Comment Re:Everquest is actually very cheat-robust (Score 2, Interesting) 420
Hmmm, you must not peruse the various EQ related boards very often, as cheating as how you described (run speed, duping, etc) has occurred quite often over the course of EQ's lifetime.
Granted, most dupe methods are found out after a time, but those that were able to take advantage of them while they lasted (and avoided getting caught) contributed to damaging the game economy by introducing many rare drops that generally wouldn't have been in the game.
Most of what you say about ShowEQ's benefits not being that great are true. Tracking, See Invisible, and a map program like Xylobot will get you most of the functionality that ShowEQ gives.
Personally, I wish Sony Online wouldn't spend so much time fighting ShowEQ. What I believe is _truly_ hurting the game is the use of automated macroing programs to gain money at a ludicrous rate.
Currently there's a program called Macroquest on sourceforge which allows you to control most everquest actions via scripts. Industrious folks have been able to find special tradeskill recipes that, when automated, can generated 6000-35000 platinum pieces an hour. For those that don't play the game, I belive 10k pp goes for $100 or so on playerauctions.com (check the web site for real numbers).
So what happens is you get these asshats that have 10-15 computers & accounts all running macros generating hundreds of thousand of plat an hour, and then they go to playerauctions.com and sell it to other people for big $$$.
This _huge_ influx of money into the game economy KILLS it for everyone else. When someone spends $250 to get a massive amount of platinum and can overpay for uber-item #10123 in the bazaar, those of us who don't cheat and only have 2k in the bank are screwed.
Sony Online needs to spend the couple of days it takes to remove/modify the tradeskill recipes that sell for more than the component cost. This only has to be done for vendor buyable items, since those are the only ones that can be macro'd easily.
The reason you see the spells you need for 10's of thousands of plat (C3 for 35k?!) is because people will pay for it.
Yw
Granted, most dupe methods are found out after a time, but those that were able to take advantage of them while they lasted (and avoided getting caught) contributed to damaging the game economy by introducing many rare drops that generally wouldn't have been in the game.
Most of what you say about ShowEQ's benefits not being that great are true. Tracking, See Invisible, and a map program like Xylobot will get you most of the functionality that ShowEQ gives.
Personally, I wish Sony Online wouldn't spend so much time fighting ShowEQ. What I believe is _truly_ hurting the game is the use of automated macroing programs to gain money at a ludicrous rate.
Currently there's a program called Macroquest on sourceforge which allows you to control most everquest actions via scripts. Industrious folks have been able to find special tradeskill recipes that, when automated, can generated 6000-35000 platinum pieces an hour. For those that don't play the game, I belive 10k pp goes for $100 or so on playerauctions.com (check the web site for real numbers).
So what happens is you get these asshats that have 10-15 computers & accounts all running macros generating hundreds of thousand of plat an hour, and then they go to playerauctions.com and sell it to other people for big $$$.
This _huge_ influx of money into the game economy KILLS it for everyone else. When someone spends $250 to get a massive amount of platinum and can overpay for uber-item #10123 in the bazaar, those of us who don't cheat and only have 2k in the bank are screwed.
Sony Online needs to spend the couple of days it takes to remove/modify the tradeskill recipes that sell for more than the component cost. This only has to be done for vendor buyable items, since those are the only ones that can be macro'd easily.
The reason you see the spells you need for 10's of thousands of plat (C3 for 35k?!) is because people will pay for it.
Yw
