Check Brother's Island for AFK *BOT* group on your server.

Personally, I actually prefer this new way. Before the boards were so heavily modded that unless you were posting "I <3 Sony and/or EQ", you'd run the risk of the mods deleting it and warning you for violation of ambiguous_open_ended_forum_rule_that_can't_be_discussed_or_debated_01.

I called for those players to be named so that Customer Service can investigate into whether or not those accounts are really cheating. If they are innocent, they can come here and explain the suspicious behavior to everyone openly.

Yes. I was hesitant to name the group until you pointed out the value of doing so.
I linked this thread to my CS report as well.
If anyone "upstairs" is still at home and has the "lights on" we should see some of these bot armies dissappear. If no action is taken regarding flagrent cheating using 3rd party programs - then we have another answer as to the long term value of EQ to our new investors.
-R

kinda surprised this is not locked my self. Normally as soon as people start calling out names and guilds stuff gets shut down.

BTW if the staff wanted to do anything about "program that shall not be named" they could easily do things that would make updating and running it not worth the trouble. However, i assume this would hurt the bottom line. Would be very interesting to see them actually make the game free of certain programs.

Maybe they want us to police ourselves now. It would require less CS.

I think it's fair to point out a suspected illegal bot group. If they're staying in a single location for days and weeks at a time, doing the exact same repetitive actions and disregarding any and all outside stimuli, then the account owner should be targeted for "special treatment" by the DBG team. If they have a great explanation for how and why they are tirelessly, silently, monotonously farming a static camp, let's hear it. Don't cheat, and this shouldn't happen to you. Fair is fair.

I have a feeling Oath of Marr prices will be increasing in the bazaar soon.

e l d e r s c r o l l s o n l i n e
is everything eq and the rest

This isn't Salem circa 1692. Daybreak has access to the necessary information, and they have the tools to verify whether or not there truly is a problem. They also have the authority to take action. Help them along and provide a tip if you see something that just isn't right. Cheaters have no right to ruin our game.

If that was really your intent why in the world would you ask for it to be publicly posted? So every vigilante Batman can go take action before DBG staff ever sees the forum post? You have petitions, bug reports, PMs, and so on without directly calling people out. And if the names posted here aren't actual botters but people harassed them, well, that's 10X worse. Guilty until proven guilty though, right?

We all know the majority of the playerbase does NOT read these forums so suggesting 'they can come defend themselves' is ridiculous.

No one wants cheaters ruining the game but the level of self-righteousness in this thread is overwhelming.

"Hey, why did you train me?" = Innocent
No response = Guilty

But really, people play at different times during the day. If there are 24/7 robots causing problems, then this information should be shared so that there can be more recorded observations.

(See thread title...)

I like to publicly state that I think everyone that bots in open zones are idiots, there are so many instances/HA/Tasks now, that it's just asking for trouble, BUT:

Please put this into the perspective from a business point of view, you have a guy, he has 6 all access accounts, botting away 24/7... should he be banned?

He is not really bothering anyone, (except ratbo), and everyone is free to go in and kill steal his bots, or kill him or rez him at 0% or whatever other grief they feel is justified, but Ill assume since he is still there, its an acceptable risk for him, just playing the game like he wants to play it...

Will it affect bazaar? plat price? krono price? those all have to be considered of course, but bottom line is, ban him, and you are hurting the bottom line...
There are like a million zones in eq now, I have seen people bot, but it doesn't bother me, Ill just go to one of the other zones...

The bottom line is that it's cheating, and that hurts all of us...including Daybreak's bottom line, eventually.

I don't think you have any data to support that notion, what I can say is that the mass bannings that happened 2003-2004 just lost them customers, they could afford to lose 30000 users back then, but this is now, forget that. If anything they need to do mass pardoning to try to get some of those folks back...

This is a nonproblem that players can take care of ingame without involving customer service.

Most HA/tasks mobs dont respawn which is probably why they are in open zones.

Yes.
Cheating is cheating and cheating is pathetic. Not sure why you're trying to eek out ways to justify it.

I don't think you understand, if you have a world full of people minding their own business and you ban all of them you have you and ratbo left who can sit and chat with each other in general chat...

-Mom, he stole my bucket! Get out of the sandbox... We can police bad players ourself, we don't need CS to do that for us.

Yes.

They still agree with that, even if their reaction times on issues reported in-game can be slow to non-existent. There was a hacking streamer banned after stream links and screenshots were sent to devs. And a guild that had hacksigns in every one of their front page updates suddenly folded after the guild leader and his pile of bot accounts stopped being able to log in.

Ban/suspend, they do seem to fire some warning shots before a full ban. But there's no unwillingness to deal with cheaters to keep a few subs. Across all the DBG games cheaters avoid bans when they're unable to be caught by detection methods or because CS doesn't have enough resources. Not because their behavior is condoned by DBG.

Okay I don't necessarily disagree with you but it only takes one mistake thinking someone is a bot group to potentially unleash WW3. I 3-box most of the time and I only pay attention to chat boxes on one of those. There has been the rare occasion where my chat window that filters tells (I have 4 total so a lot of junk going on) has been scrolled up and I didn't see a message till later. So I guess my 'no response' makes me guilty? Granted, this has been a rare occurrence relative to the majority of situations we're talking about and my team doesn't act like what is being describing here but yeah...

The Evil Program of World Domination has been around since, forever. The economy of EQ has been shaped around the presence of botters it's entire life. Suggesting that there is some huge new impact now is just grasping. What exactly has been damaged that is actually new? Because Kronos are a thing? There were just multiple posts about wanting more plat sinks. That suggests there is no real issue even with any possible inflation. Everyone isn't supposed to be able to buy everything.

If we're talking zone disruption, yeah. That's an issue if someone is taking a camp 24/7 and interfering with normal gameplay. Most of the cases mentioned here though are not that.

It only "hurts" because people want to appear to be morally righteous. It's a publicity stunt and to act otherwise is silly. Ever illusion through walls? Jump the moat in VT? Campfire in without flags? Avoid mission lockouts? None of that was intended and in years past some would be considered just as bad. And if you claim you've never utilized any such loop holes in EQ, well, I'm gonna call shenanigans.

Agree.

Using third party programs to automate in game actions without being at your keyboard is a violation of the EULA. It's unfair to other players that follow the rules if you cheat.

I do not know why I need to explain something to you that a kindergartener would understand.