Cloud Computer with Everquest over Shadow.tech

Heya,
today I came over a suggestion which was first very interesting. But here is a question for the devs: Is EQ running via a cloud computing system like offered by Shadow.tech. I never tested EQ under such a system but I heard that VMs could be problematic and I assume that the 8 cores and 1080GTX power is passed through a kind of VM mechanic.

Any dev here can say something to that?

Not a dev but officially it is against the rules to play the game on a VM. Shadow.tech creates a VM for you and streams the screen over the internet. So you would be installing the game on a VM. Therefor against official rules.

Isn't that for the progressions servers to prevent boxing? Why should a VM be against a rule on live? This is at least anachronistical in todays times if that would be. I searched the whole website and found no bylaws which are saying this. Btw I only assume it is a VM which is done by Shadow.tech. How they want to provide the Power of a Nvidia 1080GTX and a 8-core is not clear at all at moment. They say it is a dedicated system with 8-core/12GB Ram and an own connection software and behind a real Win10x64.

Any viable comment from GM/dev-side please?

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ssion-server-faq-coming-march-16-2018.247755/

So it is ANY server you can't play on VM.

No, it's not even about EverQuest. It's about a hack on Planetside 2 where you could easily see everything in game when running inside a VM. Since the launchpad is universal to all games, it ended up being applied to all games.

From what I could read (and how everyone else does it) shadow tech is just big servers with a bunch of VMs. You spin up a VM and give the client those resources when they are connected and when they are not someone else is renting the same CPU/GPU, but using their own VM copy of windows.

Now I agree banning VMs is dumb, but apparently people exploited crap.

mh.. thank you Fanra, but no real info about VMs inside and it is a progression server information only, like I said - that is known to me for TLP.

Exploits are only possible if the security is bad - so every open exploit would help the developer to remove that exploit. That is the last years the usual method to work with in the security business. If even a VM makes problems while the whole world spins around VMs esp. in Online-Computing then something is seriously critical from the security side. This is nothing which should lay in the hands of a customer.

But again: I see reason, but no official statement about life servers or about possibility. Exploits are there without having a VM and there was a bann-wave 2018 for that. So what? And the VM exploit is surely possible because you have on your own VM admin rights and can access it from outside. This is not possible in a cloud computing environment. You see only your system.

This offer is really interesting and I think about to exchange my computer system for a cloud one if that is working. It would save a lot of money.

Has anybody a link with an explicite information about VMs and Everquest?

Someone already posted it, but in the TLP FAQ the official stance was listed as:

“And as a refresher, doing any of the following on ANY server may result in action being taken against your Daybreak Account:

Unattended Gameplay: Any method that lets a character take actions while you’re not at your keyboard.
Playing on virtual machines.”

Now do they ban people on other servers than TLP? No clue. I know people have played on Linux using Wine in the past. But the only official message we have is you can not use VMs to play Everquest.

Which is 100% the wrong way to solve whatever problem they think VMs cause.

It is possible that the way shadow tech layers the VM and OS is more at a machine level (which you would want for performance) and to DBG it would appear as a normal machine, as opposed to someone running VMware or Virtualbox. But as far as I can tell the only way we have to tell would be to try it and see what happens. Could try a customer support ticket, but likely they just point to the “No VM” rule.

You wouldn’t even know there was a no VM rule unless you dig around the TLP forums. So personally enforcing a ban on anyone that isn’t circumventing true box rules is pretty stupid.

If you are saying the quote I gave is for Progression servers only, you are incorrect. I deliberately pointed out the quote says ANY server. ANY means all, means every single server that runs EverQuest for Daybreak:

This quote was right after the quote pointing out what is not allowed on Coirnav, which is what the Daybreak post was about. So first Daybreak said three things that are not allowed on Coirnav, then they followed it up to remind everyone that there are four more things that are not allowed, not only on Coirnav, but ANY (ALL) EQ servers.

Doubtful.

... Do you people understand how a VM works? Just saying.

System virtual machines or process virtual machines? Not that how they work matters for the fact that DBG has put a blanked “You shall not use VMs”. I am 90% sure you can set up a machine that appears identical to a non VM, but the OP wanted to know what DBG has said about it.

I personally see using VT-D on a server and spinning up OS’s to individual thin clients as very different than a home user running Windows and then running another OS through a VM. But outside of the “true box” rule set....a computer is a computer and what hardware I’m using shouldn’t matter to DBG. If someone is exploiting someone, you ban them.

You don’t ban AMD GPUs because you like Nvidia (little extreme but you know). Someone running Linux with a lisenced copy of Windows in a VM should be no different than the person that just installs Windows on the same machine.

As far as the programs you run on that computer are concerned, it is the same. That's why I was laughing when I read this thread.

It's like having a rule of "you must only use your right hand to play this game". The only way they would ever know you used your left hand to play was if you told them because the keyboard certainly doesn't tell them you used your left hand. It's laughable at best.

Also, virtual machines are growing in popularity, and a great number of gamers in the future (that can't afford a gaming rig) will be using virtual machines to play their games. So, it's a bad policy for any company that wants to make the most money possible.

I don't play on any TLP servers, never did, never will. So whatever is written, discussed, and/or debated on the Time Locked Progression Servers forums is irrelevant to me because I never had a reason to go there until you gave the URL to bolster your argument.

My question is: Is there anywhere else that this is stated specifically that is not tucked away in an arcane section of DBG?

I went to https://www.everquest.com/home and searched everywhere for a link to rules and regulations, found none but did see a FAQ link (https://www.everquest.com/faq). I went there, clicked the Expand All button and proceeded to read what was written.

I didn't have much hope when I saw the answer to the 4th question on the first topic of THE GAME:

4. How many levels are in the game? Max level is currently 100.

Ooookay. Maybe they are listed in Support? Clicked the Support button on the top menu bar which went to https://help.daybreakgames.com/hc/en-us

Clicked the icon that had EVERQUEST as the title which took me to https://help.daybreakgames.com/hc/en-us/categories/204220948-EVERQUEST

In the search bar, I entered "rules" and of the 3 results displayed, Everquest Rules of Conduct seemed appropriate. Clicked the link and it whisked me to https://help.daybreakgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/230629007-Everquest-Rules-of-Conduct

I read everything but found nothing, so did a Find (Ctrl+F) and searched for "virtual" and 1 listing for it was referencing virtual . The results for "vm" or "machine" were 0.

On the Everquest search bar, I entered "virtual" and the results had 2 links:

1. What things are not allowed on Phinigel? (I don't play there and care less about TLP, irrelevant link)
2. Everquest Rules of Conduct

IF you are going to enforce a rule that pertains to EVERYONE on EVERY SERVER then state so where it would be reasonably expected to be found. Like at the Rules of Conduct?

There's a difference between software not needing to make special accommodations to run in a virtual environment and preventing said software from purposely looking for and finding differences and/or configuration settings which give away that is is running in a virtual environment. Your typical commercial products are easily detectable and while it's not impossible Shadow is doing something unique it is doubtful that it would be worth the costs for a business based on hosting gaming PCs.

The real issue is whether they care enough or have the time to do anything about it.

No one disagrees with you...your also not going to find an “official” stance on 3rd part software and other tools outside of the same post. But that post is the most current (March 2018) information that exist related to the subject.

looking at the price, you could just find 2nd gen i5's at your local electronics recycler or on ebay for cheaper

Try to explain that to the large consumer market that is the target of the forth coming next-gen console machines that are essentially going to be gaming-over-IP machines. Yes. It's coming. No. I won't buy .. er get the subscription service for one, but there's enough people that will do it that the industry is actually going to try it. Point is, no matter how stupid product-as-a-service is, there's plenty of consumers out there that will subscribe to it sadly.

I’m guessing the actually target is people who want to play the newest games at max settings in 4K or as close as they can, without dropping $1k a year on GPUs (while GPUs are still trying to keep up with resolution and VR, this will die down eventually).

For playing EQ you can probably find someone that will give you a desktop just to get rid of it that would handle the game lol.

Oh if you don't have a good gaming computer and want to get into gaming some of the newer titles or you're an off and on again gamer I actually think this service might be pretty good. If we're talking about everquest though it runs well on a 2nd gen i5 without a video card, add an ssd and you've got a system that can do everquest just fine and then you get a recycled monitor and you're ready to go.

4k gaming still sucks IMO, you're better off going with 1440p if you're really into that you get a better refresh rate (im not I use a gtx770 to play newer games on a 4th gen i7 im a 1080p gamer) but for 4k gaming I think this service would be not-bad to good. Most people sit a proper distance away from their screen where the difference between 1440p and 4k might be hard to notice.

Most people will benefit more from buying a good quality 1080 or 1440 monitor with nice color than buying a 4k monitor.