Confessions of a cheater...

[Cheater]

I used MQ2 and have had my account suspended. I broke the rules, I accept the punishment with zero QQ about it. Yes I am anonymous though you probably wouldn't know my character anyways as I'm not guilded, I don't post in the forums and I am generally under the radar. I play the game to enjoy myself and had no intentions of "ruining" it for anyone else. This post is meant to be an informational thread about what these programs can and can't do so if you wish to RNF me then be my guest but please don't shit up the thread. There is nothing more ridiculous then watching a bunch of people nerd rage about things they really don't know anything about and I'm seeing it right now. MQ2 and ShowEQ (aka MySeq) do not give you god mode, allow you to dupe or any of the other wild claims I see being thrown out there. In most cases they give convenience and small (in some cases larger) advantages. This isn't an attempt to justify their use, only clear the air so that those who don't know about them can understand what they do.

Why did I do it? Habit I guess. Let me start from the beginning. I played EQ in classic era and never once hacked, cheated or anything of the like. I didn't know about it and wouldn't have wanted to risk losing my account over it. A few years back I had a craving for EQ again and found that live simply wasn't the EQ I remembered so I began searching around and found a classic era EQEMU server and decided to play on it. Except that it was pvp which was something I had never done in EQ. Ultima online I was all about PvP, but in EQ I was pure blubie. At any rate I decided to log on and give it a shot and it wasn't long before I became hooked. Sure some things were different, but at the time it was by far the closest thing I had found to classic EQ so I stuck with it.

Most of my time on VZTZ was enjoyable and in contrast to what you see posted on these boards a lot of the players were actually pretty good people. However there were some definite known hackers and they were very apparent. I played by the rules for most of my time there, but eventually frustration gave in to me searching around for what they were using. I hardly ever attacked anyone on sight and usually traveled alone anyways, but I simply got tired of trying to play fair against those that weren't. Hanging out in south karana with no one else there, then seeing one person on the /who list who was not a tracking class magically sniff me out in 30 seconds got old. As did seeing them run away at bard speed anytime I actually started winning the fight. So it didn't take long to find both MQ2 and MYSeq, learn to use them and at least have a fighting chance.

So what do they do?

MYSeq is a seperate program that runs outside of everquest that shows a live text map of any zone you're in. It lists all mobs in the zone, a live update of their positions and a list you can sort by name, level, etc.. It logs information about all of the spawns and pathing and will update the map with that information the longer you stay in the zone. It also lists what the mob/pc is equipping in their hands(to an extent). It generally uses a generic name but you can tell if it's a weapon, shield, book, etc.. I hardly used this program as I found it to be a pain to always alt-tab out of it, and hated running EQ in a small window to see both at once but the most powerful features I knew about was the rare mob alarms and the spawn information. You could set an alarm to go off anytime a named mob popped up so you'd be alerted instantly. It would also keep track of what spawned where, give you a time and mark the spot with an "x". The x would even change colors depending on how soon the spawn was going to happen and would begin flashing when it was within 30 seconds of popping. I used this on VZTZ to figure out how to spawn rare mobs in places like Rathe Mountains and South Karana. If you cleared a ton of mobs and a rare popped, it would show you which spawn spot it popped in and then you'd know what one to camp. As I said however I didn't use this program on this server as I just didn't want to spend the effort. It may be capable of a lot more than what I knew about it, but this was it's main use. Keep in mind however that the program didn't make the spawn pop, allow you to kill it in one hit or speed up the process. You still had to camp it like anyone else, it just made it easier to figure out tricky rare spawn conditions and locations.

What I did use however was macroquest, though in this version hardly any of the "hacks" actually worked. MQ2 requires you to either compile it yourself based on which features you want it to have available(or real hackers could make their own), or to find a precompiled version specific to the version of your eqgame.exe. It didn't take long to find one that worked specifically with the titanium client and was the same version I had used with VZTZ. As I mentioned however most of the really ridiculous stuff never worked on VZTZ, nor did I even try it here. The quickest way to get caught using it is to do things that stood out and made it obvious. Warping, runspeed, etc.. In fact out of all the features that even worked I only used it for 5 and they were pure convenience. The convenience I speak of are full time buffs of things my character could already do, but saved me time and effort in not having to do them. By simply typing in a command you could give yourself ultravision, see invisible, water breathing and even the ability to see underwater or lava without the murkiness. Now on a blubie server this isn't that big of a deal as it doesn't really effect other players, it simply gives you an advantage. No need for EB earring or fish scales to keep casting the spell. On a PvP server however you can see how broken it would be to NOT have it when most people did.

The biggest thing I found useful was the tracking. MQ2 gave you the ability to track just as if you were a Ranger/Druid/Bard, except there were no limits to the range. You could sort it by level, name, player, npc, etc.. I've never played a high level ranger and have no clue what their tracking is like, but my guess is that MQ2 version is superior. It also showed mobs with a "#" in front of the name which normally denotes they're special. You know that Quillemain cycle in SK? Well instead of just killing all lionesses and elephant calves, you could tell which ones were the triggers by the # in front of their name making the job much easier. Oh and you could use the /target command on npcs and mobs which isn't usually allowed. So if a mob isn't directly targetable at the moment you can manually do it. You can imagine how nasty this was in PvP targeting someone across the zone and retargeting if they go invisible on you.

What these programs do NOT do is dupe items, give you exp faster, magically make you level 60 or invulnerability or anything of that nature which it seems like people are wilding claiming. These types of things are traceable by the GM's and people would have to be stupid to try any of them. My character wasn't rich, wasn't level 60 and didn't lock down any specific camps or mobs during the game. I probably lost about 8k between my characters with the coin wipe. If anything I was extremely helpful and if anyone profited it was new people to the server that I always went out of my way to help, give items to, etc..

So basically what I'm getting at is we are cheaters as we broke the rules, but while it gave an advantage it didn't simply let us go afk and wake up level 60 or anything ridiculous like that. Those are the mad ramblings of people who want to make you THINK that's what was happening as if to somehow detract from any legitimate accomplishments a player may have made. These programs work great for tracking rare mobs in large zones, but in a dungeon you already know where the mobs are at, their spawn time, etc.. Knowing they're up isn't all that advantageous if you're already capable of killing the creatures. So for Quillemaine, Bilge, Hunter/Forager,etc.. they gave a noticeable advantage to characters that didn't have tracking. Otherwise the advantages weren't all that game breaking, just very convenient.

Again I'm not attempting to justify anything, but to my knowledge the level of "cheating" going around wasn't anywhere near as game crushing as some people are being lead to believe. Sure it could have happened but I never once saw it, and being from VZTZ I'd have known it if I did. Personally whether or not I had cheated I'd have been far more forgiving to know the guy next to me could see invisible without casting the spell than I would the guy on the other side who duped 500k gold and was exploiting a mobs pathing in Kedge Keep to gain level 60 in a week. Both of which mind you have NOTHING to do with hacking programs. In fact I'd say for anything detrimental to other players on a blue server, exploits are far more disastrous than the hacking and tracking shortcuts that were being used.

At any rate I'll take my lumps and be back in game in two weeks, even if the suspension turned to a permanent ban and I have to start new. Why? Because I enjoy everquest and the cheating wasn't something I required to enjoy it, it was just so easy that I kind of felt compelled to. Not an excuse, just an honest statement. I'm not surprised and had a feeling that new DLL had to do with Rogean's hack detection, but I was too content at the time to think much of it. Honestly I almost took all of my items and put them on another account in fear of this, but you'll be happy to know I never did so my punishment is in full. Yes perhaps the GMs are lenient, but going from 60 to 54 is a huge loss no matter how you cut it. Even if they AOE group themselves for 72 hours straight we all know that isn't fun and they will all feel the sting. For those with huge stores of plat.. well they will feel it even more.

In closing I can say I'm actually sort of happy about this. Knowing that no one else is cheating and using third party programs takes away any reason for me to even want to do it and I can just play the game as intended. You may instantly damn anyone who "cheats", though I assure you not all of us are douchebags in game. I'd be willing to bet most of you have run across these so called "cheaters" and would have had no clue. You think "cheater" and automatically assume they're assholes in game who train, poop-sock, dupe and the like but I know many were unassuming players like anyone else who probably even helped you or someone you know at some point or another. I would know, I'm one of those people. If you've ever been given items out of sheer kindness, been randomly buffed by a higher level character, had someone help you break a camp that you couldn't do alone, etc.. Then one of those times it was a filthy cheater. Who knows, it could have be me...