Bring volunteer GM's Program

Lots of people talking about rules and breaking them.

Bring a volunteer GM Program. So they get 1-account free, but we will have the in game support we need with someone live.

They had that in the past with the guide program but the part about enforcing the rules got shutdown a very long time ago.

It would be very helpful, at least on the TLP's.

Could be used not to enforce rules. But if say people report someone, and they need proof.
Hows that system.
They need to catch them in a video, thats where people I feel would be ok doing.
Yeah that dude is box army on TLP. Using the smart boxing program or its a truebox or something.
EQ provides us the tools, and we go get them.
Have to apply for it for or something so only a few people have but, few people is all takes to remove them.

The dilemma is, some people enjoy the cheaters. Because they provide the mats. They raise the plat being passed around.
PL dilemma is people hate them but, people don't have much time either.

P2W, people do not like. Who gives the services? cheaters do for the most part.

Anyways all EQ would have to do is review what the selected few that provided evidence of, go take videos and catch them in act.

Maybe increased report feature too.
/report, can we take video 5 seconds, is that ok? Sure.
/report when just before you see it happen. Boom theres your video.

See all those boxes stand up and push the mob and follow the mob while pushing. Then return to their spot to sit.

Lemme guess a true box boxing UI that lets you control other computer box. Super smart it can follow the mob, not a player and do all the attacks its suppose to and do so on.

Some player that people know can see all the mobs in zone upon zoning and not a tracker.
Catch em the act, or run the report, and it gives details to catch them/check them for cheats.

Oh look its this guy again he cheats.
/report /maphack
does the code to get peoples names and checks them.
Yep got em.

I don't have to create youtube and all this extra legwork anymore.
QOL reporting feature.

Need better reporting features.
/report afkboxer
/report mapcheater
/report thisandthat

get em with logs.
ping em got their name, did the check to see it returns some extra server that scans the map, yep. Yep everything true, is a cheater.
Email to the reviewer.

Cheater gone.

Not fun when playing cheaters and they dominate the nameds, they cleanup every zone.
And you gotta do their services because they dominated the ancient cyclopes or such.
You gotta be 100% in the zone and ready ready to compete with them and such.

How did this enchanter mage box know that the ancient cyclopes is up and know i dragged to this location. hrmm.

/report mapcheater
triggers scan check, it looks specifically for what it looks for in catching mapcheaters. Any anomolies with the server database, etc?. checks the people in the zone. hrmm this anomoloy happens when this person(s) are in the zone. Its 90% confidence true that its them. This anomaly happens when this cheat happens.

boom enchanter and their boxes gone. No more cheater.
Dilemma is someone aint farming ancient cyclopes 24/7 now. can't just wait for them spam the spam and give them the krono.
People gotta play the game to get the ring of ancients now. Not much 24/7 P2W anymore.

Who will watch the watchers?

They can barely run a CRC program ...

I like the ideas you bring to the table. A more enhanced ability to make reporting easier would do the trick. We can police our own with the right tools.

What problems do you think/expect bringing back this program would solve?
(im not flaming you, im genuinely curious as to your thoughts)

The problem is the people most qualified to enforce the rules (people that play the game a lot and understand what they are looking at) are always going to be partial or have some dog in the game. The alternative is you have GMs that barely understand how quests work or about quirky mechanics because they don't play the game they just enforce rules/assist to the limit they are allowed.

Most of the time I prefer option B.

Yeah got a feeling this would be expoited and end up causing a lot of issues

Once during Original Planes of Power, I was paying someone on my Necro, to sacrifice them. And a Junior Guide walked up and basically stopped me from doing it until i could explain why I was killing this person over and over. They had no idea what the spell was, how it worked or anything.

I'll volunteer, and I'll stream it too. I'll be a just and fair demi-god.

Uh, no. Just look at the people on the forums and pick the one person whose ideas you dislike or whose posts drive you up the wall and that will be your "enforcer". Now he is not only going after possibly legitimate bots but he has taken a dislike to you so out you go. Even if your innocent.

This is why they no longer let guides have any interference in the game - because it got too friendly in the past and favorites were played. Another example was the Epic retelling quests which were released to a chosen few ahead of time so only certain players got an advantage.

Its a two edged sword and they would have to trust players enough not to take advantage of the situation and we have proven they cannot trust us any more than we trust them. Did you play with your tradeskill depot recently What did you pay for that last Krono?

Guides are Volunteers

GM are employees

They are never going to give GM powers to volunteers because of the responsibilities involved.

And this game's management abandoned having 1 or more GM per server years ago, now we get 1-2 GM per game.

Absolutely. An employee you can 'punish' if they intentionally do something incorrect. A volunteer, you cannot.

At one time, long long ago, volunteer guides were able to do some of the GM abilities and many abused that privilege. Not much could be done about their actions when they were caught because they weren't employees.

Because there are still some abuses possible of the current guide abilities they also have a rather lengthy and involved on-boarding process to become a full guide.

You need to be vetted to hand out milk and cookies in PoK? I remember the old vetting and onboarding process, back when guides were more than glorified RP players.

We didn't enforce rules as guides back then. We had the ability to open SOME tickets, gather some more information, and escalate a ticket to a GM on duty. But we had no intel gathering or investigative authority or tools. And while logged on to your guide character and account, every keystroke was sent back to SOE for review.

It's no longer possible to have a volunteer GM program due to US and California state labor laws.

Yes, so much this. A corrupt GM is worse than no GM.

I've been a guide in the guide program twice, both before and after the lawsuit that stopped volunteers from "working" as it were. I was in it for the free account, because of course I was but I remember back in the day when the petition queue was actually within the game interface and guides could deal with anything that didn't require escalation to a GM. It's been a minute and I was quite young the first time I was a guide, but I remember having all sorts of commands as well. Not sure if we had all the GM commands or just most of them. I do remember using the /summon command once and worrying about getting in trouble over it. We weren't really supposed to use them.

I quit for a period of time and when I came back I reapplied on a different account and joined again. What a disappointment. Having to do a weekly event that was really just pathetic. Silly riddles and handing out cake. Prizes no one cared about because they were useless trinkets. Minimal to no participation with what you were trying to do.

Anyway TL;DR the OG guide program was amazing, I miss it and as someone not in the US I hate that it got ruined for us.

Wouldn't work these days, though - especially on TLP. We recycle a lot of the same players and even if you're not guiding (the old way) on the same server you're playing on ... your friends will be, so corruption would be a big issue with it.

There is still a guide program, they are not allowed to enforce rules on darkpaws behalf because people were abusing the power, I use to be a guide and you are given a lot of powerful tools that can mess up the game play for everyone.