Server Populations…

Going to be looking a lot lighter the next 7 days at least.

Color me ignorant here, but why?

Kraft Mac n Quest got people on the timeout list.

how many servers got hit?

The creativity of naming that which must not be named never ceases to amaze me

It's amazing the population drop. Makes you wonder if the accounting department will be happy with this.

Sigh. I remain baffled

How pathetic do you have to be to try to cheat in a 20-year-old game.

Was this on a TLP server?

Noticed we have been quite the last couple of weeks now lockdowns are lifting and people are no longer "working from home".

I'm just glad to hear they are still making attempts at policing the game. Helps to not make the rest of us feel like chumps for following the rules.

If they made the game playable solo it wouldn't be a problem. If people want to be able to get on, play for 3 hours without being lfg for 2, and don't cause anyone grief how is it a problem?

People that box pay 6x as much as a solo player, if you want to keep EQ going you don't drive away your largest customers thsts pretty basic math.

Nobody has problems with boxers and many of these are F2P accounts being leveled from what I've seen. The problems people have are automated gameplay where the person logs their team on, automates it then goes to bed or whatever.
Not to mention the bazaar sellers who use Kraft Mac 'N Quest to automate price undercutting which 1) violates TOS, 2) is unfair to legitimate players and 3) causes extra server load due to constant price checks every X minutes

50% of Bertox population was suspended yesterday. My only comment is that if they are willing to take that big a hit on subs they are in a bad way. is used massively. It's kinda like weed just legalize it and make money off of it.

Everquest doesn't have enough players to kick off that many players. And u doubt they are all screwing with bazaar prices.

And who uses the bazaar anymore, get your own trade skills up and it is irrelevant.

how hard would it be to take the merc software and make it so you can hit a command on a alt and have it act like one lol

It's not just about the game itself, the Everquest IP is just as valuable as the game itself, if not more so.

You can not allow cheaters to take your company image hostage.

Cheaters tarnish game companies their IP. Everquest cheaters tarnish the Everquest brand and it makes it far more difficult for Daybreak to be successful with future games when Everquest and Daybreak Games becomes synonymous with cheaters.

The cost of cheaters is not limited to the game they cheat in, it becomes a chronic curse on the company and it greatly undermines the image of the company and its IP.

I have seen many gamers completely reject games from companies due to cheaters infesting previous games. "I am not playing another bot-infested game from company x,y,z". The damage cheaters do to a company brand is way costlier than simply kicking those people out of your games.

Strawberry: This is why I quit Ultima Online. It turned into scripters taking over the game, the economy was destroyed and the game lost all appeal since it just felt like any time I spent playing it was cheapened due to the number of robots in game.

Source for "50%". I find that hard to believe.

And what do tradeskills have to do with Bazaar? Most stuff bought and sold is not the result of tradeskills.

Source on 50% is a bit rough, but we watched the General Chat go from 400 down to 270, and Gen1 went from 120 to 61 right about 6PM. Given that was just logged in toons, and yes it can be skewed... It was a significant chunk.

Well, the issue at hand is automated gameplay is used to gain an advantage over players who follow the rules. In other words, automated plat farmers are outbidding/out-buying legitimate, rule-abiding players in the Krono market. (There's been a mysterious increase in anonymous Krono buyers paying 20-40% above normal prices). These plat farmers also hoard the Krono and lessen the supply for rule-abiding players; thereby, subverting the market.

Edit: Ironically, my complaint about some of these same players hoarding Heritage Crate illusions shows their buying power and leverage. This buying power can be translated to future tradable chase loot and other avenues of game power.