Help understanding rules with VMware

The wide spread confusion with this is getting ridiculous. We need an official statement from DBG. I am going to contact support and try to get a straight answer. I will update this thread if any useful information comes from that. Thank you all for sharing the information you have!

What confusion? Don't use VMware and you'll be fine. Don't think you're smarter than DBG and do workarounds on their trubox server and you'll be fine. The people that are already coming on here and talking about this so much are likely culprits, if you don't cheat you won't get caught cheating.

I'm not sure how DMG will enforce this true boxing policy but it doesnt seem like it can be based on IP.

Lets say you have 2 physical machines at your house, they both go out the same internet pipe which then has the same outside ip. That will create 2 different connections to the DBG servers. Same thing with running 10 VM or Virtualbox sessions on your comp, they all go out the same IP.

If they enforce the restrictions via IP, I am not sure how they will be able to tell if its 2 legit comps or 1 using VM. If the enforcement is IP based and only allowing a single IP, then VPN connections will be required on your VMs. On the flip side, the IP enforcement only allowing 1 connection will hurt the ppl who play on 2 different physical machines. I use to do VPN on p99, works fine.

Well said!

DBG policy is not IP restrictive.

Just to be safe, I completely disabled all vmware services and startups. But I'm going on the record now as saying I have it installed (also for work and android kernel compiling) and would be more than mildly upset if I got a ban simple for it being an installed program on my "work" MacBook.

Probably the confusion of, no one has cited any references where it's stated or implied that running EQ in a VM isn't allowed. I'm not saying it isn't out there, nor do I care either way, but I've yet to see anything official. All of this sounds just like the old rumors about anti camp radius code from back in the day.

They can tell if the client is running in a VM or not.

And the confusion stems from the fact that when they originally added the detection code people claimed to have been banned for having the software installed, but I have no way of verifying those claims so maybe they were lying and really running in the VM and wanted to get unsuspended sooner?

Pretty sure 100% of them were using EQ inside a VM.
Only person I know that uses VM for work plays EQ sparingly and never got a suspension just for having it on his machine.

I think best rule to follow would be don't have VM on a machine you plan to play to be safe.

Roshen said it explicitly at least twice between RF/LJ launch and now, that I've seen.

I also think I saw it in one of the rules documents near where it talked about 3rd party software. A quick search of the support site and I couldn't find the one I was looking for, though.

I'm a little bit confused here.

I have EQ installed on my work laptop.
I work in IT, so naturally I have all sorts of tools installed there to allow me to do my work. One of those tools is running applications/servers inside virtual machines.

Are we saying here that just having a virtualiation application installed on my computer has a risk of getting my account suspended?

I have no intention of ever running EQ inside the VM (why would you? the video card emulation is terrible).

But is simply having a running VM process / service on my work computer something that warrants a suspension?

This is terrible if so.

You have to understand - they can scan the processes of whatever OS is up and running and see stuff. They do this to look for people who have .exe in the task list, etc.

If you are running a VM on your computer, sure, they can see the VM processes.

However, if the game is running INSIDE of a VM, the processes "look" different to the game. The game won't be able to see outside of the guest OS.

Now - granted - it's trivial to detect that the software is running INSIDE of a VM. Obfuscating it is pretty difficult for most joes.

I can't see them banning you for having VMWare (or any other VM software) running on your system. That would be an incredible stretch.

Well, so you know, some hackers in the past would attempt to run software intended to modify packets in a VM in order to avoid detection. So you really might want to shut down your VM while playing.

Of course it could possibly be that some of the people asking for clarification are intending to attempt hiding something in a VM...

I have VMware (as well as a couple other virtualization tools) installed on my primary desktop. There is no reason whatsoever that simply having the application installed (or even running alongside EQ) should result in any action whatsoever. If that's the case, DBGs "detection methods" are strictly bush league kludges. I doubt that's the case but who knows...bigger developers have committed to more amateur shenanigans in the past so you can't rule it out.

It's only when EQClient is running WITHIN a virtual box that any flags should be raised.

I have VMs on my PC as well for work. I use virtualbox though and have never had a problem. I generally have my VMs shutdown though just purely to free resources.

Can you shoot me a link?

Tried to search it up last night when I was quoting that and I'm not finding it - but there's plenty of references I can find to others repeating his warnings though, but his seem gone/unsearchable. (Hendar2 for example has one in his posting history)

Here is one from a couple years back from Piestro. There are quite a few others from the same timeframe. Later in this thread he also mentions it is a problem to be running VMware concurrently with Eq even if Eq is not running inside the vm.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ng-a-no-go-for-now.203937/page-3#post-3000520

Btw for what it is worth, as I understand it this is a company wide policy that is really aimed at cheating in other games (planet side) more than it is at Everquest.