DPS Checks are costing you money.

No plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
So "situational awarenes" is the key-phrase in the above i think.
But let's drop that - it's again taking us away from the topic of this thread.
Besides, the claim (even if there might be SOME cheaters) is unfounded enough to warrant dropping it.

There is no risk because it is completely in keeping with EQ's terms of service. They are at the keyboard and merely getting assistance from the 3rd party program.

I got news for you. Using 3rd party programs that violate the EULA WILL get you banned whether you're at the keyboard or not...

I have news for you. No it won't. Try petitioning them if you're so confident in your beliefs.

Nailed it bud, noone in a top guild is there by talent, its all the M-Q.
/applaud
You sure figured it out! We would have got away with it too, if it wasnt for you meddling kids!

Just a thought here, to get back to the original point, maybe there could be a decay on the DPS checks after the next expansion comes out. The game needs to be sold in the context of are you smart enough to play a real MMO, is WOW too easy where all classes are OP? Making it easier at least initially is no Bueno, but a decay over time might keep the end game crowd (I am in this group) pushing but over time family and casual groups who play their classes well could still progress. FWIW I have never seen a botter in and end game raid. I see them after the raid off in the corner farming sometimes, but never in a raid.

This is already a thing. RoS will allow characters to level to 110, significantly boosting each one's dps without any change in how well their player performs. Previously untouchable (for them) dps checks will then be … touchable, I guess.

This is an outrageous claim ! Software aids are not needed for decent DPS with melee , or any character. What is needed is an /Assist key and the ability to pay attention for longer than 20seconds and actually understand what you have to do...

Yes I play in a low DPS guild , we struggle to consistently beat queen within the timer, but we have some characters and toons , that can parse fairly decent , (Has been commented by guest raiders who do raid with "elite" teams)... These toons for sure do not use Targetting Aids or any kind of cheat software like you are suggesting.

Our issue is people not being willing to learn their classes attributes and abilities, combined with high turnover of toons due to stupid gameover mechanics & server lag that stops us from learning & progressing . Mostlly this is due to the inability of certain players to even reach Merc levels of DPS... However DBG have a large % of blame for our current predicatment , server instability has destroyed our normal RA, and repeated NERFS across Tanks , Healers, and DPS has demotivated other core players from even logging in.

To classify "elite" or even , as you seem to be purporting , decent levels of DPS , as requiring software aids is ridiculous... and you have just made the whole argument about DPS checks and Game over timers worthless to everyone else who will come to this thread.

All I would want to see change is a Power UP event , that is beatable eventually - I don't see how that harms the game of any other "elite" guilds strategy.

Absolute BS. It's not that hard to see the mob. Take the tinfoil hat off. LOL. And how do you explain the 10k DPS Mages, Wizards and Necros in that case? They don't have to do anything except assist and cast... yet those bad DPS players exist every bit as much as the bad melee DPS players.

Learn to play. Ask questions. It's long past the time people keep their secrets to themselves too, seek out someone in a top guild and ask if they have time for a few questions on how to play better. You'd be surprised with how willing some people (No, not everyone) will be to help out a person to get better at the game.

Once I have read the OP's thread, I knew what would happen. This kind of thread happens once in a while on these boards.
People of lower tier raiding guild complaining "Raids are too hard"
People of top tier raiding guild saying "Play better"

I'm going to repeat what I said on these threads types.
I have raided in a low tier raiding for most of TBM, and I switched to a top tier raiding guild for the very end of TBM and all EoK. I take news of my former raiding guild progression. They still haven't finished EoK atm, and won't before next expansion comes I'm pretty sure. They are stuck in T2.

Low tier raiding guilds not succeeding is due to 2 things mainly, who have yet been said :

1) DPS.
For the same TBM event, stuff was dieing 4 x faster. I could figure it on the total dmg taken to tank raid bosses for example. And this was not a question of number of players in the raid. And therefore more a question of skill.
To this extent, I agree with Maedhros on one thing. In this lower tier raiding guild, I was raiding also with some bad tanks, that were unable to keep aggro over the few top DPS players.
And also who are slow to react to things, example tank death.
The leadership never wanted to do anything with these bad tanks, as they had (and still have) good attendance.
We posted on board though what to do to play better, but as you guess these players don't care.
Still this is not an excuse, because when these were good tanks tanking, the bad DPS were still doing bad.

2) Leadership,
Not willing to put some warnings to bad players, if they don't improve, they will be booted. See my example with tanks.
And raid leadership. Certainly, raid leader of top tier raiding guild have more talent.
But mainly, and once again it has been said in this thread, the biggest problem is stubbornness. Keeping on the same strategy for a too long time. And also thinking they know better than some players that play the class what these classes can do, to put in place their raid strategy.

I could add too, as other reasons but with a lesser impact, player willingness in raid.
MA being faster called but also when some specific roles are called, like dealing with mounts in Lceanium, dealing with Torchs with Prince, then you have volunteers to do them. While in my former guild you needed to work more to find volunteers for specific various tasks in some raids.

I agree that after a certain time in the expansion the DPS requirement or other harsh mechanism should be made "easier", so that lower tier raiding guilds can still progress.
That being said, lvl 110 in new expansion will allow these guilds to complete EoK and getting a shot at new expansion raids.

For those saying GINA is unnecessary I can tell you my dps jumped significantly when I started using triggers to line up my burns.

GINA is most useful when your raid completely lacks coordination. Your goal should be to do your best to work around what other people are doing since you have no control over what that is it. But once you have a group of people who you can rely on to do the same thing every time then the use of GINA goes away.

Edit. Also, I know a lot of people are hung up on GINA. This is true for the in game audio triggers as well. It's really not a GINA thing. The best thing about GINA is it lets someone else go through the work of making the triggers and allows them to be shared quickly and easily. The extra overlays it can do can be nice but aren't necessary and I don't even think they even get used much. Just get used to what the icons look like for the stuff you care about. You should be able to tell at a glance if you have what you need.

Ingame ATs are sufficient for handling raid-mechanics in my experience, and doing adequate DPS to beat the dps checks, doesn't really require gina either.

Gina is useful if you play without sound for some reason, or simply like big messages onscreen for ATs. not sure what else gina offers?(I get security warnings on the gina-website, so Im not going to check).

GINA allows you to setup timers including a message when the timer expires or after a certain amount of time. I have a timer for key AAs like Silent Cast and ITC so I can see at a glance when I can use again (no need to hover over buttons).

I don't need GINA to do decent dps but I find it helps me keep track of burns and important information especially as I run without sound and at a low resolution.

I wish that were true... well, with the M % Q users

Do you remember what they were? I can't find anything wrong at this point and am an admin over there.

Wouldn't mind hearing more about that, heh.

I assume https://eq.gimasoft.com/gina/ is the official site.
Im using a danish version of chrome, so most of the message wouldn't make sense to you I guess, but the keyword is

Maybe an expired certificate?
or https://stackoverflow.com/questions...-when-the-certificate-is-not-actually-revoked

Certificate is good through July of 2019, but thanks for the info, will look into it further.

Kael days where you spend the whole day during your weekend to dungeon crawl thru Kael Drakkal taking 10 - 20 minutes killing a "named" that really didn't have any drops, and still a bit too low to take on AoW or King Tormax cause youre just a "family-oriented" guild.

Being caught up in losing raids sucks.

It's a great idea to know from the first 20 minutes of the start of the raid if you're going to win or fail. If you fail, pick up and switch zones.