Devs - Do people use VM ware for work?

Nothing like the uproar over them trying to stop cheating after the countless please do something to stop cheating threads on tlp forums. Its like amazing

I am sure this is a part of it but its not the sum total as you say. I can say that with confidence because I did not run inside a VM (already stated I could never get a VM to work) yet my main account is still suspended. If that were the only thing they looked for then I'd be online with my main account and not posting here atm.

You don't think when you were trying to get it to work and it crashed everytime that was because of some code that they have preventing it? And that it sent your information back each time it crashed?

Reread that post and stop trying to post out of context. I never used a VM with EQ. Besides all that why are you still trolling on a topic that doesn't concern you? All you're going to do is get the post locked again.

That is not completely accurate. Piestro advised against even running a VM alongside Everquest, when he was the community manager. It's been a while, but there HAS been communication about this.

Any business that expects an employee to provide their own computer for work is just asking for trouble. Sure Laptops are expensive but not compared to the costs of training and keeping a valuable employee. Also a users personal equipment has the same risk of getting broken, lost or stolen and there is no ability to ensure that they get any security updates at all. While the work may be on a VM there is still risk involved if the users computer gets compromised that can end up costing much more than providing and supporting use of a company provided computer.

And honestly in this day in age there are hundreds of solutions that completely automate all software updates and hardware can easily go 5+ years without needing an update as long as you don't buy cheap hardware that wont last.

Really all the places I work with you use Citrix for remote access on non work issued machines. Or you use VPN on work issued machines. Feel like that is a more common solution these days for remote work. Using VMs locally on your home machine would be more for replicating an environment that exists elsewhere.

Which isn’t really running a Vm on your machine, but logging into a Vm running at work.

It doesnt really matter why VMware is on a computer. It only matters if the person is using it to play EQ. If they aren't, there shouldn't be a suspension. It's that simple.

Having people install anything on their personal computer sounds like a pain in the . It's hard to even get non tech people to install vpn software on their computers at home and things like cisco anyconnect are super easy to use.

Seems that most of these posts are from the same sources. They want us to think that the evil DBG went and suspended (they use ban to make it seem worse many times) a bunch of innocent victims. This is not the case, and no matter how many of these threads are created, we don't think that.

There always exists the possibility that a very few innocents got caught up in the suspensions, but not many.

They needed to fix the botting, and non-true boxing problem. This is a start! I for one welcome the continuation and success of their efforts. I have seen an influx of new players of the last few weeks. DBG need to do the things necessary to keep them, and fixing cheating of any kind is one way.

I use VMware for test labs and to use certain distributions of operating systems. Its for work and study. Being in IT for over 6 years and working as Engineer has me messing around between a variety of operating systems.

I just want to know if I need to have the VM* process stopped, or all of the VM* services stopped as well. I'm not looking to resub and be faced with a 7day ban because I choose to use my laptop while laying on my couch instead of my gaming desktop.

Maybe it's Steam being detected as VM ware? They might simply be getting false positives for people running EQ through Steam.

Funny fact I know some people were suspended for using VM boxing, but only the main account was affected, not the accounts they boxed inside the VM.

This is exactly what they did in a number of cases. Strawman arguments notwithstanding.

Thought it is clear the forum-questers will never believe it.

It is also worth clarifying what VM-Software means. It is not just VMWare, although this is a leading contender, there are several.

Hyper-V, which is built into the windows OS, is a VM software (more specifically a Hypervisor).
It is used for a number of purposes such as Docker, WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux), Multipass (Canonical Dev system), Minikube (Kubernetes on Windows), and a whole host of other development and support related activities.

It is also used by the new Windows Sandbox, which is recommended for many people, not just techies, if they are installing software they don't trust.

It doesn't need to be downloaded and installed, it comes with windows 10 Pro & Server as part of the Operating System, and is either enabled by a checkbox, or by installing other software that uses it.

Right now Hyper-V it is still optional to enable, but that looks like its going to change in the upcoming release of Windows, based on windows insider dev stream. It will be mainstream.

However it is not something you can click on and off when you want to play EQ. Would require an uninstall / reboot to shut it down fully. Hypervisors are so low level they don't like to be just turned off.

Simple fact is this is all bs.

This is just a showing to say "we did something" just like they do every so often apparently with their failed flick of a switch method of "catching" people.

If they actually cared they would be running detection of VM software and what said VM software was running on top of detecting bot/hack programs that a ton of people run (I'm sure including GMs that play). But they aren't actually going to do that because it would cost them money to do so and lose them money overall because it would cost them a large portion of their playerbase.

Take this in stride as the occasional "look at us we care and are doing something" yet none of these are actually bans lol.

Maybe the people who swear they never saw the letters V and M together in their lives somehow ran EQ in the win10 sandbox mode? I could see that triggering it based on what I saw it scanning for.

What happens when your log in is they're scanning for specific drivers, specific hardware bits, specific registry keys, and some folder paths/files to exist. (Its also looking to see if your running it under WINE. I use to run it this way when I did all my gaming under linux too. Now I generally dual-boot but with how much work Valve has been putting into Proton, I might go back to pure linux soon. But I digress...)

When you spin up a new virtual machine, they only have so many different kinds of hardware they can emulate. All EQ has to do is look for those. Match enough of them and its pretty ironclad that your inside a VM. They can likely even tell which VM without much more then the BIOS version and a couple specific bits of emulated hardware (scsi and ethernet controllers for example)

Sure, you can change out some of this stuff, but there is still a limited list to choose from. For example, HERE are the vmware network card options.

I do agree that there is some chance that an innocent person got caught up in this. (logged in on a friends computer that they didn't know was inside a VM or was running some banned M software) and without knowing specifics... all we can do is think logically about this.

DBG doesn't have a ton of customers, they do need to enforce their rules though. I believe they've been collecting this data for a while now, so its possible the trigger for the suspension could have happened a month ago, not just last week. Unless they make an official statement over this, I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

Under current suspension, I run 1 character in 1 non VM session all the time. The only thing I can think of is the VMWare installed on the laptop with Win10 that has never been used. Really poor customer service not letting us know why the suspension occurred because since I don't run multiple clients, don't use VMWare, still got suspended - I am likely to get suspended again because I don't know what I did...

I only ever see posts about AFK macros, map hacks where people with no tracking ability run to your camp as soon as a named spawns, and to a lesser extent people warping to mobs and killing them. The fact that someone is using VM ware to box multiple toons on one PC has little to no impact on other players.

I think people are straying far away from the main point here which is VM Ware does get used for non EQ things. There are likely people that got caught up in a suspend/ban wave that didn't deserve it, and DBG's service to help those folks out has been sub par. Additionally with a small development team there are much more impactful issues that need to be addressed with the game.

If you can't play the game the way the rest of us do, then you can't play. That's the message that needs to be sent.

Not, "oh, little Timmeh was only running vmware, but hey, look at that guy over there running real hacks, he's the real problem here."

Trying to compare using vmware to "hacking" is just superfluous B.S. - Anyone doing either is doing something DBG doesn't want. Until the law of the land changes, doing either will result in a slap on the le pepe.

The fact that some people decide to not play the game the way the rest of us do, and the way DBG says you have to, has impact on other players, whether you think it does or not.

You don't get to decide how you play this game, DBG does.