Having more than one account is an incredible force multiplier, even without any form of multiboxing. Being able to craft on one monitor while you play or pos ton the other one is absolutely incredible.
Is it allowed?
Yes, as long as you don’t use any form of input broadcasting to duplicate commands to both accounts you are allowed to have a second account. I have had two accounts since Legion, and I’ve only ever used it to craft or run post scans while I play on the other account, with zero incidents.
Now, I would agree with people who think this is unethical, in the sense that 2 accounts or more, is an advantage that other players cannot get without paying for a second account themselves. It definitely makes for an uneven playing field. It’s still one of the most efficient things you can do, and the sheer power is such that if you care about
Setup cost
With the addition of the starter edition the initial setup cost is cheaper than ever, you just need to pay for one month of game time. This is equivalent to 210k gold on NA and 300k gold on EU if bought through the token. I would suggest this makes sense as long as this is less than 20% of your gold total, as then it will not impact your gold making operation significantly.
The other setup cost is related to hardware, and sadly there’s no getting around the fact that you need strong enough hardware to run two WoW instances at the same time.
Testing the setup
With the starter edition you can test out if it works with no cost at all. Simply make another WoW starter account on your Battle.net account. There’s a simple method to run two wow clients with different options from the same installation. In your WoW folder there should be a config.wtf file. Simply make a copy of it called config_2.wtf. Then you make a shortcut to your wow executable file, and in the target pane at the end you add -config config_2.wtf, as in the screenshot below. Then when you run wow from this shortcut it will save graphics settings specifically for that setup. This way you can run your second account on the lowest settings possible to save system resources.
What do you use your second account for?
I have all my AH bankers on my second account, as well as a few crafters. I craft stuff like enchanted intermediate materials for legendaries, inks and darkmoon cards, enchanting shuffles, vendor shuffles. Anything that takes a long time and can be done AFK by clicking create all works really well. In classic I used it to craft all the intermediate materials for Goblin sapper charges, as well as the finished sappers. Just running long auctioning scans will free up a good amount of time as you can just go do something else until it’s time to scroll wheel away.
Do I need SL?
I have Shadowlands on my Second account. This increases the cost by a significant margin, but it’s worth it if you are going to be in legendaries. getting access to the enchanted materials, shadowghast ingots and a dedicated account for cancel scanning will make back the gold you spend on Shadowlands very quickly. It does require some more setup though, including leveling to 50, so just test it out without it first and then buy it if you feel like you need it. This is the first expansion where I actually bought the expansion for my second account, so usually it is not strictly speaking needed.