Can we sticky this quote please.

I wouldn't respond to tells on an alt, since I don't respond most of the time on my main character. The only really important chat comes from my group, which usually consists of my wife (and she can just turn her head and talk to me). Most people are too uninformed to bother listening to what they say. They aren't able to learn, nor understand long standing rules that haven't changed in ages, no matter how often they are told.

I play so I can avoid people like that, not hear from more of them.

The bright side is that there are plenty of people around who think sending a tell must always be answered, or a petition or report is warranted. Inevitably, customer service will grow tired of the ludicrous and wrong-headed nature of the complaints, and over time they will learn to simply ignore them.

The more you clutch to your opinion, the sooner this will all be behind us.

The issue we have here is there is nothing further to say. We've stated our current policy (which hasn't changed in a long time) and there are no plans to change it. I respect some folks are unhappy with this, but I'm hopeful this will provide some closure.

What I can say with certainty? The Boxxer vs Anti-Boxxer back and forth fighting is over. It's creating a non-constructive environment so we're going to start closing those conversations up.

To the point of being able to distinguish between someone afk botting and someone just not paying attention to tells -- didnt there used to be a GM room where they teleported you if they thought you were botting? Seems to me that even if you arent seeing tells you would certainly notice being popped into a 10x10' room with no doors or windows. If you keep sending commands after that then you deserve every ban you get.

The cat room (its in befallen)

I'm disappointed you consider it non-constructive. If I was responsible for gathering feedback I would note that in future there is certainly a requirement for a MMO that doesn't allow people to control multiple characters simultaneously, and maybe even within this game. There have also been some fantastically detailed and ingenious suggestions so to file that away as noise is a generalization. I'm sure the 'non-boxing' crowd will accept this ruling with humility and move on. I also think that some people have been here discussing the subject as opposed to 'fighting', I trust you can distinguish between players offering their thoughts as customers and general nastiness, maybe even thank players for offering feedback?

I respect your desire to disengage, the community in general and I think it will just go from this website to community websites, MMO websites and facebook, twitter to continue discussion. You can only control a little bit of that here and what you as a company say, and after all, it's just the angry 8% that visit forums anyway from what I heard? You have no plans to make changes, so what I said was not wrong, or especially quote worthy, just that people are not happy with this playstyle have to make a choice for themselves and you as a company maintain your current stance, I get it.

However, I can't let you off yet as still I feel the overall statement is vague, if you would like closure as much as I would, could you answer me this one question, and then I'll disengage and get back to playing your wonderful game. I've summarized it, to it's most empirical form, this is what players have asked many times and are unclear about :

"Multiboxing allows players to control more than one character at once. Is it deemed legal/permitted while controlling multiple characters at once, while sat at their PC, to press one button that transmits a keystroke to multiple clients at a time, which activates a single combat ability per client? an example would be to have 6 mages, and if I pressed the number 3 key, they all shot off a fireball at the same time?"

I completely respect where you are coming from, but believe me we've seen plenty of feedback on this topic and it would genuinely stun me if we saw something new. There are of course nuggets of valuable feedback within the "noise" and while we appreciate those, we aren't making changes so these discussions aren't really providing benefit. They are also continuing flashpoints for arguments and drama.

While I understand your question, we aren't going to dive into a philosophical debate of our TOS, or the semantics of what defines automation. If you are in front of your PC, playing EQ, you can do so with the assistance of some 3rd party software which we are going to stop mentioning since they have their own forums.

Once again our policy to my knowledge has been the same for more than 3 years but I do realize a number of folks are coming back and are unfamiliar with it. We're hopeful we've cleared that up.

Holy crap, I did not realize the thing which is not to be named is okay as long as we're at the keyboard. Thank you for the clarification.

Wholeheartedly, many thanks for addressing my concerns with a direct response. I understand your position even though I was unable to push for a final clarification, you just want to make your game as enjoyable as you can and make people passionate about that. Thank you for your recent efforts during launch and with the community and I look forward to the progression of these servers and the future of Everquest.

On a final note, how about EQ2 progression, that I could really sink my teeth into especially on a PvP server? Just a though

The fact that you dialogued this a little with us says a lot. I appreciate that effort since the silence is sometimes maddening.

That falls under different TOS than this.

Forum explosion in....

I'm mostly pro-boxing, I do it, but don't use the program presumably we can no longer name, and only box 3, however, if I might interject on behalf of anti-boxers out of fairness: There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Daybreak's policy on this hasn't changed in years, because it isn't on people's minds, and it's easy to not take action on what isn't causing waves: EQ has been mostly instanced since 2003, and so it's been possible to escape boxers and/or boxers go in the instances and stay out of sight, and out of mind. Thus, saying that it hasn't changed in years isn't really a worthwhile defense, as it likely hasn't been challenged by the community in years, and hasn't needed to be except when a TLP server comes up.

I would think "some" instead of "a", "they" instead of "it" and "forums" instead of "forum" gives a pretty encompassing pass.

What you are suggesting would overturn several sections of the ToS, don't you agree?

Good point. Thanks.

Their position is abundantly clear, and the official response posted here should be all the clarification you need to move on. Unattended play (as in away from the computer and ALL instances) is not permitted. Each and every command by broadcast of keystrokes is initiated by the person at the computer, and by no means does that mean that each instance of EQ responds to each keystroke.

Requests for "final clarification" imply lack of clarity when there is none.

I'm happy I get to ask and get a response. While I thank you for your input, I think I got what I needed from RadarX.

Just to be clear, he's talking about key clone software not [Macroing Software which shall not be named and anyone using it to cheat should feel bad about themselves]. Anyone with reading comprehension already knew that key cloning was legal as it was said so years ago and quoted many times recently. Not sure why anyone is surprised.

Edited by RadarX: Sorry, we're not discussing that software anymore either.

I don't quite understand reasons for the vaugeness of the responses still. Why not just say what 3rd party software is allowed and what isn't, even if you are at the keyboard..

If someone is using that "other program" to control other characters while they are at the keyboard, there's not a whole lot of difference in the end

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Yep. Pretty clear. You may use 3rd party software/addons/automation whatever the current semantics want to label those, as long as you are sitting there in front of your computer. You may program whatever that 3rd party software is set up to do and have it automate your however many characters you want, as long as you are physically at your computer, even though you will be doing less than a single player who is playing without that automation.

I do appreciate the official word and have saved it so whenever I feel the least bit ambivalent about this subject, I can re-read this official clarification and restatement of what apparently has always been EQ's stance on 3rd party software but which seemed unclarified prior to this day.

Thanks for interacting here and giving us clarification. Much appreciated!