Why is AFK pvling service in zones using ae spells is no classified as unattended play game?

Changing it would be very bad. Need to afk two minutes to bio during a raid? Better drop raid lest you inadvertently gain xp while afk. It would be a mess.

Against my better judgment I glanced at OP's post history to see what he's on about. Looks like he came to the forums to complain that SKs are underpowered and it's been downhill since. The awful font garbage is new though, there's that.

Oh sorry, I didn't mean AFK EXP to be removed as a mechanic at all. I was meaning about the discussion of AE AFK PLing services were to be regulated or prohibited. I also don't see AE PLing as enough of a disruption to care, it just seems like OP has had some bad experiences. There are only 2 or 3 zones this really happens in and it's in early expansion TLP's but my main point was it's not a violation of the policy he's reaching for.

One time, I don't remember exactly where but our Necro was afk and his pet was a good source of our dps...so we rooted mobs on top of him while he was afk to get his pet involved.

Even if this were a thing(which it never will be), the amount of hours required to regulate this across all servers would be astronomical. The company would literally go bankrupt trying to make this work. This isn't something you can automate, so think of the actual hours needed to make this a reality. This company can't/won't(for various $$$ reasons) even regulate the huge automated raids going on. What makes you think they can regulate the thousands of small groups, most of which I'm sure have at least 1 afk person at any given time.

You need to pick your battles realistically. This isn't one they can win. they would just wind up wasting huge amounts of money for nothing. Besides, afk pl buyers can always just put up an afk "talk to so-and-so" message to avoid getting kicked offline for not answering tells.

This is not something this company wants to dive head first into. It would be a time & money NIGHTMARE for them.

Just came back to simply reply to this asinine little thing: It's not about the money. It's about integrity. If DBG's wants to survive, they will have to deal with the botting and RMT problem. Many people won't play EQ or return (Such as myself) till the situation is dealt with. I myself would prefer an iron hand. Gotta spend money to make money as the old saying goes.

Automation I grant you does need to be dealt with, it is a direct contravention of the rules of play & it is not in the spirit of the game.

Gaining XP while AFK does not contravene any rules so long as the players creating that XP for them are doing so by using acceptable means, you might not like it very much, but if they are actively playing & not breaking any of the rules against automation the argument against having an AFK player in the otherwise actively played group simply doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Of COURSE it's about the money! How is it not about money? Do you think the employees & manhours required to pull this off would be FREE?? Do you really, really think DBG is going to make themselves go broke trying to pursue any kind of regulation on this? Just the cost from manhours alone would put them under! The cost would be astronomical for them! Then they would be dealing with many, many currently paying people no longer giving them money. I guarantee you that playerbase pool is much larger than the one you represent.

Since you're sitting here spouting off about integrity that is NOT monetarily feasible for this, why don't you draft up a business plan wherein DBG would be able to afford this without going broke. Since you seem to think you have the answers, give us one!

Only reason I'm giving a response is, your reply is rather irritating. Do you think that DBG's would have to build a new wing to the building, staff it with top notch industry experts, equip said wing and finally, pay for a staff of hundreds?

All it would take is ONE, just ONE of the devs to actually give two shakes to wander around in-game in his/her free time to see what's going on. I'm convinced that they don't, or they simply don't care enough.

The question then I will throw back at you; Why is it that there are a few studios out there, that possibly have fewer devs and a far greater playerbase; is able to police and enforce it's own policies?

It's not about the time it would take. It's about the tens of thousands of subs they would lose. macaroni quest is massively prevalent on live...

Truebox should be another story, but unfortunately at this point it appears not.

The Dev's actually do not have access to ban accounts. That is a CS function. Not to mention I would rather have them working on fixing things or building new things then patrolling the streets of Norrath.

Tomato, tomahto. Dev guy: Hey CS, come over here and ban this guy. Done.

It's not really realistic to expect that to happen. It's not the job of the devs to identify people violating policies, nor should it be.

How about the CS guys take the lead on this? Let the devs do their job, development, and the cs guys do their job.

I don't disagree, but you'd think once in a while the devs would want to roam Norrath and see what's going on.

If I were a dev, I'd personally be frustrated by rampant 3rd party software use. And I'd probably want to take up that crusade. And I'd probably have a boss who lays down the law, and tells me, "That's CS's job, not yours, leave off."

Just speculating but I think this is highly likely. There's likely a pretty big pay discrepancy between dev staff and cs staff, and I'm sure management doesn't want to have people like Prathun doing work that a cs staff member can do for much cheaper.

If programmers here are like anywhere else I've dealt with, they probably think the average player is a complete idiot and the owners are repressive jerks and the cs are incompetent plebs. I doubt they want to go rub noses with the average eqer; they'd like a free hand to sit in a dark room and just code.

Not even close to how it works in the real world.

Do you like your job? I know I do, but I also wouldn't go work for free in my spare time. It's not that they don't care, I'm sure they do, but they are paid to do other things and running around after hours policing your day job sounds terrible regardless of how much you actually love it.

Well, I know many devs do in fact play the game, many of them are even former players who ended up working on the game, so this point is really rather ignorant of the situation.

Did you just pull this out of your backside or can you name any of these studios? The "possibly" you threw in there tells me you have no real faith in this assertion to begin with.

Every game studio out there has issues with cheaters, AFK whilst in a group that is active is not cheating, you just don't like it & have your nose out of joint over it, I think it's time you developed a better understanding of how this all works instead of doubling down on what is a blunted & rather myopic perspective.

But let's say I myself were to suggest a way to deal with this situation if I hated it as much as you do, how would I go about it?

Rather than calling my fellow players cheats & other derogatory names for doing something that is perfectly within the rules, or slandering the game developers unfairly I would suggest a "participation" system.

A participation system would be checking & monitoring what your character does to each mob, any character would then only gain xp from a mob that it participated in killing, by directly casting upon that mob or by directly hitting that mob, this would exclude passive spell effects, songs & auras, this would however require time & coding resource to achieve besides which this new monitoring is going to use up resource in terms of actual ongoing processing cycles - creating more load on a game that already is by its very nature high-workload & may not be acting to correct a real problem just to ease someone's petty frustrations so I would not expect an immediate resolution but at least I would have contributed constructively towards the issue.

Perhaps you should read the link to "The Golden Rule" in your sig prior to every post.

Then I would have to say that the Programmers that work on EQ ARE different to the ones working elsewhere, not from blind fandom either, from my interactions with a few over the years they always demonstrated to me that they had a real passion for the game, to helping the players & in making EverQuest the best game it can be, but let's try and be realistic about what programmers can & cannot do & try & reconcile they have budgets too, of time.