Question about Memory Read detection

[LordCrush]

Hi all,


Yes i know another post about this topic :rolleyes:

I am wandering if there is the possibitlity to distinguish between the memory read that an app like Magelo Updater or a Virus scanner does and the MySEQ Server (if someone wants to do detection =) ?

Great Work CMB :) =)

[trustno1]

I was wondering the same thing myself.

WONDERFUL job!!

The only thing keeping me from using this program regularly with my main account is the fear hehe. I use a throw away account to test the server and client. It's really shaping up good!

[cavemanbob]

Virus scanners likely use a lower level method, I can't really say how magelo does it. There are better ways of doing this, hopefully I'll have one soon, it really won't be an issue till the next eqgame patch anyway.

[Resiliant]

Hereis My ken on this issue LC...

If SoE were to implement such a detection scheme, they would be so overwhelmed by false positives that it would make it virtually impossible to tell the MySEQ users from the people with application X that happens to access EQ's memory space for some reason.

Frankly, I've never seen ANY evidence of a desire on their part to sift through the what? 500,000 computers connected to the EQ servers to find MySEQ running on any single one of them.

The memory reading will get better in the future, for the momeht, just rename the client executable to something other than what you got originally, and my belief is that you're rather safe.

R

[Elmo]

Frankly, I've never seen ANY evidence of a desire on their part to sift through the what? 500,000 computers connected to the EQ servers to find MySEQ running on any single one of them.

This goes back to the discussion that has been debated over and over in these forums. As things currently stand, it may not be worth SOE's time, effort, or $$$ to look fro MySEQ users. However, *if* a tool like MySEQ became popular enough that a signficant percentage of the player base was using it, *and* if the impact of it was noticeable enough that players who did NOT use it were complaining in droves about it, *then* SOE might decide to do something about it.

One of the ways the SEQ developers tried to prevent that scenario from happening was to make it only available on linux, and requiring users to go through more than a point-and-click complete installation process. This intentionally limited the SEQ user base. It remains to be seen how many people will use a Windows version like MySEQ (and LEQM), and what impact it will have on the game.

The main point is that I think if a 3rd party program gave SOE a good reason to spend resources on squashing it, they would most likely do so. Other games have been significantly impacted to the point of driving away a large number of paying customers by the widespread usage of 3rd party programs, and I don't doubt for one minute that if a program like this got to the point where a lot of players started cancelling accounts over it, SOE would try to do something about it.

[Kimbler]

In the early days I could see why SoE didn't want folks to use SEQ. But frankly now it is not a great differentator from the stand point of fair play. Heck everyone has an alt tracker or knows one so the "who is up in the zone issue" is not a big deal. The new map features ingame pretty much take away that advantage. The old highly contested (camped) single spawns for a single item are not a big deal since the game has matured the highly contested mobs are Raid level with guilds tracking times of death and keeping a tracker in zone.
So the bottom line is MySEQ really really enriches EQ game play (man i sure love this program, thank you) but it no longer provides the drastic advantage it use to provide.
Why SoE would go to great lenghts to BAN and scan would seem to be big waste of time and resources.

[Resiliant]

I completely agree with what has been said above.

Here's another point to consider... There's a threshold involved here. As long as a 'significant', but relatively small percentage of SoE's customer base is usig MySEQ, then we risk them taking action. At some point, however, this action starts to hurt them more than it helps them.

Lets suppose that MySEQ, because if it's incredible ease of installation, and its feature set, becomes used by 75% of SoE's customer base. It then becomes a defacto standard, and SoE will, in all probability simply buy in to its feature set, which exists, after all, because their own customers want it, due to their own ineptitude as regards program design.

In the past, the SEQ developers have by design kept the user base intentionally small. My hope is that MySEQ will become H U G E L Y popular, and will achieve a degree of protection simply because of its customer base. No way is SoE gonna Ban 50% of its users.

In any case, we all know that it's quite possible to make it *extremely* difficult for them to detect interprocess memory reading without violating several laws, and spending millions of dollars. Imo... the future is bright :)

R

[Elmo]

That whole argument goes in circles. You say on the one hand that it gives you no big advantage, and on the other hand you talk about how it enriches the game so much. Certainly a program like this is more of an issue in PvP games (and in the case of EQ, on PvP servers) compared to PvE, but it still boils down to the fact that you've got it and like what it does, and others do not.

You can go scooping up ground spawns for tradeskills, you can avoid all the invisible traps, you can weave your way through dangerous areas avoiding all the mobs that might aggro you if you stumbled along blindly, you don't *need* to park trackers and go looking for spawns that are deep within a zone possibly beyond tracking range from a zoneline, you can go to any zone and know exactly what named mobs are up as soon as you get there.

If tools like SEQ became so prevalent that for example half of the user population had one, then the other half would almost certainly know about it, and many would likely feel cheated by not having the same amount of information. If it ever got to that point, I could certainly see SOE pay more attention to detecting users and banning them. Also, they wouldn't need to ban all of them, they could just start making examples out of a few people, and if it was clear that you can easily be caught if you use the programs, a lot of people would probably just stop rather than get banned.

[Resiliant]

Elmo,

No.. your missing my point. We make this mistake a lot, and it was one of the reasons we used to get into a very 'hot' debate in the SEQ forums. Let's try to look at this from a dispationate point of view. EQ is just software. It has features. If a substantial portion of the user community, lets say 75% of the user community for a piece of software state, through the use of competing software, that a certain feature set is what they want to see, the manufacturer of that software is going to be highly motivated to add that feature set to its product.

If, in fact, the only reason that 75% of the user base of EQ has NOT used SEQ was because it was impossibly difficult to set up, and IF given this new windows environment, that kind of percentage of users adopt it, I submit that SoE would be insane to start making 'examples' of their customer base by banning people that, in reality, are telling SoE what they want in the game. I suppose they could still go ahead and do it, but it would accomplish nothing. If you are saying that you think that SoE could somehow alter the reality of the desires of the customer base, then I think you are mistaken. Fact is, as most of us know who use SEQ and MySEQ, bottom line is, these apps make the game *more* fun to play.

To use just one of your examples, perhaps the current implementation of ground spawns is not optimal. Perhaps making huge portions of tradeskills critically dependent on the random chance of finding something that is *extremely* difficult to see is bad design. It's not fun to go around for 15, 20, 50, 100 hours looking at the ground so you can pick up a couple dozen items that are critically important to you developing Brewing, or Smithing, or Tailoring, or whatever. Perhaps the reason SEQ exists is because SoE totally blew it as far as game design goes. If that's true, then improving the game is what we're about. Hell, they've already adopted our map system.

:)

R

[Elmo]

Resiliant, I understand your point, and I can buy the argument that some features (e.g., cartography system, windowing) were inspired by SEQ and its brethren. I also wouldn't rule out SOE deciding to add similar features that these 3rd party tools, and competing games, offer. So as far as that goes, I agree with you.

However, I think I would argue that rather than generalizing EQ into being any old piece of software, I would think of it within the category of multiplayer games. A lot of people who play games want the rules to be the same for everyone, and many people have been turned off by other games that had widely used hacks and cheat programs that put a "plain vanilla" user at a disadvantage. The person using those programs might say that they made the game more fun to play. The person not using it might say that other people using it makes the game less fun to play, and might quit playing because of it.

That's a different dynamic--I wouldn't say gee, the game company should have added those hack and cheat features for everyone to use. I realize that many of those games were PvP-style where this sort of thing is a bigger issue than a primarily PvE game like EQ. However, EQ is still a competitive game, even if the competition doesn't involve killing other players. Most people are trying to improve their Magelo profile, and trying to advance their guild, heck some people are making $$ off the game, and that is competitive. From that perspective, you could call a program like SEQ the equivalent of insider trading.

I am also generalizing a bit, because many of the hack/cheat programs are more active than a passive monitoring tool like SEQ, and other EQ tools (e.g., Macroquest) might be more of a concern in the EQ environment. However, to the extent that SEQ gives you *any* advantage, even if it's just better information or a better/additional interface, it still makes the playing field uneven, and creates the risk of driving players away from the game.

I don't buy the argument about how SOE was "inept" at designing their game, I could just as easily argue that their design mistake was including the zonewide spawn list and some of the other specifics that only SEQ shows you in the client data stream. If their design was so badly flawed, I don't know how they achieved the market dominance they currently possess. I could argue that without any timesinks whatsoever, you might have whipped through the original 50 levels, gotten the best gear available at that time, and quit the game long before they released Kunark. That's all subjective.

I disagree with your conclusion that by handing a SEQ style tool to half the player base, it would definitely cause SOE to add all those features to the game. I think SOE would prefer that some of those features were not available to anyone, and if it created enough of a rift in the player base, i.e., if lots of people started cancelling accounts because of its widespread usage, I think SOE would try to stop it if they could.

[Resiliant]

Elmo,

Whether its 'right' or not is not the point. Whether or not there are what you call 'Vanilla' users out there is also not the point. What SoE may concieve of as 'proper' or 'correct' is also not the point. In the final analysis, EQ is a product. It makes a profit because people buy it. People buy it because it does what *they* want it to do, not what SoE thinks it *should* do (or even what a minority of players think it should do).

Bottom line... The map system was added not because its a 'neat' idea, but because SoE thought they could sell more product with it IN than with it OUT. The only question that needs to be asked is this: If EQ had SEQ capabilities, would SoE sell more product or less product in the final analysis. There will always be a subset of the user community that doesn't like game feature 'x'. SoE is in the businiess of minimizing that subset, and maximizing the subset of people that like the game. That is what is driving development, not if feature 'x' is 'cheating' or 'right' or 'the right way to do it'.

I belive that more people will like MySEQ features than will dislike them.. and i believe the fraciton is substantially weighted toward acceptance rather than rejection.


R

P.S. Oh.. and one other thing. Just because a product has market dominance (a point i am not sure im willing to concede), and because there are many things that are good about a piece of code, does not in any way imply that there cannot also be glaring deficiencies, horrible implementations, bad design, poor testing, etc. etc. I'm reminded of what Benjamin Franklin said about the government of the United States: "Its the worse form of government on earth..... except for all the others" LOL