One player not only managed to get 1,954 achievements (157 more than the maximum), but did so with five different characters: Ataxius, Ataxas, Ataxus, Ataxxus, and Ataxa. They each have an identical set of achievements because of an absurd computer game delivery system known as multiboxing. Multiboxing is where you use several computers simultaneously to trick the game into thinking you're five different people. It's similar to another trick you might try as a hardcore gamer -- convincing Pizza Hut you're an entire soccer team.
How Much Time Would This Take?
If you or someone you love has three extra nipples, then you already know how difficult it is to play with five different things using only two hands. Simultaneously playing five Warcraft characters turns a relaxing diversion into a stressful, full-time job. A single wrong keystroke and suddenly one of your paladins is eating cupcakes instead of crusader striking. That doesn't sound like a big deal, but with the amount of diabetes in your body, looking at a picture of dessert is more than enough to make your foot fall off.
The point is, multiboxing isn't exactly a time saver. Even if you're swinging five swords at a time, it takes more than just years of killing monsters to get all the WoW achievements. You need to research where countless rare monsters and pets appear, then stake out those locations for days, hoping to get lucky. You have to pretend to fish -- just stand there and fish -- for over 500 hours. You have to schedule hundreds of all-night sessions with 24 actual humans in order to kill complicated bosses. And trust me -- you don't end up moving to World of Warcraft because of your honed people skills. Communicating with MMO players is like trying to speak sign language through a hole in a bathroom wall: Everyone on the other side of it is confused, is angry, or only came here to suck.
Being the top five characters in this game represents years of work. When you read about some woman who forgot she owned a baby because she was distracted by her shaman's herbalism skill, she isn't even close to this. It almost defies science -- isn't human blood supposed to congeal when it sits still for that long? Plus, it's hard to control five guys at a time while insect colonies are sending foragers in every direction to retrieve chunks of you. Let me try to put it another way: In the time it took to win 105,000 Warcraft achievement points, this person could have become fluent in Icelandic and used it to watch a can of Icelandic beans expire seven times.