Confessions of a cheater...

[RandySlopeJr]

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

There are plenty of threads in R&F for that kind of crap. I'm not going to move the thread, I'll just move the people who can't follow the rules into the banned usergroup.

Thank you Uthgaard you so uber ,What would P99 be like without you.Your amazing keep up the great work.And best of luck.

[Demetrium]

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

There was a time where I treated Street Fighter 2 as seriously as a heart attack. Played religiously for years, entered tournaments and knew everything there was to know about the game. I still love the game and it's a classic, but I would never treat it as seriously as I did back then. It's been 20 years, if I were ever to take it that seriously again then then I'd be doing something wrong. Now I play it for fun and nostalgia, and to occasionally trounce some young fool who thinks he's good at it even though I was playing it when he was a twinkle in his momma's eye.

As a competitive Street Fighter player I'm honestly surprised you would cheat and I'm actually leaning towards you being a scrub more than anything.

Salvation lies within, scrub:
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

[WizardEQ]

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

emu or not, 12 years old or just released

all of that doesnt count, a game is a game and P99 can be taken as srsly as a game just released

I would expect less hacking now. In '99 you guys were all 12-16 and hacking, have impulse control issues, and got your slaps. Now you're all 24-28 and have learned right? You peps still hacking and older are disgraceful....ultimate shame and humiliation upon you. Public lists please with "A"s on your BPs.

Xaxian

[Cheater]

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

As a competitive Street Fighter player I'm honestly surprised you would cheat and I'm actually leaning towards you being a scrub more than anything.

Salvation lies within, scrub:
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

Ouch, you wound me deeply sir. I can understand the sentiment though, but I was definitely no scrub or button masher. I played mostly in the Bay Area, CA and would travel down to Golfland in southern cali on some weekends just to test my skills with those boys as well.

Normally I abhor cheating, as lame as that may sound, and feel the worst thing added to any game was the difficulty slider. Do you remember how tough the old school NES games used to be when there was no "easy" mode or internet to download a FAQ?

I guess the grinding eventually got to me and I ended up down the dark path. At any rate say what you will, Rogean caught people and has handed down punishment. Some think it's too lenient and perhaps their QQ will change his mind, but for now it is what it is.

[Cheater]

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

I would expect less hacking now. In '99 you guys were all 12-16 and hacking, have impulse control issues, and got your slaps. Now you're all 24-28 and have learned right? You peps still hacking and older are disgraceful....ultimate shame and humiliation upon you. Public lists please with "A"s on your BPs.

Xaxian

In 99 I had no clue there was any hacking. I naively assumed that since EQ ran in a full window and you couldn't alt-tab out of it that it was impossible. I really didn't learn about how bad hacking was in Live until well after I had left the game and read about it. What we did have was a shit ton of exploits and bugs that people took advantage of.

Hmm, there was one where if you deleted your character you could create a new one with the same name and loot your old corpse. Could transfer no drop items that way if you wanted to reroll an alt, like say Jboots..

Or one where sometimes the name filter would not catch duplicates and you could end up with the same name as someone else. Sometimes while zoning you would end up as the other character so if you were level 14 and they were 50 you'd both be in for a rather strange surprise. Seen that one happen to my buddy and he was the one that had the higher level guy.

There were so many at the time I don't think people needed to hack. The game was buggy as all hell when it first opened.

[Kobias]

This is probably one of the more well thought out posts regarding the subject I've read in a long time. I was expecting a RNF style troll or something.

The moment the v12 patch came out, I was digging into the ASM of the new dll files to find out what they did. I was actually rather shocked with some of it. Those files do a lot more than what you might think it does. Kinda borderline privacy violation imo, but I can see the need for it; I just hope they keep my personal info secure on the server that collects it. I kinda sorta warned people upfront, but I didn't want to tell them it was a detection because I figured I'd land myself in trouble. I'm a programmer myself, and I love security stuff. That is why I take a vast interest in a variety of things on both sides. You need to understand how MQ2 works in order to stop hackers cold.

@OP: I will be honest, I can see why you'd find appeal in some of the things you mentioned. From what I've heard about it, it does some interesting things. But, those "interesting things" in MQ2 are often abused by the wrong people. I do know many players from Live that used it. Many of which only used it passively (for a means of information such as selling price of items? spell information on demand?) We'd group together and he'd tell me all the shit I should keep or toss lol. I don't personally have a problem with these types of people. I might consider the Tracking/EB thing you mentioned as bad though, as there are encounters that demand it.

But then, there are those people who did find SERVER-SIDE EXPLOITS, and used MQ2 to develop plugins/macros that took advantage of them. For example, the most notorious scandal I can remember was NoDelay/Ghost Killing mobs from EQLive. This went on for a very LONG time! Pissed me off because people were always jacking my mobs >.< But, It was because EQLive didn't enforce delay in their code that opened up a weakness to be exploited.

This is why NoDelay/Ghost doesn't work on emulator servers to the best of my knowledge-- or at least I've never heard about it? The loophole it exploited doesn't exist here.

Anyway, I've always been kind of torn on the whole issue of MQ2 thing, even from Live. The point I was trying to make, and maybe is the same as the original post: MQ2 can do a lot of things, most of which are passive (effects how you perceive the world). In some cases it can improve your gaming experience tremendously by taking tedious things out of the equation and let you focus on whats important to you. Then there are the A-Holes who pay cash to get hardcore plugins that do some wickedly sick things (Warping, zoning, etc), and act like complete dicks to others with the "power" it gives them.

Normally I wouldn't say this because it might count as divulging an exploit, but given that we have detection now, I feel a bit more optimistic we can discuss more detail. I've seen a guy use warping on P1999 to kite/med mobs. He'd setup 4 or 5 warp points in a circle pattern and pull a mob; start warping between the 4 points (smaller warps are less detectable apparently) and just dot a mob. He'd sit down and still be warping to the 4 points on a nice interval that the mob never could catch him. Easy XP? This is the kind of guy I have a problem with. I confronted him about it, but he was a nice guy so I didn't report him; just warned him that it's not a smart idea to use it here.

It was very generous of Rogean and crew to only suspend these people. If I had my hand in this process, I would have had a specific GM spy on those people during that period and serve them a ban instead for the ones exhibiting any noticeable/major exploitation. The community would probably be better because of it.

---

@omg mq2 cheaters must die: You probably met the small dick guys I was talking about.

@omg mq2 users can't track anymore: Guess again! the OP was pointing out other methods. There is a reason why EQLive has battled this problem for years, and it began with ShowEQ. It cannot be traced if done correctly, and I guarantee you somebody will do this. I wont tell you the correct way to do it. It just wont be as common place to use because MQ2 made it easy for the common guy.

@omg mq2 is gone forever: Not likely. If you honestly believe this, then you're a fool. Security and Hackers go hand-in-hand. A new security method comes out, a new hack circumvention prevents it. There is probably already somebody working on patching the new .DLL files to always transmit a passing state (or manipulate the data it collects about your machine). The point of me saying this is: relish it for a while because we'll be safe from hardcore cheating here for a while; but if I had to place my bets I'd say it'll be back at some point.

@omg P1999 actually did something to stop it, EQLive didn't: I heard a lot of people say shit like this, and always thought it was kind naive. EQLive did a more advanced detection technique years ago, and discovered the sheer well of people and their accounts who used. They took action against a select few who used it more hardcore game disrupting, but they inevitably adopted a secret policy of tolerance. Honestly, their reaction was the same as Rogeans: Disappointed. However, Rogean doesn't depend on us for financial backing, unlike EQLive. That is precisely why those who used it passively were not banned during that period, their continued subscription fee.

@omg Kobias was suspended too?!: No. My post here isn't in retaliation to a suspension or anything. Just sharing my views on the subject, and putting fact to stuff people talk about but don't seem to understand.

@Mods: Sorry if I put something in here you'd rather me not say. If you need to edit the exploit thing out or something go ahead... Would prefer that over deletion since I put a lot of time into this [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

@tl;dr crowd: try Ritalin...and learn more [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

@OP: I feel for your loss man, probably the only one I've heard who was suspended that I do.

[Striiker]

I actually found this to be an interesting read. I never knew what these programs do although I had some good guesses. We all come to Project1999 to play original, challenging, hard mode Everquest. Why anyone would want to come to this server AND use cheats to make it easy is honestly baffling. Why not go play on the other servers where this is easier or somewhat condoned? It all makes no sense to me. If I don't get that rare spaw or uber item, it makes me more determined to get it. That's the challenge and the whole point of playing on this server.
Thanks for the well-written post.

[Cheater]

Well I'm glad at least a few people got something out of the post, that was my intention after all. I agree that hacking/cheating may not be completely stopped, but it will stop the majority(like me) who were using it passively and not aggressively trying to break the game and ruin others fun. Other than upsetting other players in the fact that cheating was going on, I never once used my advantages directly against other players. Most of the time I just had MQ2 running in the background for the free buffs and convenience. Stupid yes, but just took some monotony out of the game and I got so used to it I just left it running at all times.

At any rate I'm not upset about it in the slightest. EQ is a brutal game no doubt, but those that have logged many hours still understand the game better than the average player and it certainly won't be impossible to get back to where they were without any cheats. I undestand the sentiment and it's easy to point fingers and claim all people that use MQ2 "suck" at EQ, but how much of that is to make yourself feel better thinking "well if I used MQ2 I'd have 5 fungi tunics too!"? Some may and need the crutch, others just see it as a way of making certain tasks easier. I'm quite sure some "cheaters" are actually quite skilled players and use the advantage to a better effect than the average person would be able to. If you disregard that reality, well then that's fine too.

[Feachie]

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

Ouch, you wound me deeply sir. I can understand the sentiment though, but I was definitely no scrub or button masher. I played mostly in the Bay Area, CA and would travel down to Golfland in southern cali on some weekends just to test my skills with those boys as well.

Normally I abhor cheating, as lame as that may sound, and feel the worst thing added to any game was the difficulty slider. Do you remember how tough the old school NES games used to be when there was no "easy" mode or internet to download a FAQ?

I guess the grinding eventually got to me and I ended up down the dark path. At any rate say what you will, Rogean caught people and has handed down punishment. Some think it's too lenient and perhaps their QQ will change his mind, but for now it is what it is.

that's why nintendo power had a game masters hotline [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

also, demon souls.

[mitic]

good post kobias