Alright, we can define it then in the context of how most people in AO would understand it:
Multi-logging: Running two or more instances of the client and have one person control them manually in order to do simple content or enable faster completion of content. E.g. have a doc on follow and alt+tab to push heal occasionally while you kill stuff with your soldier/shade/whatever or have your MP heal pet on /follow on a low level char. People have done this forever without every other thread on the forum being turned into a discussion about it.
Multi-boxing: Using third party software to significantly increase the effectiveness of multi-logging to the extent that it becomes game breaking. The keywords here are using third party software.
What innovation? What's the innovation that multiboxers have brought to AO that benefits the wider population and wouldn't have come without them? It is my oppinion that you're grasping at straws here. You're trying to apply logical reasoning to something you have no data to support.
It's left out because it's a fallacy. You can't predict the behavior of the economy without multiboxers. That's like you trying to predict the weather by sticking a finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. Neither you nor I can say anything consequential about the impact of multiboxers on the economy. You have no data what-so-ever to base anything on.
Again, you're giving the perception of providing logical arguments for benefits of multiboxers without having any data to support it.
Another thing: Who's to say prices going up on lootrights is a bad thing? Maybe someone would think to himself/herself "Hmm, can't afford a 1b credit DB3 bracer, better go do it myself with org/friends/random people". Maybe, just maybe, I'd get an extra person to team with when I wanted to do XX instance instead of him buying it because he doesn't have the credits to be lazy about it.
See random thought above.
Actually, we agree here. No amount of changed game mechanics will dissuade multiboxing. It'll most likely make life more difficult for everyone but multiboxers. That's why it's just something FC has to ban and then let GMs police it with a seperate petition category for a while. This might push some to just do it in PvM instances and I'm fine with people risking that as long as multiboxers are kept 100% out of PvP atleast. By all accounts Eve actually did just that. It's perfectly reasonable to ask FC to do the same.
Let's not kid ourselves here. There are not that many multiboxers around and I actually get better response time on my petitions than I used to from 2004 to 2009 when the game was much more active. If it's banned it'll probably die out pretty quickly. People don't go around exploiting in public just for laughs.
Yup.