The Next Antonious Bale!

There are some pretty fool proof techniques that can severely limit the monopoly these botters hold over a zone. Since they clearly want to kill every mob in the zone, give them a hand with their pulls. If they mez them, hit a small damage AE that will really make their chanter or bard earn their keep.
If they die, instead of asking them, go ahead just rez them. Dont worry if a mob is nearby, if they die, be a samaritan and just keep on rezzing them. If it takes them 67 deaths to realize they should be paying attention to their toons, then you have helped them learn a valuable lesson, and should be commended.
One may ask, "what happens if I get reported ?" and to that I gotta say, have your petitions gone anywhere ? What makes you think his single petition is going to be given any more weight than the hundreds you made against him ?
No, do this for growth, for yours, for his, and for the game itself. This is God's work we're doing out here.

Nope.Don't do that. Friend was at a camp with his alts. Bots set up right on top of them. Friend pulled a heap of mobs (he's a raid tank maxed everything, he likes living on the edge). Their auto-bot started engaging with the mobs; he's doing aes. He gets suspended for training them.

It's really strange that you're more likely to get suspended for interfering with a bot group than for being one. That kind of sends a message of their priorities. Unless some GMs are just doing unscrupulous things.

My other conspiracy theory involves "illicit" item/krono sales. A quick Google search will lead you to popular auction sites where you will find that, unless a majority of those people are really bad at finance, they aren't making any money unless their server transfers are free.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seems pretty corrupt to me. Something like a foreign business would do run by the mob. Ya'll think EQs IP is already shipped out?

Anyway, this just helped me to cancel my subscription. It was only 1 months worth. But if you want new players to stick around.

I suggest in the news we see:
Bot crackdowns.
Communication from DARKPAW Games. About the CSR, their efforts, and how this is structured, and how they care about keeping the game fun and fair.

Don't run your game like the Casino. The mob will come for you once it ceases being a cash cow and you lose all your customers, you will be next. American businesses that outsource their assets become very soft targets. That's a suggestion, from someone familiar with the corruption in our society, America, and how these things will eventually go down. Nothing more or less.

*cheers and god bless*

Bolded the important bit for the games CSR and moderators to consider. Incase anyone misses it or struggles with the queens English.

I would have added this to my above post, but my edit timer ran out.

Again. Be great. God bless. Don't allow exploitation and corruption to ruin your lands.

Why do I get a feeling that those who cried the loudest are bot users who got undermined by a much more sophisticated bot?

The problem is people still want to play this game! Usually in real life there's an alternative when you want to vote with your wallet but if you want everquest the alternative is what p99? Other mmo's on the market are not the same and they don't have the community people have built up within everquest.

A lot of people only play this game because they can sit in game and chat with their friends. Even if there was an exact clone of everquest it wouldn't have the same community, the same friends

you can still vote with your wallet and play the game you love its called F2P .. if all you want is to chat with friends you can easily do that .. you can also play the game granted you wont have access to alot of stuff uber gear and T5mercs but you can still play with friends and guildies .. by not paying for you sub even though you are still technically playing your telling DPG that you wont support them until some things are changed ..
1 or 2 peeps who do this will not make up the dev's mind however if it could be coordinated to get a mass number of people / guilds to do the same thing that would at least show them we are serious ..

as a F2P player I can still play this game to get my "fix " as most people like to say .. I also am playing on Test which is all access .. and until things are changed I will not give them any more of my money .. Ive given EQ 21 years of my gaming life and im sure it equals to over 20k in actual R/L money .. no more .. I hope others follow suit but if not no biggie .. that is my choice it may not be for everyone ..

Ah welcome (another) new member trolling people who don't like bots..
You should perhaps talk to user Crybaby - I think you'd have a lot in common
Not least a strange view of the world: People who protest about x are not usually those doing it. That's really not how it works

Sadly, that won't work for most people - those who value progression; those who are raders etc. I'm sure my guildies love me, but they'd probably love me less if I was a paper tank with FTP gear and AAs . I also can't see my 100-ish guildies moving wholesale to FTP
It's really tragic we're even having this conversation; that the Powers That Be are allowing bullies to drive their paying customers out of the game. Tragic - and truly bizarre

My guess is, he is very likely to come back screaming for getting suspended upon training the group. Or his own bot team got owned/suspended blah blah blah (Not wise to do so IMO)

Just because people are experiencing silently doesn't mean they are bots/afk, especially after a GM investigation.

Actually, a group that posted up on top of the afk group, got suspended today for messing with them.

Meanwhile this same group is still exping 24/7... I guess you're right though, maybe they're silently exping for 24hours a day 7 days a week; that's more probable.


I'm just moving on from this discussion as it appears this group (I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's the same crew on multiple servers leveling up toons on a paid service, seeing how this group cycles a new toon out once it hits max level every few days.) is being supported by a GM(s), otherwise why would it not suspend them, but others who show up and mess with them?

@dreamweaver please close this thread, if nobody is willing to do anything about the bot groups online afk for months at a time, while GM's are suspending other groups messing with them, no point in having this thread up.

Sounds like you perhaps have a different crew there. The AB rabble send automated replies if you send them a tell 'cry me a river' is the usual starter.
They were missing this evening. We had loads of real groups playing for the first time in ages! Probably too much to hope they've been booted; some suggestion they've gone to TLP

I don't think you would even need an active GM to make that call. Just have an algorithm evaluate the playstyle over an extended period of time, for players who has been marked as "suspicious behavior", by enough reports by players(just like we can "mark as spam").

Being active nonstop for 3 days(as in, no sleep or biobreaks at all), is a completely valid reason to disconnect someone imo.

Either the guy is taking shifts with a friend or 2(thats account-sharing and against the eula), or he is a an AI controlled bot(against the eula too), OR he is a legit player, who is completely absorbed into the game, and will probably DIE if not kicked offline(dead players are bad for business, even if it is not against the eula).

Our bots are back in force this morning and a friend's group driven out of GD. They say they won't be going through the reporting process as there's "no point" as nothing happened with their previous 5/6 reports.

It would be really useful if DBG could come along to these threads and tell us what we're supposed to do about this??

Voting with your wallets is fine when you pick one store that sells chicken over another store that sells chicken. But EverQuest is a community. Most people are more interested in starting a neighborhood association or calling the mayor about the police performance than selling their home.

And action against bot groups doesn't have to hurt the bottom line for DPG. The OP even stated he doesn't care about multiboxing, assisted multibox or a day of automated AFK. The majority of people just don't care. This problem is as simple as banning bot groups that stay in the same place that affects ACH/current content for an extended period of time. DPG can turn a blind eye to botters that move every 12 hours and stay out of current content if they like. But the chronic offenders have to have action taken against them. It's completely unacceptable to allow someone to shut their screen off for a week and come back to profits.

What server transfers? krono are account bound

Bots setting up in popular spots and encroaching on other players is of course, unforgivable.

However, I've yet to come across a bot group that could KS me and my friends.... lets be real, these people aren't risking raid geared accounts, their dps isn't godly.

Perhaps the interim answer is to simply play better

100% agree.

(/sarcasm on) And if a "bot" knows how to get you suspended from either training or messing with it, then you should be very afraid of it evolving into Skynet (/sarcasm off).

YES! YOU deserve to be punished for training ANY group, bot or not.

They always have a full group. For casual xp etc, very few folk have a 24/7 full group of raid-geared players. Some people like to play on their own or with a couple of family members etc - but thanks to these bullies, they can't
The bots are maxed lvl and AA. Not every player is
The bots are using software which maximises every "player" every second; unlike actual real humans

The answer to bullying is not to demand that the kids walk around in groups of 6 to save them from the cowards who harrass them - the answer is to get rid of the bullies

(Ah, and the bot groups sometimes bring another group of bots along to make *sure* they can out dps a legitimate group)