A Word of Warning

[EQDoze]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Sony isn't going to worry about scanning memory, or hard-drives, or detecting memory accesses. Naw, much easier to catch folks unwittingly giving themselves away.

I'm not talking about telling your bud "hey, ever try this ShowEQ thing? It rocks!!1!!!!1"

I'm not talking about bee-lining it to the named mob.

No, they've done something much craftier to get you to unknowingly rat yourself out.

Today, in nearly every zone I went to a PLAYER CHARACTER of Level 0 appeared at a specific location. The name varied, though the guild tag was the same. Due to the nature of this particular tactic I won't give the names I saw, nor the guild tag I saw. At least not until we know it's a serverwide naming convention, and not client specific.

Anyway, the names of the player character were mundane, like "Sandal", "Signet Ring", or "Snake Eggs"... All were level 0, all were in the same guild (which, ironically was a name that was reminscent of the humor we saw in hate with "ShowEQ Users are lame").

The guild name was something to the effect of "You Cheater". In other words, it appears to be aimed at SEQ users.


OR...


I'm crazy and paranoid. Either way...

I suggest you do not use "/who", or "/who all" on the guild tag, or the character. The dead giveaway is that these characters are level 0, and usually right in the middle of a bunch of KoS NPCs all alone.


Anyway, check it out, let's verify this so we can see if they're really up to something, or if I should be told to STFU cause I'm a paranoid twit.

[baelang]

it is just some sort of bad packet that comes across as a player. it is just bad data. guildid is always 255, whatever that maps to on your server. usually located at 0,0 too.

[quackrabbit]

It's a known bugged copy of the "you" spawn, and it's on the list to be fixed.

[Projenoski]

Not an issue to be worried about directly as a result of SEQ. I can confirm seeing these while running only EQW, though only in one or two zones (Paludal and Unrest are the two that leap to mind). Same exact as you mentioned, a lvl 0 char, with Race and Class both Unknown came up on /who. When I found this peculiar phenomenon, it appeared as a human male with limbs splayed (ie arms straight out and legs spread wide) and the hair floating slightly away from the head. I took a few screenies of this, in case someone is interested in seeing them.

Oh, if it makes a difference, in one case this was buried up to its waist in the ground, and in another was floating by perhaps two body lengths above the ground.

[fgay trader]

What Projenoski described could be the remains of a perma-killed NPC. For people who don't know what "perma-killed" means: when GM's need to completely remove a particular NPC from the spawn table, they will issue some command that *should* prevent that NPC from spawning from that point forward.

There is (or was) a side-effect to that action, where a naked human NPC usually in some weird pose would spawn a few more times in place of the perma-killed one and would be named "!" (usually has 1 HP and is easily killable). Could be EQ devs tried to fix that bug and ended up messing it up some more :)

[Projenoski]

Originally posted by fgay trader
What Projenoski described could be the remains of a perma-killed NPC. For people who don't know what "perma-killed" means: when GM's need to completely remove a particular NPC from the spawn table, they will issue some command that *should* prevent that NPC from spawning from that point forward.

There is (or was) a side-effect to that action, where a naked human NPC usually in some weird pose would spawn a few more times in place of the perma-killed one and would be named "!" (usually has 1 HP and is easily killable). Could be EQ devs tried to fix that bug and ended up messing it up some more :)

That very well could be it... only two things make me a bit dubious on the matter, but I don't really know one way or another.

1) This was distinctly a player, not an NPC.
2a) Pretty sure nothing ever spawned in that location of Unrest (way out near the zoneline)
2b) Also fairly certain they haven't changed spawns in that zone around (ie. no unrest files patched, and more, any twinks I have tend to live in that zone from 12 to 20)

But as I said before, it could be anything. Who knows?

Edit: Come to think of it, I remember those "!" named naked human NPCs... used to kill them all the time running through EK, right after the halloween events there. Always figured they had screwed it up somehow during the event, now I guess I know how.

[datadog]

Were these things in places where peeps without SEQ couldnt know they were there? Near the zoneline in unrest doesnt sound like a good way to catch SEQ users.

I remember seeing mobs matching that description in South Karana when the quenos badge quest was hosed. At the time i thought it was probably corrupted spawns, but its possible they had been 'perma killed' or disabled in some other way as described above to prevent people from turning in quest items to a broken NPC.

I somehow doubt they would commit much in the way of GM/Guide resources to catching SEQ users. Too many servers and not enough GM/Guildes.

IF they are going to try to catch SEQ users, (and Im not convinced they are) its much less costly in terms of resources to do it programatically.

I think they will be happy as long as there is some concern that they might (deterrance). My view is that they wont take a chance on a class action law suit 400k strong. It would only take one technically strong person to prove they are doing something illegal, then the rest of us can jump on board for the ride.

[Dedpoet]

Slightly off topic, but I thought it was a bit funny. I posted in this (http://seq.sourceforge.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2430) thread just a few days ago that I had never even seen a GM in the year that I have been playing this game. I'm not in a big PoP-capable guild competing for spawns, I'm just Johnny Everquestplayer. The day after I posted that, I was hunting with an RL friend of mine who also uses Seq, and I turned around and there was a GM, standing right next to my friend. It startled me a bit because I wasn't expecting it but there he was, green name and all. I went to target and hail him but he disappeared before I could even do it. I'm not sure if he invised, ported, or zoned, but I quickly checked my spawn list and he wasn't on there. For a couple of hours I was paranoid, but never did hear anything else about it. It was a fairly high traffic area we were in, so I'm pretty sure it was just coincidence. He was probably camped there or something.

I just thought I'd share. I got a kick out of it :-)

[TrplCzek]

Originally posted by EQDoze
Today, in nearly every zone I went to a PLAYER CHARACTER of Level 0 appeared at a specific location. The name varied, though the guild tag was the same.

I can confirm this, except that it wasn't almost every zone. It was EVERY zone. The names didnt stay the same in one zone when I logged out and back in, though the guild tag did. They were always at 0,0 and not visable if you ran by the loc and looked.

[The Sage]

The ones that I have seen didn't have a name or anything. just a littel box telling me it was a PC rather than an NPC. Level 0 and all that, but no name or guild tag. I just figured it was a bugged spawn. Or, as has already been said in this thread, a bad packet. Either way, inconsequential (jeebus my spelling is terrible) because unless you start /gui or /ooc laughing or asking about it, no one knows you saw it.

[fee]

Its a bug in showeq. Specifically its the "You" spawn created for you. It is simply an artifact of decrypting the player info packet on the fly. Hopefully will have it fixed in my next update (eta unknown)

Fee

[seq_linux]

Originally posted by The Sage
The ones that I have seen didn't have a name or anything. just a littel box telling me it was a PC rather than an NPC. Level 0 and all that, but no name or guild tag. I just figured it was a bugged spawn. Or, as has already been said in this thread, a bad packet. Either way, inconsequential (jeebus my spelling is terrible) because unless you start /gui or /ooc laughing or asking about it, no one knows you saw it.

(my question)

I did a search after reading the above post. My question (that I could not find an answer to in my search) is should I be using the OLd Ui IN EQ on my windows box ? It sounds like (from the above post) if I use the new ui GMS/VERN will know I am using seq? or is this only if you start then new UI in game?

(my rambling)
ALSO : The guides/information here is amazing. Still have not run SEQ yet, I want to learn as much as I can first (plus I had a few commands left in the walk through but had to got to work)
STATUS:
Everything is going smooth so far! well except trying to get eth0 get DHCP from my cable providers DHCP (I am now using a linksys router now) and setting eth0 gateway and dns info to point to the linkysys gateway 192.168.1.1
Thanks.

I think I am falling for Linux... I am technical in nature as I do programming for web sites, and love understanding concepts. But I have never tried to understand the workings of what I have been working so closely with all along.

Great OS , Great Features good to learn.

[Dedpoet]

My question (that I could not find an answer to in my search) is should I be using the OLd Ui IN EQ on my windows box ? It sounds like (from the above post) if I use the new ui GMS/VERN will know I am using seq? or is this only if you start then new UI in game?

I'm not sure what gave you that impression. Maybe The Sage posting about /gui, by which he meant talking about ShowEQ in guildchat, not anything about the Everquest user interface.

The current consensus is that the only real way to get caught using Seq (at least with the current lack of detection methods) is stupidity - that is talking about the fact that you're using it, b-lining to rare spawns, zig-zagging through nasty zones to avoid spawns, etc. This could all change if Sony starts trying to detect key sniffers, but at this time, no one believes they are.

Use any GUI you want, it has nothing to do with ShowEQ.

[Cryonic]

Well, I've seen the You mob in SEQ. Interesting thing is, after I zoned for the first time (after logging in to initial zone) it cleared itself out and did not follow my char to any successive zone. I'm guessing the bug is in how SEQ is handling the passing of the initial You that is created when you start SEQ up and then the creation of "You" when it finds out your playerID and real char name, etc...

[genius]

If you buy a Lexus in silver or black if they are the same model then it is the same.

If you use the new ui or the old it is the same.

I know that is very simplistic since coding is not universal in both but the things that matter to SEQ are not tied in to the UI. It is just a 'wrapper' or 'skin'.