The Man Who Would Solo a 40 Man Raid
Posted: 2006-06-05 11:38pm
This guy is crazy. And far too rich for his own good.
The Man Who Would Solo a 40 Man RaidDavid Sirlin wrote: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.