Machine Wars 2019 (Mangler)

Selo > Mangler

You're supposed to do the lords work on level 1 cleric burner accounts

"hours on-line"


I'm sure that bot software is very tired.

Being semi serious for a second, I think this is why some folks are peeved to the point where they start threads on this issue every few days or so. Its not a matter of someone having the camp at all times, its a matter of camp monopolization by one entity with bot software, which is so obvious that it should have had a stop put to it by now. Not only did it not have a stop put to it, but someone training them got suspended. Keep in mind this is not a defense of training them, but it shows the one sided-ness of the situation.

The other point to be made here is: Is this the nostalgia DBG is marketing with these TLP servers? I dont remember Tron x12 DPS racing mobs I was killing in 1999, or buying Krono to purchase the item I want off his merchant mule.

While botting should be policed and it is frustrating to see the camp you want always occupied by the same person, I am really curious what version of EQ you guys played in the past where all the high money spots weren't permacamped and there was no RMT going on. I keep hearing this isn't how it used to be and that runs contrary to my own memory of things.

I don't think anyone is saying that there wasn't RMT going on back in 1999 - but it was nothing like is going on now.

I understand that overall game knowledge is way higher know and that simply more people know about the bounty that Hill Giants and Ice Giants reap, but in general, back in 2000, you could still, from time to time, get access to some of these camps. Today, that's really not the case. And even if you do...odds are, there's a group of mages with magical timers pick-hopping exactly when your mob pops to snipe it away.

when i reported thatsmydaddy on agnarr, it took them two weeks to "investigate" and ban wave him and all his customers. 11-15k a day for hill giants? wow thats terrible and not worth the drama and spotlight.

but as i've said thatsmydaddy just picked up and continued doing the same thing on coirnav lol profiteers gonna profit

I could write up a short novel on how these are very different . I feel most objective readers dont need a Tolstoy-esque trilogy on the topic to understand how the two eras are not similar in impact, so I'll summarize instead.

The TL;DR on this is:

Current era:
This is now part of the game, is perfectly legal, KSing, RMT and all.

1999 EQ
What you remember was NOT part of the actual game system and RMT was a ban-able offense. KSing was against the rules and was arbitrated by guides.

Equivocating these two is laughable. The Nostalgia being marketed here, doesnt exist.

It was actually way way more common before the first crack down, we were all selling things on eBay thinking that it was the future. NPR and Wired were running articles about this brave new world of buying and selling virtual goods. It was everywhere.

What changed is the wide eyed naivety that many people had back then. Oh and computing power costs.

High-speed internet connections between China and the US didn't exist 20 year ago, either. Running a box army of 24 mages from China would have been physically impossible.

For sure you are correct - people were RMT'ing like crazy - but perhaps it just seems like they were more discreet about it in the past for fear of being banned.

Nowadays you quite literally have box armies that are playing non-stop, for 16+ hours a day hitting keystrokes on every character repeatedly at very precise intervals and we're to believe they're not automating game play? In addition to that, they're coming on the forums to essentially gloat about it.

DBG is either hamstrung with lack of GMs to look into this stuff or they just don't care. They tell us to "be patient"...but I suspect that we'll be waiting for a while.

And yet with all these threads about it. Everyone is still playing, still paying, oh and TLP's revenue are growing year over year. So it must not be that big of a problem or issue for people. What incentive is there for DBG to act?

I'm gonna be honest, my own personal experience with botters and AFK-campers on Mangler has been extremely minor annoyance at best.

Like I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to camp IGs in Everfrost or HGs in Rathe but that's about the extent to which it has actually affected me. I've had Efreeti camp groups on a few occasions and that's the only other place I've seen this really be an issue. Seafuries/AC seem to be usually camped by one or more actual people.

I assume Quillmane is probably locked down? That hasn't come up for me yet.

It feels far blown out of proportion, even factoring in for the forums rage multiplier.

I'm not saying it's not a problem that it happens and that it shouldn't be addressed, just... it certainly is not at a level where at has ever made me consider not playing.

You're right in that it certainly depends on what you're looking to do. You can avoid them by staying away from the areas / camps you mention.

The best way I find is to get into a raiding guild and then you can bypass needing much of the crap these people horde.

It doesn't annoy me to the point where I don't consider playing anymore because there really are no alternatives. Once Pantheon comes out in 2029, I'll certainly be switching over to that.

All the complaints seem to be coming from people who apparently want to perma-camp Ice Giants, Hill Giants or Efreeti themselves but either can't bring the DPS necessary to win or are just too lazy to do it.


I know that back on Ragefire that they had guides trying to arbitrate camps and enforce kill stealing when someone realized that the game mechanics had been geared to DPS race, they hadn't enforced kill stealing or camps for years on any live server for years and all that was happening was that things were being left to a combination of low ping so that whoever can get the first point of damage off can claim the kill and the whims of whatever guide or GM is on location who has to rely on "common sense"

All the schadenfreude attitude against players who prefer the integrity of the game system be maintained has no root in logic whatsoever.


For instance: theres a difference between being lazy, and being a non p2w player.

I actually wish this were a "git gud" issue, and not a wallet warrior issue. It might actually be fun.

I'm going to make a video soon when I get around to it visually displaying my entire setup and talking about all the misconceptions between legit and non-legit boxing, but I have some time right now to do forumquesting so I'll throw in my 2 cents.

#1. For all the people complaining about getting suspended for training big boxers and thinking they do nothing to big boxers because of 1 sub vs 12+, the reason you are more likely to be suspended for training big boxers is because there is a much higher chance of a GM being physically present there while you are doing it. Big boxers actually get watched more than you think. When I used to box and farm items, I was watched like a hawk by GM's. On Agnarr when I held base Efreeti for the first month and half of classic, I had GM's visiting me on a daily basis, one of which would literally come in there and afk with recording on while he went on his lunch break multiple times a week. I never cared that GM's watched me, because anyone who has ever played with me or been guilded with me know I box 100% legit, and the upside to it was that almost EVERY person who trained me would get a suspension, because there was always a good chance a GM was watching me and saw the training in the process.

As far as the 1 sub vs 12+ thing, they do not care about this at all. I know a lot of the big box farmers just from competing with them through the different TLP's in DPS races, and most of them have received bans at some point in time, you just don't hear about it when it happens.

#2. The community over the last several years has been just as much to blame as DBG themselves when it comes to how slow they are at banning the actual cheaters. On phinny, the first true-box TLP server, the vast vast majority of boxers were completely legit. Sure, you had some cheaters but they were a very small minority. The problem was that the community is REALLY bad when it comes to picking out legit vs not legit, and you guys haven't gotten any better at it as evident through recent posts. So the community was constantly petitioning actual legit boxers for cheating wasting a ton of DBG's time. Every person who boxed was probably petitioned at least once, if not many many times, again wasting DBG's time.

Fast forward to Agnarr, still the vast majority of boxers were doing it legit, while maybe the cheating minority # went up a bit, they were still the minority. Still the same result though, mass petitions on the legit boxers wasting tons of DBG man hours on false investigations.

Fast forward to Coirnav, this is where the cheating minority really started to rise and get out of control. While still not being the majority of boxers, the number was still high enough to actually start effecting the game. DBG at this point was probably so tired of investigating false flag petitions that they stopped caring, which was pretty evident from how bad it got out of control on coirnav.

Now that we are on to mangler, I will agree that the amount of non-legit boxers is the highest I have ever seen on a true-box TLP. While this falls half on DBG for letting it get this far out of control and taking too much time to do something about it, again half the fault is on the community with the amount of false flag petitions people have sent over the years. The community is so quick to just call every single boxer in the game a cheater when that's not the case.

The funny part is, that most 6 boxers I know really want something done about this. They want the cheaters gone more than the non-boxing people do. 6 boxing legit and effectively is not the easiest thing and we that do it take pride in the fact that we do it, and people circumventing that is annoying. I myself would LOVE for DBG to get rid of all of them and completely stop the VM stuff.

What I would love to see from DBG is to stop doing this wait forever and ban wave type stuff. This game is not like a MOBA or FPS where that style is effective. Waiting 3 months to do a ban wave is too long and causes irreversible damage on the server and it's economy. Please adopt the broken glass theory and start enforcing it. It doesn't take a mass staff and man hours to do this. It would only take 1 person to police the server if you adopted the broken glass theory, as other games with higher population sizes have proven. And to the community, stop calling every single boxer you see a cheater. That does nothing but slow down the banning process for the people who really do deserve it.

That story basically TL;DRs into: They did nothing about it and people continued to "test the fence" so to speak until ineffective handling of the issue was observed, then more and more started doing it.

The claim that the community is at fault wholly or partially due to too many false flag petitions would need citations as proof. Even in a situation where this is correct, its still not the community's fault that the company will not, or cannot, patrol this issue effectively. Blaming it on players in the community who are doing what they are asked to do is silly at best, and passing the buck.

At the end of the day, the message that gets sent in gaming communities when nothing, or not enough is done with issues like this is when theres a way to take advantage of the system, do it early and do it often. By the time it gets caught your Krono will be safe on another account and spent on items you want or consumed to sub on that/those other account(s).

If every time a person holds a store at gun point the police are called, chances are they will respond quickly.

If every time a person walks in to a store someone calls the police and say its being held at gunpoint, chances are the response time will start to be extremely slow or they stop believing it all together.

I never said that the community shouldn't help police, but reporting every single boxer you see on the server is very detrimental.

Nah it's just 100% gross incompetence. The current GMs have 0 clue how this game works, they don't know what a "train" is, I've seen people get sent on cruises for kiting adds on boss fights, they don't know what the difference between boxing and botting is they don't know anything about this game.

What's the bet that the GM's KNOW what's going on, but have been told by the CFO and CEO (who are legally responsible to the share holders of the investment company that owns EQ) to allow it to happen. No matter how much we whine on this forum, we are still paying the fees, and kronos are still being bought. They are looking at the dollars and cents, and I reckon the GM's are just getting super fed up with being unable to even comment in these threads, let alone slow the flow of kronos.

The idea that we need to have botters permacamping spawns in order for there to be a market for Krono is patently absurd. That market would exist if all the botters were banned and it was only legitimate boxers doing the farming. There is no conspiracy incentive to allow botting to continue. The simplest solution is that it is legitimately one of limited resources available to police the problem.