Daybreak - Communicate with your player base!

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Lorolgon, Feb 6, 2022.

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  1. Schadenfreude Augur

    Absolutely this. The amount of information they have at only a few keystrokes is more than adequate to determine what you were doing and whether or not you were running you-know-what at the time or have at any time in the past.
  2. Svann2 The Magnificent

    From the EULA:
    When running any Game(s), we may monitor your computer system or console for unauthorized third party programs running concurrently .....
    Tarvas likes this.
  3. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    They have listed things that are and are not legal but they can never get a comprehensive list as people always find new ways to gain an unexpected advantage. My comment on being more things that would get you suspended was more talking about in game actions (such as the famous cactus gate where people dropped at the end to avoid the lockout). There can be cases where you yourself didn’t take advantage of an exploit but you joined a group that was and that could be enough to get you caught up as well.
  4. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Not sure if that shows that can determine if another program is reading your logfile or not as there are plenty of programs that could read it that they will not be looking for.
  5. Zalamyr Augur

    These threads always make me laugh. Most of you sound like when they interview the neighbor of a serial killer and he's like "I had no idea, he was always so nice." People lie. They especially lie on the internet. There's a strong possibility your EQ friends lied to you. Sorry this life lesson is hard on you.

    For the like 3 people who were legitimately falsely suspended, my condolences. I'd probably get frustrated and quit myself.
    Vumad, Maedhros, Tygart and 2 others like this.
  6. Febb Augur

    During beta of ToL, I noticed they were dumping all running processes on my computer to the dbg.txt file everytime I zoned, so I'm sure this was them testing this out to see what people were running.
  7. Kiras Augur

    I think the thing that bugs me most is the people with some accounts suspended, but not others. I find it weird to think that people might be cheating with one account but not with their other, yet I know multiple people who have had only one account suspended.

    The lack of communication brings to mind Kafka's The Trial :) You're guilty of something but we won't tell you what.

    For the record, I have not gotten in any trouble with GINA and occasionally using the old autofire program to fish while I read a book in front of the computer. I do respond to tells fairly quickly so I'm not actually afk during that. I alt tab box when I do box, so I can't provide any ideas on the boxer program people use.
  8. Szilent Augur

    "sometimes when I cheat I get away with it, tho!"
    Schadenfreude and Warpeace like this.
  9. Soulbanshee Augur

    In order to convert to a 64-bit client, they need a stack/process trace if the client crashes in order to patch the client. This seems a bit innocuous than what people are making it out to be. If they really wanted to test processes running to ban people, it wouldn't go to a log file.
  10. Cadman Elder

    Really? my dbg.txt hasn't had anything written to it since 2018 and I've hopped in on the last 3 beta's. No processes in it though
  11. Althalonas New Member


    We aren't anonymous. All of us are using our in game names from our main accounts. Come find us on AB if you like. None of us have been banned or suspended we are querying the treatment of guildies who we trust. As I said maybe the trust is misplaced but I still believe clarity would help.
    tanith and Jumbur like this.
  12. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    I would expect any beta-program to have excessive logging for debugging-related reasons. I don't think it was related to anticheats at all. As others noted, it doesn't log process-info for live-servers.

    Besides, why store anticheat data-files on the local client, instead of sending it directly to the server? Cheaters would just clean the log-file too.
    Svann2 likes this.
  13. tanith Augur

    Without getting my legal hat on...
    What has happened appears to contravene simple principles of natural justice - ie that people in any situation, whether a nation state or football game, know what the rules are and how to avoid transgressing those rules.

    We, that's those of us who haven't been suspended and those who have, don't know what folk have been suspended for.
    There's plenty of theorising and hypothesising, but we don't actually *know*.
    (yes some banned folk can have a pretty good guess, but that's not the same as *knowing*).

    We have been told, for many years, that there is an unwillingness to state that one must not use x, y, z programs/utilities because x program could be changed tomorrow, turning it from an ok thing into a definitely not ok. That isn't helpful. And surely what we need is helpful? Giving a list of programs that on x date are banned would be helpful. That list could very easily be amended very quickly and simply. Ditto for utilities that are not banned.

    I'm sure DBG wants this to serve as a warning to others who may 'cheat'. What I am seeing is a whole bunch of people, including those who've never boxed, who are very anxious as to whether they are next in line for a penalty because they played in windowed mode/pasted their tradeskill log into a website/sat afk at a zonein when their kid cried etc etc.
    Everquest is more than a game to many people. It's something they've invested a major proportion of their lives in. Now they are worried and upset. Surely this is not the aim?

    Like Ashigaru, I've seen a heap of people affected who I've played with and around for 10/15+ years and never in all that time seen them do anything that looked dodgy. And I've seen plenty of dodgy from various parties. Very dodgy. (yes they could be sneaking off somewhere in the dead of night to warp around some obscure corner, but... really?!).

    So this is a plea for the Powers That Be to be more transparent. Yes some folk will put effort into getting round any publicised rules, just like any form of regulation. But that doesn't mean we give up on lawmaking and just expect folk to intuit what's ok
  14. Tegila Augur

    That's not particularly true. I know people that openly use, got suspended, quit using or didn't even log back in after the suspension, and got suspended again. I also know too many people that are completely nonchalant about the whole thing, thus why anyone they've known in game for any length of time knows exactly what they're using and when they get suspended.

    EQ is so old, its playerbase too, that a friend ingame to many is like a friend irl, and just like irl before certain leaves we're legalized in many places, they didn't care what you thought about it, they'd happily tell you they were using, and where to get some. For some this is no different. For that reason, im not disinclined to believe such people who have said they used and got suspended but then got suspended again without using or even logging in since. IRL that's called double jeopardy. No one can be absolutely certain of anyone elses honesty, but in such cases as this I'm inclined to believe at least some are being honest. There are innocent people on deathrow after all.
    FLWizard and Sup Rog like this.
  15. Tamarea New Member

    So, before people try to antagonise folk for rarely positing on the forums, as most of us none keyboard warriors have lives, families and other things to do with our time rather than spend hours pontificating around ethics and being honestly quite obnoxious, I would urge you to take a step back and realise that just because YOU have your opinions on a current situation does not mean that others that have a differing opinion are wrong, and vice-versa.

    I am not and will not get drawn into protracted, endless debates and discussions, nor will I stoop to responding to 'people' who clearly set out to belittle or try to antagonise others to retort; nor do I feel the need to 'prove myself' with the length of time played, or how many accounts I own as frankly, it is nobody's business apart from my own, and and before some clever person tries to suggest I am banned - I am not.

    Feel free to pop into AD and speak to me if I have offended anyone so far...

    Like many have stated in this thread, who actually make sense it is about 'the company' being transparent and actually engaging in a conversation with players and supplying the evidence to back it up of why they have taken the action they have taken and actually treating players like they are human - a blanket e-mail or just not being able to log in is not sufficient. How on earth can a player who is honest, and I am of the opinion some of the folks currently affected are, respond to silence and refusal to engage in any meaningful discussions it just does not make any sense at all.

    Come on DGC, surprise us all and reflect on what you are doing - this is not a plea to allow cheating, nor letting people get away with breaking the rules, this is about being fair and open to folk who actually care about the game, and their friends and discussing it with them. For clarity, I am not suggesting that DGC advises that you were using x, w or z illegal programmes so 'folk' don't freak out as I am aware that it may give folks who cheat more idea's, et al, but actually giving a break down of day's, times and at least what people are being accused of their alleged wrongdoing.

    Not much to ask.
  16. Someplayer New Member


    Is there ? we can't know for sure.

    Could there be ? Yes, It is technically possible to tell what app has an open file handles to a file your writing to.

    However, the EQ log is being written to in a way that explicitly allows it to be read 'live' whilst being written to, at high speed. (Not exclusivley locked, and not buffered writes) - It appears to be designed to be used in this manner 'live'.
    Tarvas, Jumbur and Svann2 like this.
  17. Jumbur Improved Familiar


    DBG is in complete control of what data is written to the log file, that means DBG is in control of what thirdparty log-file parses can do or not do.
    Fenthen likes this.
  18. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Im not going to look them up but I remember them making changes to parse file text explicitly to help you be able to parse.
    Jumbur and Fenthen like this.
  19. KurySweetbunns New Member


    Co-sign.

    Add me to the growing list of people who have played since 1999 but never needed to post on the forum until now. EQ has seen me through 2 marriages, 2 kids, and a whole lot of love and loss along the way. This is way more than a game to me and my EQ family and now one of my family is worried their account is on the chopping block for good and we are all stepping in and stepping up to try and help them get some answers. If they made a mistake and ran a program they shouldn't have, at least DBG should have the decency to be transparent about it and let them know exactly what their offense was beside just "cheating" so they can prevent the mistake from happening again.
    Kalvenie likes this.
  20. Thraine Augur

    yeah for real, it must have sucked to not raid T1 and T2 on launch cause it was a blast for us. But we are talking about the devs not communicating with the player base here, try to keep up my guy.
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