning to ‘That guy is a machine!!’ :)
June 3rd, 2006 at 10:05 am
I kind of have a feeling Blizzard will discourage this guy from doing this. He’s going to map all these’s characters’ movements and commands to one or two keyboards, which is a violation of the Blizzard’s precious Terms of Service.
June 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Heya, I’d like to add my 2c here.
I think that this is possible, I’d just like to say that at first. I think, though, that something that was mentionned in the first few pages will have to be done. You are going to have to clear MC first with a proper raid grp (I.e 40 or at least 35, hehe, man grp) up to Raggy and just leave the trash and raggy to do. The reason I feel this is that the other boss fights all require different tactics that I don’t think you will be able to be successful with on your own. For example:
1:) Garr requires you to CC something like 10 elementals. The best way to do this is to have Warlocks on banish duty. Even though you may well have the reflexes, banish can break early and be resisted which means that a Hell of a lot of attention would need to be allocated to just them.
2:) Major Domo needs to have a load of mages sheeping. Again, sheep’s can be resisted and break early, not to mention the fact that any damage will break them (This is surprisingly easy for 1 person controlling 1 char to do).
3:) (I can’t remember his name…the one with priests) Cannot have his priests CC’ed and therefore you need a good amount of tanks, say 6-7.
Your main strategy, or rather advantage, seems to be that if you take a grp with 35 of one class, it becomes very easy (comparatively) to controll them. I don’t see you being able to take that kind of group through all of the bosses, however. I think you’d be in trouble with at least one of the bosses in a single class raid.
Good luck though, it sounds as though if anyone can do it, you are best equipped to be that person.
P.s. seeing as I play a warlock as my main, i strongly advise you to use Necrosis mod if you choose ‘Locks.
P.p.s It occurs to me that maybe what one could do is set up an extra screen to show info on all 40 characters. You would need to do a lot of fiddling but I’m sure you could end up with all your mods (Such as Necrosis) showing their respective cooldown’s etc, on that one screen. One to think over if nothing else, GL
June 4th, 2006 at 6:48 am
So he’s playing the Warcraft MMORPG like the Warcraft RTS. Brilliant!
June 4th, 2006 at 10:06 am
I think if I had the resources to play games on that level, with the free time implied, I think I’d go for a bigger game by going to a third world country and starting a war.
June 4th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
If you read the thread linked, you’ll see that he’s actually attempting to solo the whole thing, without having it cleared first by others. Various plans have been drawn up for the bosses. As I’m not a player of WoW myself, I’m not sure how it all works, but it seems that there may be kinks with a couple of the bosses, but there’s still some optimizim that it’s possible.
June 9th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
I’ve seen people group Domo’s adds and AOE dmg them down. I’ve seen the same for sulfuruon’s adds and gehennnas adds. I’ve however not seen the same for Garr’s adds but that could be interesting.
June 11th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
“I kind of have a feeling Blizzard will discourage this guy from doing this. He’s going to map all these’s characters’ movements and commands to one or two keyboards, which is a violation of the Blizzard’s precious Terms of Service.”
I doubt it. To run 5 characters requries 5 CD keys and 5 subscriptions, and he controls his current 5 with some mod/keyboard tinkering already. Given that multi-boxing has a precedent in other MMOs, I don’t think there’s anything in the Blizz ToS that forbids him from doing so. And since Magtheridon Alliance have cried about the Zins multiple times in multi-page threads in General, I think Blizz would have stopped him if he was violating their ToS.
June 17th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Here’s the DAoC version, Team Wizzy. Been around for ages.
http://teamwizzy.com
June 17th, 2006 at 10:46 am
It was mentioned on more than one occasion by several people that mapping multiple commands on one keyboard was a violation.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I definately want this guy to be able to clear Molten Core by himself, but don’t be too surprised if this turns into another gay/lesbian friendly guild incident.
June 19th, 2006 at 4:17 am
i think thats insane .. and blizz wouldnt do anything .. cuz this just encereges more ppl to buy 40 games .. and time a month .. imo they rili just want are money :P
June 24th, 2006 at 6:29 am
I’ve been on the receiving end of the ‘zin’s on Magtheridon.
It’s a pissoff having 4 mages arcane explosion you to death in harmony, but dude’s got a killer setup going for this.
Either way, kill the priest. =)
July 4th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Not really that hard except it’s impossible to really control 40 ppl meaningfully. He’ll have to use scripting to communicate controls and that is a violation of the TOS (perma-ban). I’d say he should really consider it before all the investments because all his accounts can get banned on someone’s whim. I have a simple python script that simultaneously runs 4 mages + shaman and it’s only 20 lines. It’s not a derivative of wowbot etc. I run 5 copies of wow on same machine (dual core athlon with 3gb ram).
Kind of boring too. A lot of work to level them all up too for one person.. then he’ll run into scripting challenges.. remember how hard it was to take down lucifron for the first time? with 40 relatively skilled players?
July 7th, 2006 at 7:20 am
Simple question….banish breaking early ..it is not always random is it? If it hasn’t ’stuck’ - like the warriors sunders- for ‘x’ ticks it is possible for a ranged attack or pet to break the banish. I have often been told that banish can’t be broken but this is not true if the banish is not yet ‘holding aggro’ , so to speak…then the warlock has to rebanish and each time it becomes easier to break….
i am expecting lots of comments on this…
July 7th, 2006 at 7:24 am
I think that might be true. I have seen banish break when the mob is attacked many times especially in heavy instances and it didn’t seem at all random then to me -pretty damn specific in fact.
July 7th, 2006 at 7:26 am
Isn’t it just breaking anyway ? I have been told banish can’t be broken
July 7th, 2006 at 7:29 am
No it’s true. I don’t know where the idea comes from that banish can’t be broken- why would that be the case when all other classes similar immobilisation spell, like sheep and sap, can be broken easily. Warlocks are so different and Blizz likes them more ?? Come one, even aggro can be broken. This is just a stupid myth of course it can be broken
July 7th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Where does that idea come from? No class has anything that cannot be broken. Aggro can be, sheep can be, why should the warlocks do better ? Cos Blizz likes them more ? Yes it can be broken!
July 12th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Well, unlike Sap, Sheep, Shackle, Seduce and so forth, a Banished mob can’t actually be damaged. Every “breakable” CC breaks on damage. You might be able to dispel the Banish debuff (I’ve never seen anyone try…), but you definately can’t cause the mob any harm while it’s on. I’m pretty certain the only way Banish can be “broken” early is by the random number generator.
As for why Warlocks have an apparently “unbreakable” CC, that has nothing to do with Blizzard liking them any more than other classes. In fact, I’d say it was quite the opposite. Hibernate works on Hunter pets, Sap, Seduce and Sheep work on all players… The only class that can actually be screwed with by Banish is the Warlock class itself.
Banish is basically like a hostile version of the Paladin bubble. Once it’s up the target is incapable of interacting with anyone, no one can interact with them, and its there until the timer runs out. The only difference is that the mob gets a periodic resist check, just like every other CC.
July 26th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Sorry if I’m 2 months late…
But whoa! Controlling 5 toons at the same time? Now, towards MC? Good luck mate, and do drop me a shout when you actually try it. I wanna see!!!
July 27th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Where does that idea come from
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August 10th, 2006 at 5:14 am
So, getting to this a couple months late (and after a gold seller to boot), I won’t comment on AoE some of the bosses’ adds down, but there’s 2 in particular which I think can’t be done with 35 mages (at least not by simply AE spamming). The first is Garr. He has 8 little elemental adds with him. Standard strategy is to have extra warriors tank some and warlocks banish some. Kill the tanked adds, kill Garr, finish off the banished adds. The problem with just AEing them all, is that the blow up when they get low on health. One explosion is survivable for the tanking warrior and rogues. Eight explosions on mages? There’s the knockback factor on the explosions too. If one goes early, that’s 35 flying mages going everywhere and who knows what the remaining 7 elementals will do then.
The other boss of concern is Golemagg. Big giant guy with 2 dogs. You can’t AE down the dogs. They won’t die as long as Golemagg is alive. Standard strat is to have warriors tank the dogs while everyone hoses Golemagg, when Golemagg goes down, so do the dogs. Dog control is important. Even with a balanced raid group, a dog getting loose is very bad since you can’t kill them.
All things considered, Ragnaros is probably the easy part of his endeavor. He’s a straight up tank and nuke fight (as long as you don’t get to the sons spawning). With all his dps being mages, he wouldn’t even have to worry that much about aggro. He just needs to plant his warrior up front and Rags will keep wailing on him. Mages getting knocked around into lava by Ragnaros’s ranged knockback thing will probably make things interesting, but all things considered it should go about as smoothly as that video.
August 11th, 2006 at 5:01 am
Gar is not hard…just have an invuln pot for each mage so right after you AOE them they all invuln and then it’s just kill Gar. Not hard.
In fact most bosses you could do this if it became an issue. Basically what you’ll need is tanking groups (1 tank and a few healers per tank) and then mages for you dps. The max tanks you’ll need would be 3 for Gol? Once you’re able to get a healing/aggro with the tanking groups it’s all about dps. It shouldn’t be tooooooo hard. But then again I don’t know specifically what shortcuts he has availbable to him.
Oh, and this will be a lot easier now that there are rolling ignites. 35 mages keeping that up and ticking would be awesome with the right gear or mage starting the ticks…good luck on aggro though.
August 11th, 2006 at 5:05 am
Nm…forgot the FR. It’s been a while since I’ve been in MC.
August 16th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Holy shit. I can’t even process the thought of controlling 5 computers at once, let alone 40.
This man requires extreme awardage for this couragous act of manpower, and nerdpower.
He will be the supreme ruler of WoW, everyone will fear him and no one will apose him, Gentlemen, He is a Warcraft god.
Praise him.
August 23rd, 2006 at 9:07 am
LMAO Get a life man, it’s just a game.
September 9th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
You, sir are an asshole when it comes to PvP.
I could care less what you do raidwise, and would be impressed and happy for you should you run a raid on your own….
However, stop this crap in BGs… seriously.
September 16th, 2006 at 3:57 am
Do it with 40 characters… but make it balanced classes/groups. No 35 mages and 5 priests. Some hunters, warriors, rogues, you get the idea :) Do that and I’ll be impressed.
September 19th, 2006 at 6:20 am
I wonder if there’s been any updates on his attempt… the thread no longer exists, after all. Did he try? If so, are his 35 other characters level 60 yet?
September 25th, 2006 at 9:32 am
This is the kind of post of yours that I really like David. If you ever lose your job as a games producer (har har, not likely) you should report on gaming culture full time.
October 1st, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Jim Miles: Thank you and if there were any money in reporting on gaming culture, I might make the switch. Lord knows I’m one of the few who just say what’s what with no regard to who might be offended, an approach that’s popular with the kids. ;)
I do not know what ever happened to Zin. Wherever he may be, I wish him well.
–Sirlin
December 21st, 2006 at 12:47 am
He is within the TOS nub, read the previous post. The GM’s applaud him.
I dont see him being able to recover from the knockbacks though on Rag. Chain casting spells, assisting, following yes … but not moving 3 guys, then 3 more guys then 5 guys back into a good position. If that happens he will loose focus on his 5 mains and the dps will degrade.
I would like to see an onyxia run first,
December 22nd, 2006 at 2:06 am
There’s only 26 letters to the alphabet. Ever thought about that? You’ll get in some serious nameing-trouble for your little avatars…
January 4th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
I think you’ll run out of names for the characters at 26 ;)
January 6th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Beacause, of course, the player can’t do something ridiculous like using numbers or naming them “aa”, “ab”, “bb”; that’s just stupid.
February 22nd, 2007 at 2:20 am
“Do it with 40 characters… but make it balanced classes/groups. No 35 mages and 5 priests.”
Somehow I have a feeling that, due to the mass imbalances present in WoW, that is not the best idea.
April 5th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
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July 9th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
He’s actually in a guild called Exiled. I’m suprised at how far people will go in level/gear based MMORPG’s. What happened to the days of just having fun, or playing it as a hobby? I can understand someone doing this in a skill-over-gear and level type game like Guild Wars though.
July 21st, 2007 at 9:41 pm
[…] you know,… many sick people are out their, but some are really in another league of sickness. Planing to play 40 characters (is it called characters in WoW?) at once to take down a boss (is it called boss in WoW?) is IMHO really sick. No, not the money he needs for the setup. That’s something which I call adequate if he has the desideratum. But the time it will take to level all those characters… sorry, but at some point I would really think about my life and if I really want to get such a challenge on… sick World of Warcraft addicts… […]
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Rag in under 2mins with 35 mages will be easy. I was in a guild on the EU realms called The Silver Horde, who along with many of the other larger guilds on the server organised a Rag run with 1 Warrior, 1 Priest, 1 Druid, 1 Paladin, 1 Warlock and 35 Mages and downed him in 67 seconds. That was before Nax was released too, so T2 or AQ gear was the highest stuff we had.
35 Shatter Spec’d Mages, spamming Frost Bolt. Although doing it all yourself is still a task.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
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December 11th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Do you think it would be fun to have an MMO wherein people could do this sort of thing? Not necessarily a group of fourty, but have control of several characters in the way he does in PvP? That seems like it could be interesting, if difficult to coordinate/macro and it might not be fun for a lot of people.
February 13th, 2008 at 2:41 am
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