Recent change to killing things while afk, specifically mercs and pets

Just make it where if your AFK flag activates your merc and pet go into an AFK routine and stop attacking/assisting/defending you. When you come back and move your character AFK flag goes away and merc and pet start resuming normal functions. Someone could argue that you could use a macro program to circumvent this, but with that it turns into botting and AFK macroing, which, at that point SHOULD be a bannable offense.

There, DBG ive done my work for you. If you are hiring game designers please look me up. I am not far from San Diego and can relocate there to come work for you if the money is right.

well i would think it would simply be a auto keyboard thing which i believe is legal?

Some automation is legal as long as your present at your keyboard.

My cleric merc already does this with it's ninja afks...

Been smiling at this message since I first read it.

Oh as far as I know the rule is for all EQ servers isn't it?

I think auto keyboard things are only legal if you are at the keyboard. afk and you are afk... doesn't matter how your toons are being controlled... not at all, [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software], auto keyboard if you are not at the keyboard you fall under the rule.

mercs already go into passive mode automatically after a certain period of time with no action taken. You were only able to afk merc kill on spawns that had fast timers or in areas with multiple spawns that could be spaced out.

If any daring people want to test how well a GM is able to detect if you are afk or not, I would say go to a TLP server or a server where someone will snitch on you, pull out a merc or pet and make it seem like you are afk. If a GM comes and moves you /rewind that to go right back to your spot, then see what he does! lol

Unchecking the [ ] Auto Merc Passive box under Options - [General] tab would put them in a state in which they won't auto-passive. I don't remember but I'm rather sure that it is off by default.

Actually, I think our raid leaders might approve of that some nights. <grin>

“Next update: Any AFK longer than 60 seconds in a raid zone will result in a 500k AE nuke with a corpse that cannot be XP rezzed. AFKing in raids was not an intended game feature.”

Yeah because that is a logical progression go from punishing just the afk people to everyone in the zone Single target the afk'ers though and yeah as Garshok says some raid leaders might like it

What about the people that have been exploiting autofire programs for foraging? This has been going on for years and when you look in the bazaar at certain traders it is fairly obvious to me who has toons up auto foraging 24/7. These individuals are making millions of plat a month selling mats in the bazaar doing absolutely nothing and this has been overlooked for some time. If you are going to punish people for afk killing for a profit you need to also go after those who have been afk mining for years. I would argue that this is worse than afk merc farming since there is zero risk in terms of getting killed unless someone intentionally trains you. Just my 2 cents though.