A cloud verison of EQ.

Every major tech company is getting into cloud gaming. Playstation with PSNow. Microsoft with xCloud. Google with Stadia, Nivida with Geforce Now....etc. Anyway, you get the point. The Netflix for gaming is coming.

One of the more interesting things about cloud gaming is that it completely removes any form of cheating. Everything is done server-side, the client can only imput commands. All the data is completely shielded from the client, hacking on cloud gaming platforms is non-existent.

I think it would be interesting for EQ and MMO in general. The amount of time developers have to spend to prevent cheating and to deal with customer complaints regarding cheating, could now be invested in the actual game.

I can only imagine the man hours it would take to convert this 1999 piece meal code into today's cloud technology.

wouldn't input cloning still work?

Well, I'm not a game developer.

But Playstation managed to make half their PS3 and PS4 catalog available on the cloud through PSNow. And Nvidia managed to make hundreds of PC titles available on the cloud.

I'm just saying, this might not ever happen for EQ, but it doesn't seem to require developers to rewrite the whole game. It might be more convoluted than just putting your game on Steam, but it doesn't seem to require that many resources either.

What is input cloning? Like a broadcaster sending a single keyboard command to multiple PC? Sure, cloud gaming doesn't stop boxing, but it completely stops actual hacks, like warping, aimbots, etc...none of the game data is accessible to the user.

It's the problem that can no longer be named, yes, sending multiple key commands to multiple accounts (same PC or not). Boxing shouldn't be hardstopped with either IP blocks or one account per PC, however, I consider third party programs that automate or clone commands to be cheating. By using them, the player is not tabbing between accounts to issue unique commands to each character. Boxing is one thing, but using 3rd party software to automate, or even clone commands, is another.

No offense but I don’t think you understand what “cloud” is or why companies are moving to it. If you want to understand more about why games or EverQuest more specifically is susceptible to hacks, please read up on Client-Server architecture. You’ll want to learn more about authoritative servers design.

Even if all of EQ servers were lifted and shifted to AWS, that doesn’t eliminate hacks.

Lifting the client to a cloud system would eliminate hacks. Not sure anyone has done anything like this with a client-server game though. It would also prevent things like gamparse or gina or custom ui's since you wouldn't have access to the file system. Probably not a viable solution for Everquest.

I love the arguments that going to cloud removes hacks. Candycrush, Farmville, PokemonGo are all cloud based games and are all easily hacked.

Also when you say cloud, what do you really mean? Moving the EQ servers to AWS or Azure? Migrating the client to a browser based system?

And since when do dev's take care of customer service requests from cheating? It's like the argument where they develop a new character model and you complain about how that time could of been spent fixing XYZ Bug. You do realize there are multiple people who work on this game all with different roles and responsibilities. One guy doing one thing does not mean someone else can't do another thing.

Forget all that. I want Everquest as a late 1990's style Virtual Reality game. You know the kind with all of the various controller attachments on your head, hands and feet. In fact, if you play a small race-- forget scaling the room size-- you have to play with the feet controllers on your knees.

Streaming games over the internet looks like crap. Why do you people enjoy digital artifacts so much.

I play pokemon go, and quite a bit is still client side. It is actually impossible to completely lift it to the cloud since it relies on GPS. and that is what is being "hacked". People aren't able to hack things like items in the game, they can just spoof their location, and or use bot accounts to scout locations.

The OP isn't talking about games themselves being hosted on cloud servers, he is talking about cloud gaming platforms like GeForce Now etc.

Cloud gaming removes hacking and cheating, because the client no longer has access to any of the game data. All you personal computer receives from the game is a stream of images, not any different from a Netfflix movie. And all your personal computer sends is which buttons you push. The actual game is completely shielded from the client, there is not a single file any hacker can access.

Google's presentation 2 days ago about their cloud service has made this very clear, hacking and cheating is completely gone from games that run on their cloud servers. This is a major advantage.

I love customers like this:

I have no clue what I am talking about, but you should totally do this thing that I read about on the interwebs. I understand that you can barely keep it operating as it is, but completely redoing it shouldn't be that difficult; I mean the article only took 5 minutes to read; so you'll have this done by what, tomorrow?"

Those are games that have a client (your browser or phone) and store data on a server elsewhere, same as Everquest.

Want more lives in Candycrush, roll your clock forward, that works because the entire game live on your phone, not in the cloud.

I mean technically you could still hack them, but it would be monumentally harder. I don't think any but the most daring and skilled users would hack into a google cloud server, and I doubt they would do so over a video game, aside from trying to snag something for RMT

They are just going to steal your account instead, that’s the easier option.

I feel like many people may be underestimating whate the input lag for something like this could be too, but I haven't tried cloud gaming myself enough to know what the capabilities are.

Yeah, that would be a more sensible thing.