The Elephant in the room

Maybe because there is no possible way Windace can be online 24/7 to BE 100% confident, at most he can only be slightly confident when he & these associates of his are both online at the same time and only while he is observing them actively communicate.

Can he even be 100% confident they aren't AFK automating while he is actually online?
Of course no, in reality he can't truly be 100% confident they aren't unless he is in the very same room these associates are in observing them in the real world.
For all he knows the group is 100% automated while the player is "at the keyboard" only some of the time and not actually controlling ANY of the characters, the player just so happens to be chatting ocasionally.

And all of that is only if we 100% trust Windace.

Wow…

"

I'm beginning to think this is the case. In fact this thread is the only source of information on the subject currently.

So a dozen people got banned, and a few claim its the end of EQ. Yep.. another peak EQ-Player moment right there.

" Well you are obviously mistaken. This is far from the only source of information, this is actually the worst place and the last to the party place for this information. It affected way more than 12 people, like half the server so 100's of players. but yea, keep talking like you actually know something.

Yep. When you trade your plat for a krono you keep the plat price of kronos high, motivating more people to buy kronos to trade for plat. It completes the circle of darkpaw getting revenue from krono purchases.

I have no agenda. Literally..but people like you who appear to be defending cheaters.. actually do have an agenda..

To try to make the cheaters out to be innocent people who were some how wronged.. by getting getting banned.. for cheating..

Which is exactly what I said..

They themselves didn't pay prolly.. just bought ingame krono..

What makes you think I think they aren't using it? You explain all the suspensions then.... . They had the resources to suspend folks on Bertox and . You are aware that some i s b of the folks suspended were i s b folks right?

And whether the devs are using I s b or not their new owners may not care.

Cool story bro.

Except the reality is that there is no way of knowing if banning these people has ANY effect on krono revenue. The people that originally BUY krono from daybreak buy them to trade them for something else, not for play time, so they are already the paying customers. All that banning people that are the ones buying the krono FROM them is doing is lowering the PRICE on those krono by reducing the number of people buying and the number of people farming plat for them.

So its doubtful it costs them much of anything.

I love this !

People cheating get banned ..

WERE ALL INNOCENTS ! ! !

EVERQUEST IS GOING TO DIE WITH OUT US ! !

YOU ALL HAVE AN AGENDA TO TRY TO MAKE THOSE OF US WHO WERE BANNED FOR CHEATING OUT TO BE BAD GUYS ! !

When in reality .. see like 70-85% of those banned people back in a couple months .. Doing exactly what they were banned for in the first place ..

Dont cheat by using 3rd party programs that are not condoned by the game .. its simple as that .

Until then .. see every one of yall in a couple months .. (P.S. Your banned grp is not bigger then eq, and in truth eq will absolutely be ok with out a single one of you coming back. Sorry , not sorry)

Who is surprised now?

You did not respond to my question. Was there no automation involved?

Your "friends" automated between 1 box and all boxes. See the 'New Member' above who rationalizes automated characters as "slightly better than a merc."

These people are watching TV while EQ plays itself. They are near their computer during peak hours but, when the majority of players go to sleep, they do not attend to the game. Furthermore, if they do not receive inquiring/accusatory tells, they feel even more comfortable and can leave for longer periods.

These "people" do not ALT-TAB and play each character individually. They even pretend to be grouping with other people to explain the simultaneous movement of multiple characters. (I have had people tell me, "I just lost a roll on an item" to deflect attention).

Hard to say. I suspect as krono demand drops prices will drop and as prices paid for krono drop. If the demand isn't there it might not be as easy as selling more krono.

But I do agree it is a complex issue which is probably why this was tested out on one server only.

I just wanna say, I currently box with just alt-tab; but I would LOVE a 'prison' server where automation isn't punished.

Most of my work has been in software automation of other software for QA, and most of the bot groups I see are simply bad. Things like always returning to the pixel perfect exact same spot instead of randomizing, simultaneous actions instead of randomized delays, pulling mobs that are already debuffed but still at 100% from directly in front of other players...

I would love the chance to program an entire raid force myself without breaking the rules or hassling other people, it's a meta-game in itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crobots

I've said it before but there's probably a hole in the market the 3rd party crap fills, boxing conventionally is harder to do than playing just 1 character and EQ could probably even make some money selling an Official boxing program for the game that allows you to control another or several other additional characters from the one PC, or an "added value" subscription service for that functionality.

Some "modernisation" of the game would probably go over well and reduce some of the desire for the 3rd party crap.

For example:

Onscreen maps to allow a small amount of additional visibility of mob locations "within sensing range" e.g. mobs within earshot/sense of smell distance (as well as things that are actually within visible LoS) have their approximate locations shown on the map.

Improved Autofollow - no brainer this one, I am sure the QoL of this one feature alone has led many boxing players to the bowels of 3rd party software.

Were they also using macaroni or another forbidden third party program?

Only played Overseer since Hardcore Heritage has ended so I have not noticed anything special going on like banned players. Is anybody still playing EverQuest beside Overseer ???

Is there an official info about a ban hammer ? Missing players might have other reasons. However it would be nice to see if the noobs finally got the kick in the butt that they deserved for such a long time. Not that I cared much about cheaters as its none of my business but SOE and DB tolerated them for more than a decade which was or still is a big mistake. The term "3rd party software" was always blurry and software like GINA or map packages (which are just files and not software) are definetly not involved I assume.

This guy doesn't even know how to use the reply button without screwing it up and then thinks they have an authoritative say in the subject.

Again just because it affected your boxes doesn't mean the game died. Servers are running as they always have for the last 20 years.

Would be interested to hear some first hand experience of someone banned from just using inner space boxer.

It's easy to make a very potent bot group with inner space boxer and a drinking bird toy. Often the disparity between a player group and a target group of mobs makes the capability that macro quest gives irrelevant.

IIRC when maps were first added to the game (they werent there at release) they literally said that players could make their own maps and share them.