Macroquest

[kuahara]

Itchybottom's response was like a breath of fresh air in this mess. I always roll my eyes when people talk like MQ2 is somehow broadcasting it's presence in clear and obvious ways.

The only thing I feel inclined to point out it that the adjustment of offsets is probably not the answer. You can find the new offsets in a matter of minutes, make the change in MQ2 and recompile... problem solved. did it a million times my last year or two on live. Note that I never once touched a hack or exploit during the 7 years I partook in raiding and other forms of guild progression. I don't condone any form of cheating in competitive arenas.


To the OP: I'd say that it's almost not worth toying around with it at all on other servers or just to play here exclusively because you will invariably leave MQ2 running one day. It will be unintentional, but it won't matter. All it will take is that one time... I'm not saying you'd be caught right away, but that'd suck if you were suddenly banned at lvl 50 mid raid because of something you may not have realized you were doing.

That said, if it was me, I'd just write a script that terminates any running instances of MQ2 first, then runs eqgame.exe. Make your EQ shortcut call the script instead and you should be set for life.

good luck

[Noleafclover]

What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men.

[toyodafenninro]

This is somewhat silly. A long winded response:

I started playing EQ in 1999 and continued to 2002, completely MQ free. Through these years, even as a simple player, I began to notice very patternistic events occuring on my server among certain players (especially those in high end guilds) regarding amazingly lucky trackers finding rare spawns and raid spawns. I'd occasionally take notice of an empty sebilis zone, late at night, and while I farmed gems at 3-way a necro or monk somehow suddenly claiming crypt was camped. Maybe they camped out there, behind the locked door...
When I joined a raid guild the secret was revealed to me in a voice chat session and it all clicked. I mitigated the cognative dissonance of MQ2 usage by chalking it up to keeping up with the jones's.

On live, from 2003-2004, I used MQ2 in a fairly tame manner. No heavy plugins, etc. Advanced tracking, targeting, runspeed adjustments capped at SoW speed, etc. I did my own builds, modified my own offsets, and flew under the radar completely undetected.

In 2005 I didnt play Everquest.

From 2006 2009, becoming bored with EQ and the mudflation rampantly destroying what I felt Everquest was, I started using the heavy plugins and more extensive capabilities of the program because really, I had less and less to lose. This was where I took full advantage of warping, got reckless setting my runspeed to bardspeed (I was a wizard at the time), did several AFK plvling sessions with fully automated groups, Utilized instancing to farm loot....the list goes on and on and on.

I tell this story not to condone cheating or condemn cheating in an conceptual sense. I simply will say that using MQ2 burned up my remaining interest with EQ faster than it normally would have...but there was some truth to claiming I "needed it". By 2007, if you were playing EQ on Fennin Ro or Combine and DIDNT know about/use/benefit from someone who used MQ2, you were the complete minority.

I do not want MQ2 usage to be widespread on p1999. Id so much rather have a fair server. I say this with complete and total confidence.

Let me bring this around to relevancy to the OP. Understand the following facts about MQ2:

Having MQ2 on your computer, or using it on another EQ emu server or on Live, isnt gonna get you banned. The devs are not, to my knowledge, scanning anyone C:\ drive.

Simply running MQ2 on ANY everquest server, including EQemu, is not detectable in and of itself. Anyone who tells you different either does not understand how MQ2 works or is attempting to scare you. If it was simple to find everyone using MQ2 in a tame way, it never would have taken hold like it did. Almost ALL bans on Live, resulting from Mq2 usage, come from players reporting players and subsequent targeted investigation by GM's - NOT from some sort of "scan" GM's could do to seek out those running MQ2.

This said, pretty much any use of Mq2, beyond staring at the map is pretty easily detectable by simple observation AND server side investigation.

Example: A puller in a group running sow speed or faster for more than 27 minutes after their initial joining, with no one in the group to refresh sow and no using potions.
Example: The quillimane farmers. Enough said.
Example: A person entering a zone and somehow mysteriously ending up camping a mob behind a locked door somewhere in that zone, with no rogues present.
Example: A person on p1999 linking an item not available on the server yet, or being able to instantly link almost any item mentioned in group chat.

Runspeed modifications and warping are both highly highly detectable if Dev's want to look into it. I trust the devs here on p1999 are truly policing this to their fullest inject-inyoface power.

An important observation:

The vast majority of users to not code or want to know how to code. They get their builds from stupid friends who code or one of the many available sites that distribute them for nominal yearly fees. Changing offsets DOES curb MQ2 usage by limiting its use to those who ORIGINALLY used it: quietly and under the radar to remove some of EQ's annoyances. My evidence for this claim comes from the massive spike in forum usage on the cheat sites when sony patches eqgame and everyone is fiending for their fix. The coders are already back in game, using their self generated build. This is not a perfect fix, but it greatly curbs the usage and should be implimented on a regular basis, the more often the better.

[guineapig]

Originally Posted by Ferok [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Hello, new signature!

You beat me to it!.

[azeth]

Can someone post an SS of what macroquest shows you btw? I've never really looked into/seen what benefit/cheat it provides the user.

edit: i believe im thinking of ShowEQ(?) that shows you loot tables and mob health etc. Macroquest is the /command program right?

[oldhead]

Originally Posted by oldhead [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Perhaps not as many people are using it as you think.

I have been accused of using it a few times by other players.
I have never used it in my life, ever, on any game. I only know what it is by reading threads like this one.

My point is... just because you "think" someone is using it doesnt mean they do.

Its funny.. I posted this then started camping an outdoor rare spawn that is very similar to quillmain being thats its a rare spawn with a valued rare drop.

had him pop twice... no reactions. had him pop a third time and was on him quickly. By the time I got him down to 25% I had people running strait for him (non tracking classes). When he died he had dropped the high value item. There were suddenly 7 new people on track that ran over to the area where I killed him.

Coincidence? Dunno... It defiantly made me paranoid tho.

[frefaln]

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Having it loaded will automatically inject itself into any EQ Client it finds that its compatible with. If it injects, we will detect it, and theres no excuse; I'll inject your face with a ban.

Unless you're in Wrathful Inquisition, then it's a free pass.

Also, feel free to use ShowEQ. MySEQ 1.27.0 works well with Windows 7 as it has the correct offsets right out of the gate. I used it for 60+ levels across various toons, and I know plenty of others are using it also.

[Spunge18]

Surely GMs with their apparent detection methods will be able to trace ShowEQ just as easily as MQ2?

[Jeice]

P99 allows dupeing too right?

[Itchybottom]

Originally Posted by toyodafenninro [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The vast majority of users to not code or want to know how to code. They get their builds from stupid friends who code or one of the many available sites that distribute them for nominal yearly fees. Changing offsets DOES curb MQ2 usage by limiting its use to those who ORIGINALLY used it: quietly and under the radar to remove some of EQ's annoyances.

And imagine using codecaves to change where information in the client populates. Like putting ActorDef in SpellInfo, portions of ItemInfo in CharInfo. Someone may be able to run some automated patch day tool to compare offsets, but if the entire structure of the client were to be changed there are very few of us that could map the new executable after modification like that. All of the struct tables in the script kiddies MacroQuest2 compile would need re-writing. Then you start taking a log of who disconnects after login (client crash) and you'll have a list of people even attempting to use it.

EQEMU is already based on reverse engineering. I don't see a binary diff, and a compiled binary patcher to work against an existing eqgame.exe being any more of a problem. You aren't distributing any copyrighted material, you're just altering a clients runtime execution (which is what WinEQ2 is doing already)