If I spot AFK XPers, I'll report them. But if I suspect somebody is using other "tools", but is actually there playing, I'm not going to ruin their life and report them. Who goes around with that much hate and animosity? Seriously... There's a certain level of decency we should show our fellow players. Even the "users" of these tools have a purpose in EQ. They keep the population up which, these days, we all can agree is beneficial, and most of the time they'll jump at the chance to lend a hand to another player. They take pride in their ability to multibox and want to demonstrate their usefulness for other players. These people are sometimes the *most* passionate about EQ and are some of the largest contributors to the game and community. I've known people who use these questionable tools and, generally speaking, they are nice people often looking for chances to play with other people. Yes there are bad apples, but there are also non-boxing bad apples in EQ who ruin the experience, too. Everybody just needs to freakin' chill out.
I don't use any tools to multi-box, just run 3 clients. I only really pay attention to the dialog windows on my bard between pulls and I alt-tab between my two healers so fast that I never see anything on those screens beyond finding the spell gem and clicking it or if I have to re-position. Half the time I just use a key combination and don't even look at the window really before tabbing away. I know I've missed tells from people for hours at a time by accident, though. Guess I'm lucky it was never a GM.
I miss tells too. I usually put my box characters into AFK with a message who is running the show, but deaths and camping out or ressing resets the afk status and I don't always remember to reset it. Whats more, I usually turn off the UI on the alts since I keep their inventory and bags open (the most common reason I would actually use the UI on a bot). If they are talking to the box char, I likely would not see it. As far as automation goes, it does work with boxes but I also know someone who used it without boxing to farm plat, and all the extra features it provides even a single player. Boxers who use it are more likely to be caught because it is more obvious.
Just keep a small window on each character with Tells as the sole filter. And if you really want, set up an audio trigger with the pattern "tells you". I never miss a tell unless I leave a character logged in and then lose the connection to the server before I am ready to play again. I sure wish they had time stamps, though.
Audio triggers.. I used them in the past to wait for crag beast queen and a few other rares. Never thought to simply add one for tells.. SMH.. I always overlook the simple things lmao.
I have that audio trigger set up (tells you), but selling to vendors (and vendor diving) gets really annoying - every single item sold causes a ping. I usually turn off my speakers and forget to turn them back on.
I dislike using a separate tell window because there's not an easy way to /clear it. Much too OCD for that
Multiple free accounts make Daybreak no money. I can assure you that a bot group of 5 FTP toons and one SK on a paid account can farm Brothers Island all day and all night in the right spot. This type of person is not botting to "pay for his account(s)" - it's botting to generate rare drops and plat to sell for real world money. This type of player is never engaged in "normal EQ activities". If it's online at all - it's botting for cash. That's it. It makes Daybreak no money at all, and only screws EQ out of Krono sales by making cheaper plat available on the Plat Sites. -Rat
