At the character creation drop point in Crescent Reach, for over two years now, there is two characters that cycle all day long, 24/7. It doesn't seem to be malicious / a hacker. Here is what happens: Two characters named *****autodlive and *****autoflive (there might be an autoelive, the first few letters of their name have been omitted so this post doesn't get deleted) drop in at the creation point. About 30 seconds later they go LD and disappear. Several minutes go by and they reappear as a new / class race with the same name. This happens all.... day.... long.... Are these characters a random anomaly in the server code? Were they purposefully created by a past dev as some kind of April fools joke or a way to remember them? The characters don't do anything, but it's fascinating... and we want answers!!
You may not see it happen in real time, but even if you made a character to just stand there for a hour or two you will see in the chat logs it happening repeatedly. The whole process does take a while, maybe a 10-30 min cycle.
This sounds like the 2 NPC who are related to a quest, I can't remember which one. It is not a normal Cresent Reach quest. They are part of another bigger quest and are only up during that quest. Like an anniversary one or some other holiday. I know I have done the quest long long ago and had to interact with 2 NPC right at that spot. Sounds like they got stuck. Edit ah, it might be spooky sally and her friend from halloween placeholders
Automation doesn't care how long it's been, it only cares that you didn't tell it to stop... I mean, yes that's a really long time and this whole thing is weird, but I go by what evidence I see. These are characters, not NPC's, or you wouldn't be able to do /who and see their class. So it can't be a quest or anything that is part of the game. The names look like something scripted with placeholders, I don't know what's behind the ***** part, but "auto" and "live" with an incrementing or alternating letter seems like a constructed variable with placeholder text. They appear at the new character starting point, and show up with different races and classes, and the names repeat, even when the classes change (if I'm understanding your post right). That screams: somebody making a character, disconnecting (LD instead of camp), deleting the character, and repeating. Honestly the weird part for me is how long it's gone on and how constant it is. Connections drop, power goes out, eventually even things that are supposed to be automated 24/7 stop working. Generally something like that would be enough for whoever set it up to notice it's running and put an end to it. We'll probably never know, and it's probably not fully intentional. Something like this, if it was to be abused in some way, there would be no point in immediately going LD and then deleting the character. Maybe it is something on the server going wonky, but why only one server?
That's what I meant by dedication over 2 years. Seems like an odd thing to set up once a month at the minimum for that length if time.
end-user license agreement (EULA, /ˈjuːlə/) is a legal contract entered into between a software developer or vendor and the user of the software
Correct, but you skipped over my point. Robnie commented against Niente's mention of QA automation, saying it's against the EULA. EQ devs are not end users. They can do whatever the he!! they want.
It wasn't obvious to me he was joking. I tried to reply humorously, but @CatsPaws ruined it for me. Oh well!