Poll: Is there any interest in a Windows version of ShowEQ?

[RavenCT]

Originally posted by JustACoder


that's not cheating...

True, my statement about powerleveling as "cheating" isn't all togeather accurate, but my point more was "it's all a matter of perspective".

Take, for example, the poor newbie who (unfortunatly) just bought the game and has hardly any idea how to get out of Freeport, let alone find there way around East Commons or N Ro... Along comes Mr. Powerleveler... And he keeps stealing every mob around that he can find so that his level 1 twinked out tank can get to level 10 in one night. The poor newbie is left trying to kill the one or two mobs that either spawned away from the P/Ler or that he doesn't care about.

Is this fair? Is it fair that the poor newbie has to wait for his pittaly 50 HP's to regenerate while the P/Ler has given his little tank a cool 300 to 500 HPs to play with and enough buffs so that hardly anything will touch him?

The poor newbie might look at this as "Hey! I'm just trying to play the game and you keep taking all the monsters away from me!", the P/Ler is thinking F* him, I've played this long enough to get an UBer char, and if I want to P/L a new char, I'll P/L a new char...


Now, is this argument right or wrong? Like I said, in the strictest definition of the word, no this is not cheating... but it sure as hell doesn't feel that way to the newbie...

[darkangelx]

Ignorance is a curable disease. Stupidity is not (save by a bullet)

You are my hero Poser

[darkangelx]

My thoughts:

First of all, to all the dev's, I offer a big thankyou. You have done so much for one person more than you know. I was a better than average windows user before SEQ. I was the poor shmuck that always died and could not find my corpse. (thanks Sgt Slate a lv 45-50 mob in a zone where newbies could get killed) Then I hear about a great program that allows you to have a map and it will tell you where you are 100% of the time. I couldn't believe it. There was a catch, I soon learned. What the hell is Linux? I asked myself. I spent hours on hackersquest back in those times reading and reading and reading. I chose something less talked about for my flavor of *nix. Slackware. (does anyone but me use it?) Anyway, neither here nor there. Me having this has helped me find lost friends, lost corpses(underwater). You all have I know it. ShowEQ has enlightened me and expanded my mind, forcing me to grow beyond my limited scope by challenging me with something new. Change, new things helps someone grow. Thank you devs.

However. I emplore you, please do not go WINSEQ. If nothing more than for the those that have used the tools and knowledge bestowed upon us by others including the devs. Make it so you still need the Linux box to view. The idea behind WINSEQ was and still is a bad idea.

[Cam69]

I would use a WinSEQ version personally...though, EQ would soon have a Diablo-ish feel about it I imagine once WinSEQ became very widespread...

Maybe just have a stub to grab the key on the Win box, then send it to the *Nix box for processing...

[Wartrack]

Keep an open mind to the possibility that they are not done changing the encryption. They said it was a 20 minute fix, and he smirked when he read the war doctrine....

I know it's possible... to secure the spawn info. They could do it. Change the format, change the encryption, use a creative key array with a checksum, and it may never be broken..

I'd hate to see a lot of development time wasted.... I think Verant should release a zone radar window, and everyone should just play or quit... I quit. Just posted 3 auctions, heh.

-Wartrack

[a_guide_01]

though the game would be radically different, I don't think it would be diabloish because no SEQ for windows would allow you to cast anarchy or whatever from a 255 charge stick and give you godly plate armor. I wouldn't get rid of all the monsters on the way to target x, just let you know where they are.

I agree as well, SOE isn't done screwing around... but no doubt whatever Absor and the crew of crack heads comes up with, there is an answer and way to work around it.

Good luck dev's with all the upcoming things. and yes windows SEQ is not the worst idea I've heard.

[smoothielover]

id just like to point out again that most of the everquest info sites are based on information gathered by SEQ users. thus SOE actually need us in some way.

BIG BROTHER issue will become more apparent as they change the encryption. this measn things that we know are not quite rigth will again be unfixed for weeks. anyone else notice that the AC and LODI are not spawning anywhere near what they used to? is this a server issue? probably. can they check yes. will they if we dont bitch. unlikely.

SoE cannot police their naming system let alone half the other things they probably should be doing so it comes down to us to police it to some extent. we tell them whats broken they fix it faster. some things cannot be fixed or solved using seq such as broken spawns etc but we sure as hell know when mobs spells and other things change.

anyone who looks at the bestiary or looks at a quest with specific information regardin mob abilities and spawnpoints most likely would be reading information SEQ has provided in some way. be logical about this. its been said before how do people know what lvl mobs are over 65 if they not ever had PoP. how is it possible that rare spawns are calculated to the hour if they are a random spawn accross a zone. how else can mobs be identified as things to hunt other than the experiences of people hunting that zone. i know sure as hell i dont know anyone who would sit in a zone doing nothing but watching a spawn point for a mob they think spawns there for over 3 weeks to find out the spawn times if the mob is reset on a patch/reboot etc.

there are some things that could be explained as normal research but some just dont add up unless they are SEQ users.

when anyone looks at eq atlas they are cheating the same as we are. we just know EXACTLY where the mobs are MOST of the time. sometimes we dont as the encryption changes but we still can help people find bodies etc. and i continue to do so.

the reality is that if a rare spawn pops that is a uber loot mob we need to get people all in the zone as fast as anyone else. if your camping LODI you either have a person at the spawn point or a ranger waiting and tracking etc. if you dont your not camping him and hes open game.

as far as i have experienced as a seq user and as a player there has NEVER been a situation where i could point a finger and say I WAS CAMPING THAT. HOW DID YOU KNOW IT WAS UP??

isnt hunting in the same zone as a mob that pops with an alt for XP still cheating if you swap chars to kill it? not really its in the game and is done. i hunt zones with rare spawns and risk death alot because of this reason. sure seq allows you to see mobs all across the zones and yes we can look for them better than most BUT the fact remains we still need to amass the people to kill have the skill to kill have the intelligence to install it and INVARIABLY the INGAME knowledge of where to hunt BEFORE we go there.

dont know about you but none of the maps or seq things ive seen ever said you should hunt these zones and you kill the mob using these strategies and that you need at least this many people.

ISNT giving this information away far more influencial on the game than anything else? throretically the specs of a mob are SoE's intellectual property. i dont see mobs changing a significan amount of times because this information is available to them.

for instance if eq atlass was to put colorfull areas on their maps stating lvl or mobs if they were rootable and where they hang out then most of the seq users would hjave exactly the same info as anyone else

THE ONLY PEOPLE the long range tracking helps is the pullers. and they are the ones who die the most. its only fair in my books that the people who risk the most should get the most help.

i dont risk a great deal most of the time in groups as in not normally the puller. the fact that i dont know where mobs are atm as i havent updated the cvs after they rebroke the encryption doesnt affect me in the slightest BUT i have to admit if you stand in the dangerous pull zones im noticing a significan amount of more trains and rezzes on my server. UP is one in particular im talking about. sure its a hard zone but even getting to the elysians camp with a LVL 60 group can be scary if the DARK assasin and masters are roaming around. surely the world understands that the games is not about how many times you die when travelling its about how many times you die FIGHTING.

anyone ever asked anyone in GUILD if whoposhi is up? there ya go they are cheating.

anyone ever ask in guild if such and such is dangerous? theyre cheating.

anyone ever get information from another player on anything they are technically cheating as SoE never intended that information to be spread in any other way than hailing the NPC who tells your or by killing the thing yourself.

by desigh the game is about grouping . think about it hard for a moment. if the tracking is the issue they want to break and thats ALL that broke in the last eqgame patch from what i saw then simply dont put it back up.

for some reasin all the unknowe spawns are not being displayed on my map. they are there when i targetr them etc so i can work out whats around if i try but the general concept of knowing if its a heavy spawn in the zone or whats camped can be done via shouts etc but that depends on other people in game. this is not a bannable thing so not asking and just knowing shouldnt really be bannable. the fact we know specifics about the mobs only assists in intelligent hunting and time saving because we dont need to study the bestiary. i still have old hand maps with rough area spawns and the reason i got seq was because i was approaced by a GM saying your a seq user. i didnt even know it existed at the time but the fact i knew more about the zone than the GM at the tiome seemed to piss him off. i said ask me a question about the zone which he did and i told him the answer.

he asked where does such and such spawn and whens he due. ui replied somthing along the lines of....http://everquest.allakazam.com/id=122232 or somthing along those lines.

obviously he pissed of about 2 minutes later btu the fact we learn from seq isnt actually the reason we win. the reason we win is beacause we understand how it works.

yes i write the long posts here it seems

also in regards to winseq/ any prog for memory searching.

WINDOWS cant handle its own memory properly in general really

as a techy who works on a few different OSs i would use the example in the smoothwall FAQ

THROW OUT THE MS junk and use linux. even a memory snffer on a windows system will be defeated easily. they just change 1 line of code EVEN put a comment line at the start of the source and the memory address will most likely change unless that are hardcoding it. the speed in which they are updating things and the DLL linkages shown in the intefaces & client imply thay are not hard coding them and thus EVERY time EQGAME changed so would the memory address. sure we can set up a snaffer based on the timings from a call etc but do we really want to write something for MS OS? its not really an OPEN SOURCE project anymore if we do.

[Vlad]

Can't believe people give a shit if it's cheating or not. Too many stupid arguments can be made for or against it - so let the freaking topic drop.

As for SEQ - in the long term, I can only see verant winning this battle. They have control over their source, and can, if anything, change things faster than the SEQ dev team can adapt to them. Bring SEQ to Windows, and that long term is going to become very, very, very short term. The only option, it would seem, is to create a key sniffer on windows clients and have the program either relay the key to the SEQ box or just broadcast it on the local subnet, perhaps 'hiding' it as a windows service and encapsulating it in netbios traffic. That should at least prolong the inevitable.