In general, dedicated melee DPS characters like rogues, berserkers, and monks are among the more difficult classes to use effectively in a boxed party, since they require both frequent hotkey input and frequent position-checking to ensure they are still in range of their foe. What follows is a discussion of the challenges involved in making each class work in a boxed party, along with some commonly used methods for meeting those challenges. Players seeking to optimize their boxed parties typically take the required input for each class into consideration, and form parties accordingly.

Several factors require consideration.ĭifferent classes in EverQuest require different amounts of user input on average in order to keep them functioning effectively during a fight.

Combined with the ability of each character to have one mercenary companion, using boxing as a means to form a basic group has never been easier.ĭesigning and operating a boxed party is a strategic challenge in itself, even before any actual questing or combat occurs. The advent of Free-to-Play has increased the financial accessibility of boxing considerably. Having three or more meant dealing with a steadily increasing price of play. When EverQuest was a strictly subscription-based game, boxing two or more of one's own accounts required a higher monetary cost for the player in question: having two accounts meant paying for two subscriptions (and two sets of expansion packs, if desired).

Real-world monetary price has traditionally been an issue faced by boxers, and sometimes argued as a limiting factor on its popularity. The release of third-party tools such as EQWindow (which bypassed the client's limitations and allowed EverQuest to be run in a window), and the eventual addition of an in-built windowed mode for the game, greatly expanded the accessibility of boxing from a technical standpoint, enabling users to run two or more instances of the EQ game client on a single computer and quickly alt-tab (or click) between them.

Since the earliest versions of the EQ client did not play nicely with alt-tabbing, lacked a windowed mode, and were fairly demanding on the hardware (and Internet services) widely available at the time, boxing was not convenient in EverQuest's early years, although two-boxing using two side-by-side computers (a common enough tactic among gaming couples and college friends) worked about as well as it ever has. Boxing has a long history in many MMORPGs, and EverQuest is no exception.

Dual boxing programs l22