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EverQuest/Sony Fights Code Wars With Latest Expansion
The most recent expansion for EverQuest (Planes of Power) adds a lot of problem-solving quests to the game, so Sony beefed up the (long-since broken) encryption that they used for the client protocol. The expansion has been a major hit, pleasing some of the most critical voices in the EverQuest world, but one week later, the anonymous development team of ShowEQ had broken the new encryption. Read on for details of the ongoing battle over keeping secrets in plain sight.
First, the skinny on the latest EverQuest expansion, Planes of Power (PoP). Because this is an expansion chock-full of content for only the highest level characters in the game, Sony added some features that everyone would want (and thus, pay for): the ability to progress to level 65 (60 was the cap before); a new zone called the Plane of Knowledge which allows characters to moved freely to all of the old game areas and a feature that allows large groups to coordinate more easily. That's the carrot for the lower-end users, but really this is the first expansion to lock out even moderately experienced players in favor of large, strong in-game guilds.
Even so, the response has been almost all positive. Some players complain about the last-minute changes (especially the changes that made monks and druids less powerful in the high-end game), but those who are taking advantage of the new game areas are happy with the reduced time required for encounters and the fact that the game rewards strategy more than ever.
Planning, attention to detail and a fanatical focus on getting past every challenge that Sony presents are important in-game, but Sony is less than pleased by programmers who are just as happy to approach those challenges from outside of the game. Using Linux and Qt, ShowEQ is a packet sniffer that watches the EverQuest client protocol and displays a map of everything that the Windows client is privy to, but may not disclose to the player. Years ago, the ShowEQ developers discovered a weakness in the encryption that the client uses, and they have been able to reliably interpret the data ever since.
With the PoP release, Sony improved the encryption so that it used a larger key which was more securely chosen. At first, the talk on the ShowEQ IRC forum was gloomy and the normally secretive developers cloistered themselves off from the the group, returning only rarely to proclaim the difficulty of breaking this new scheme. The protocol is not unlike that used by ssh or SSL. A public key is sent from Sony to the client, and the client uses that key to encrypt a random session key and send it to Sony. Theoretically, this approach is open to only a limited number of attacks, all of which run the risk of being detected by the client.
A former ShowEQ developer who was hired by Sony was reported to have said it's over, "you'll never break this"... One week later, the new version of ShowEQ was available via CVS and was working again. The new keys were vulnerable, it seems, to an even simpler form of analysis and the result was simply that ShowEQ worked significantly faster. In many ways, this seemed to simply be a "bonus quest" that Sony threw into the PoP expansion, and it had been beaten.
On Thursday, October 31 ShowEQ broke once again. The protocol now compresses key data to prevent the analysis that was limiting the keyspace that has to be searched. As of this writing, ShowEQ no longer works passively, but this escalation is not over. The latest version allows a user to input the key directly, and developers are hard at work, trying to find further weaknesses in the key generation and/or exchange. The developers are even starting to question the long-held, unwritten truce that they maintained with Sony. The idea was that if Sony did not make decryption require a Windows-side component, there would never be a Windows version, limiting the use of ShowEQ to those capable of getting ShowEQ working under Linux. Now, the party line is, "there is absolutely, positively no reason not to have a WinSEQ."
The technical details are interesting, but the social and legal details may take center-stage for a while. The seq team is trying to figure out what they could put on the client-side without being detected and that brings into question the legality of Sony scanning running processes and reporting back. There's also the matter of Sony's rather astoundingly harsh EULA that tries to preclude activities like this in every way that it can (though the legality of click-through EULAs is still a hot topic).
One problem with this escalation is that, like another product (TiVo, which is partially backed by Sony) the very people subverting the product and making it more than the creator wants it to be are the best customers. In terms of EverQuest, they are often the ones maintaining several accounts and/or spending extra money for the "Legends" service. How does a company contend with a market where your best customers are also your most resourceful? With the TiVo, there was an uneasy understanding between the company and its modders. Sony has broken that balance with EverQuest.
Now that Sony has crossed this Rubicon, it is quite likely that ShowEQ will be ported to Windows and hundreds if not thousands of new users will be introduced to it. Was that Sony's goal? Certainly Prof. Felton showed us that such a battle is ultimately futile. Why does Sony want to fight it again on yet another front (remember that they are an RIAA member)? Is there any financial justification, here? Does mapping software really threaten the game more than the many in-game exploits that the high-end encounters suffer from?
PoP is a finely crafted fantasy gaming experience, but Sony has once again chosen to spend extra time and money hurting themselves and their market. Perhaps their competition will not make the same mistakes.
It's a big MMORPG. IIRC someone killed themselves a while ago because of losing something on it, so I'm guessing it's pretty addictive.
the saying It's just a game isn't valid anymore, I wonder what would happen if Sony just shut off Everquest, the hardcore players would once again have to have a life.
> I checked how long he's on every month, an average about 250 hrs every month
:) mobile everquest!
with everquest now on the pocket pc - he'll be able to clock that record i bet
Raph Koster's rule of "the client is in the hands of the enemy" seems to have been forgotten by EQ's developers- if ShowEQ is such a problem, it's time, perhaps, that they stopped telling the client all these nasty things they didn't want it to know. I mean, I first remember ShowEQ coming 'round *3 years ago*. Why they haven't simply made the client ignorant of things it shouldn't know in all this time is beyond me.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
This article paints the ShowEQ developers with a rather sympathetic brush. If these were aimbot developers for q3 or ut or cs, wouldn't we totally revile them? What is the difference?
Maybe there should be two sets of servers, one for all the ppl who want to play fair and play against ppl who are playing fair; and one for cheaters, and those who want to reverse engineer the protocol, etc.
Laugh at my Lisp and I keeell you.
A very well written and informative article. I'm intrigued by the story of ShowEQ -- and the fact that Sony seems to want to protect their system by deciding what users can and can't run on their computers. It reminds me of the video player that uninstalled Ad-aware automatically, claiming that running it wasn't allowed under its license. I don't believe that such things are really legal -- are they not an invasion of privacy and an illegal search? (Alas, the Constitution's protections against this in the US are only applicable to the government itself, but such practices, I feel, are going too far) Sooner or later, I think, Sony will be dragged into court over this and sued. What if, for example, they use their little spy applet to suck data off someone's computer that gives them an advantage (a competitor's computer that had confidential information, for example?).
I am, though, a little surprised to see that the ShowEQ people haven't been sued under the DMCA. And I'm glad they haven't, because what they are doing is reverse engineering and they are not actually hacking into the client or the server, so it is legal. They are not trying to pirate the game. They are merely trying to see what exactly their computer is saying to the server and what it is receiving from it. A perfectly fair thing to do, I think, because it IS their own property and the owner of it has the right to know what exactly is happening, so they can choose whether or not to run a given application instead of having to trust the programmers. Checks and balances.
Note: I don't play Everquest. I call it EverCrack, actually. I don't play games that I have to pay a monthly fee for. I prefer to play single-player games, or sometimes multiplayer, offnetwork, with people I already know.
i am a soviet space shuttle
In EverQuest, the license agreement must be accepted each time you start up the game.
/played time, you've seen that license hundreds of times. Whether or not you've read it is illrelevant, but you've willingly clicked yes to it hundreds, if not thousands of times.
No auto-yes option. No "I understand and agree, don't tell me again" option. You [b]must[/b] click "I Accept" every time the game EXE is called.
If you've accumulated any significant level or
I'd say that makes it pretty binding.
The big advantage people get from decoding the zone information is the name, and to some extent, the position of monsters all over the zone. If Sony changed EQ to only send data about monsters that are near you (within a reasonable distance) there would no longer be a big reason to decode the zone data. 99% of what you'd be seeing you could also see by turning in place, and clicking on each monster.
:)
Due to how the servers are setup however, it seems to be more efficient for them to send out all the monsters, rather than do the range calculations and just send the nearby ones.
My prediction, if a Windows version is released and becomes widespread (and I consider the latter likely if the former occurs), is that Sony will, finally, bite the bullet and change the code. It's not quite as straight forward as I may have made it sound, as there are some other systems (such as tracking) that will have to be significantly rewritten as well. However, if they really want to stop people getting at this data, really the only way to do it is to stop sending the parts that aren't needed.
According to the Sony developer that everyone talked to, the changes that Sony makes to the encryption only takes 20 minutes or so. I believe that part of that time included remaking about 5 different binaries with the new code. Sony just has to change the 5 or so #define's on the encryption and everything breaks. Also, according to the same developer, Sony will not spend much time on breaking ShowEQ until management decides otherwise.
How ShowEQ is fighting back is very interesting. Encryption information is stored at a preset offset in the client. About a month ago, SOE changed it so that, on NT/2000/XP boxes (this didn't effect Win 9x), other programs (even on accounts with "Administrator Access") couldn't read that memory space. However, ShowEQ developers eventually got around the limitation by making the key reader run as a service on the NT LocalSystem account. This service can then send the key information to the decoding system.
As for WinShowEQ, I have sources that have told me that WinShowEQ is an easy port to make. If they are serious about making it and releasing it, expect to see it sometime soon.
-Valen
I hear all of your posts, about how they should get a life, blah blah blah.
I myself played everquerst for about 18 months on and off. I averaged 15-40 hours a month, depending on the month and how I felt.
Everquest "zoned" me, to another world. In our(Non-eq) reality, it left me behind a computer, with closed curtains, fighting and sweating while in battle.
When I was 17, I robbed a firestation, got a drinking and driving minor, and sold adderol (Meds for ADHD) to my school peers.
By the time I was caught I had 30 felonies(Possession with intent to distribute in a drug free (school) zone.), and 50 years in prison staring me straight in the face.
I lost my license and was on house arrest for over 4 months.
About a year later, I was accepted and attended one of the top engineering schools in the nation.
Now, my question to you, is: If I can't spend my time playing EQ, and raising my daughter, do you want me selling a perscription legal meth to your brothers and sisters?
Don't get me wrong, I'm well past that stage, but I'm sure if I did not have habits that keep me home, or somewhat entertained, I'm sure I could find something to do outside in a city of ~3 million people.
I have not done drugs in 6 years, and have drank about 24 beers since I was 16.
I save TONS of money, $15 a month is a lot for EQ sure.
But consider what it saves you.
If I'm spending 40 hours of afterwork/weekend time on this game, I'm not eating with my friends, I'm not buying gas driving around.
I'm not doing anything that will harm you.
Sure some people will kill themselves over this game, just like some willl spend $9000 on a character on ebay. But that's evolution. If they killed themselves prior to reproduction, we won't have to worry about those genes surfacing for at least a little while, but hopefully they will be rid of just as fast.
I'd rather have joe schmo killing himself(maybe a few others) because of distress from the game, than driving with his drunk buddies at 1:00 at night while I am on my way to drop off my daughter at her mother's house.
It is more probable Joe kills me while driving drunk than if I was an innocent bystander near his EQ game.
EQEmu (An Everquest Emulator) was also having a problem with the encryption until our master coder (Go Quagmire!) Found out that it uses a default key if sent the right packets to the client. Since then, we are able to run with the latest client.
I have watched EQEmu grow over the last year, and this Wednesday, we should have our best release yet! We are going on 1 year of releases on Dec 4th, so why dont you download EQEMu and see what it is like to run your own server.
Firstly, no matter how you paint it as creative coding and a good hacking & cracking job at the code, it still is cheating. What the article failed to mention is what else the ShowEQ program does. It doesn't just show a map, it also shows all the monsters in that zone. So, someone who has that can walk through a very dangerous zone, unhindered by evil beasties should they desire. Or perhaps they are hunting the elusive Gobbleygook dragon, and they can find it within minutes. If Player A uses it and starts gaining levels and platinum faster then Player B, who elects to do it normally, what happens when Player A decides to attack Player B? (assuming this is on a PvP [Player versus Player] server) It is cheating, plain and simple. Like Microsoft's closing out of modders of the X-box (And as much as I am loathe to agree with MS on anything, I must on this), Sony is trying to keep the game fair for everyone. I wouldn't want to play a game where people could cheat like that. Who knows, now they can see the map and monsters....what's next?
As to the Click-thru EULA, I think that with the way that they force you to think about clicking on the button, it is legally binding. However, I still don't like the idea of companies attatching unreasonable things to their EULAs. Next thing you know, MS will be asking for the soul of your first-born in the Windows EULA, and a sacrifice of your spouse in the Office one. But the question is, would a clause against cheating be a fair addition to a game where dozens of others are paying to play? Your cheating makes it a worst deal for those others who pay and play nicely.
And no, I don't play EverCrack...I just know lots of people who do.
.sig: It's what's for dinner.
Although I have played EQ off and on for the last 3 years or so, and have heard of ShowEQ, i never really knew what it was used for. I dont have a Linux box, so it didnt make much difference for me. What does concern me about this is that with a windows version, the program can and will become far more widespread. I would compare it to the recent developments in the diablo II community.
There has always been trade hacks, and this hack, and that hack, but to execute them, you usually need packet sniffers, have to understand how the program works, and basically know what you are doing. Every once in awhile, one would come along that was easy to use with some fancy UI and mass chaos would ensue.
Anymore, most players use Pindlebots or Mephisto bots, to just endlessly kill those bosses over and over for hours on end, hoping for some uber item to drop, and in the meantime racking up exp. They are extremely easy to use, just run the executable, configure the config for your character, and it does everything else for you with zero interaction. Now, you can't create a game without having to wait in line on the USEast Realm, and you can get just about any item you want in the trading channels.
I ran pindlebot for two weeks, and in that time, i got alot of the best equipment in the game. It seemed nice, to have this great character, but ultimately it ruins the game, because you have the best equipment, theres no challenge, theres no point in playing the game anymore.
If ShowEQ does get ported to Windows, I can only imagine similiar situations like this arising. The masses start using the program, and ultimately the legitimate players become too frustrated and leave, and the players with the cheat / hack / dupe / whatever ultimately become bored with the game, and a game that was once a great way for people to pass time becomes the playground for the people have ruined the game.
Maybe the DMCA should be updated to also include interfering with the IT centric business process of a corporation. That would make things like what ShowEQ and BNETD do illegal and leave no doubt as to their activities.
Then the folks who pay to play these games can get back to their fun without having to worry about as many cheaters as there are now.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Except that EQ for PocketPC is single player only.
Karma: Incomprehensible (Mostly affected by posting at +5, reading at -1, and metamoderating everything unfair.)
The Man in the Middle attack is one of the oldest and still most effective attack on public key encryption.
I don't know all the details, unfortunately. They may very well have tried this already.
Pardon me for posting anonymously, but at this point I don't QUITE feel like losing my account... which wouldn't be so bad if I could give the character to someone else. But, I digress.
/loc system, and Sense Heading never told me much except where I was facing. Without a map to tell me where the hell I was, I was lost and useless. This game is absolutely worthless to me if I can't figure out where the hell I am. Other games such as World of Warcraft come with a built-in map function, so I really wouldn't need a packet sniffer for it. But for me, in EQ, I need it to play. Otherwise, I'd just cancel my account, and Verant/Sony would be the ones to lose, because they would not get my money.
I use ShowEQ. Does this make me a cheater? Yes, in the strict sense of the definition, it does. Here's comes the more important question: would I still play if I didn't have ShowEQ? No, but not for the reasons you might think.
I do not use ShowEQ to benefit myself at the expense of others. If I was playing on a PvP (Player vs. Player) server, that might be one thing, but I do not. When the packet decryption was working, I would use ShowEQ to avoid monsters that would assuredly kill me (I'm not a melee class.) I also used it to track down the location of groups that invited me, track how much experience I have left to level (as an iidle curiorsity), and find friends' corpses. None of these helped me at the expense of others; in fact, one might argue they helped in others' benefit.
Much more important, and this function still works without packet decryption, is that I use ShowEQ as a GPS. I have a horrible sense of direction in these games, and a lot of the time EQ's terrain in a zone is uniform. I could never get the hang of the
In the end, yes, you could say I cheat. But maybe, just maybe, if Verant made the game a bit easier for me to figure out where the heck I was, I wouldn't need ShowEQ. I can't be the only one with this problem; there are a LOT of us ShowEQ users out there. (We may not admit it, but we're out there.) As it stands, I really enjoy playing EQ, and helping out my friends. If Verant wants to lose me as a customer over this, that's their loss, not mine. (Friends of mine will tell you that while I like the game, I'm not addicted.) And for those of you who condemn me for being a cheater... well, go right ahead. But I still say that I need the tools Verant provides... not for my own score and glorification, but as a basic aid to help myself and others.
Flame me all you want. Mod me down.
But anyone who doesn't condemn the actions of this group is no better than them.
This game belongs to Sony. They make the rules, so either play the game as its creators intended the game to be played or don't play it at all.
If you think that this app is a valuable addition to the game, convince Sony to accept it and help those wankers develop it. If they say no, then just go away. It's their game.
Otherwise, you're no better than the people who exploit the in-game weaknesses. A cheater.
/. Where the truth
Every MMORPG I have played has started out not nearly as thin as it had to be, and nearly all have had to undergo significant redevelopment to rectify this matter.
EQ can be forgiven for not knowing this at its start (it was one of the earliest MMORPGs) but it's had a long time to learn from its own experiences and those of its competitors.
Assuming that everything known by the client will be known and exploited by the players using it would seem to be the safest rule.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Asheron's Call has been like this for years. There's a program called Decal that intercepts and can forge packets between the client and the server. It exposes them through COM to a plugin architecture, allowing people to easily create plugins that interact with the game.
On the one hand it could considered cheating, but at this point, most people seem to run it and it's made some fantastic things possible. For one thing there's a plugin called ACArm which allows figures out how to switch between armor profiles at the touch of a key, much more easily than figuring out the right order and dragging and dropping manually. There's another called Robochef that automatically does crafting. And one of the oldest and best known, Sixth Sense which can scan for items/monsters/players etc. is almost required for some challenges in the game. (Find random spawn monster somewhere out in the wilderness.) It takes much of the tedium out of a game that's supposed to be fun.
The down side, though, is that people have come up with money making trade skill macros where you just load up your character with enough starting cash and some of the ingredients, and it crafts a bunch of items, sells them at a profit, buys more ingredients and continues. That inflates the economy a bit, though not much it seems. Worse, some people have made combat macros that automatically camp a spot and kill all the monsters. It's very annoying to be running around in a dungeon and finding a mage perched in a corner stealing your kills. (Combat macros are now a bannable offense under the CoC, however. Also, the Decal devs are very anti-combat macros.)
Anyway, I know that's AC and not EQ, but I just thought I'd mention that as an existing example of where this can lead. It's got its down sides, but it's mostly been a good thing for the game.
The answer is simple: DO NOT LET THE CLIENT KNOW MORE THAN IT ABSOLUTELY HAS TO, and be willing to CHANGE THAT DEFINITION on an ongoing basis.
Serverside cheating is the real bitch of the matter in MMORPGs, and no law will save you there. Only long term vigilance and quick response will protect a MMORPG population from serverside exploits.
In a related note, BNETD is not even the same thing as ShowEQ. BNETD is a server emulator, and in fact is more conducive to lower cheating rates simply because one can create "walled gardens" wherein only trusted users can play, and the player population can be more appropriately vetted for fair play- mechanics-related, sportsmanship, and otherwise! ShowEQ is akin to a EQ debugging program, showing data known by the client but not revealed normally.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I always thought the point of new client architectures was to enable players who'd like to play but don't have the right gear to enter the game at the moment.
Making new servers for them seems rather redundant If they want newbie servers, they ought to make new servers and limit them to accounts under their first 90 days of play time for the first 90 days of the server's existence (UO did a similar thing with the Lake Austin server for new accounts when it opened.)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Min/maxers are some of the most serious players of any game. The fact of the matter is that we all engage in min/maxer style behavior when we play, regardless of style, because we want to succeed in the game to be able to enjoy it.
:)
Accomodating min/maxers makes them into your unofficial debugging force, as well- if a game's based on numbers, you ought to be able to see the numbers. Other people want to see them, even if you don't- and trying to legislate your form of "immersion" on players is pretty silly. We all find our own level.
Remember, also, it's your friendly neighborhood explorer that teaches you all those nifty tricks that you use every day
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Same thing, different words :)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Years ago, Ultima Online had a pretty egregious cheating application called UOExtreme. It let you do all kinds of special stuff- run faster than normal, see hidden people, get an automatic readout of damage you did to players, and have general interface improvements that allowed you to play the game more efficiently.
Well, people got banned for UOE use for quite a while, but the thing that killed it was that the UO dev team simply emasculated it and made it no more than a device for the delivery of trojans.
How did they do this? Clever engineering and greater awareness of the needs of their playerbase.
Fastwalk was fixed by making walk packets require a response from the server before moving the player.
See hidden was fixed by just not telling non-GM clients where hidden players were, and disallowing attacks and other operations on hidden characters. Invisibility was handled in a pretty slipshod way beforehand- the server just told the client, "hey don't show this guy."
The automatic damage readout was just integrated into the client, with the addition of Starcraft-style health bars showing the damage level of your current target.
The interface improvement issue was solved by the legalization of a similar program called UOAssist. Many operations in UO rely on an extremely clumsy interface requiring many mouse clicks and movements for actions that should be far simpler. UOAssist changes this, offering somewhat of an "expert interface" for the game. UOAssist's author sends all program changes to UO's developers to be examined before release.
Come to think of it, you probably know all this stuff already...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I just have to say this. If cheating was meant tob e part of the game then Sony would have added it themselves. They would have added special commands or buttons or what have you, to allow you to cheat.
They did not and they are trying to fight the battle understandably. Is it going to hurt their market? I doubt it, but who is to say. If it is going to make a series of high end multi-account gamers quit then so be it. I am sure that is minor to the 400,000 subscribed users. (That is what I heard at last read on an EQ article)
It is in my opinion that Sony is in the right to fight this. It is also in their ability to do whatever they please to keep ShowEq from working as I am sure breaking the encryption is violation of the DMCA.
Frankly I think this whole topic of debate on whether ShowEq is okay or not is a waste. If you can't tell right from wrong now, then you never will be able too.
Play the game as it was intended. Without 3rd party software.
~Char Lander
Brothers and sisters I have none, but this mans father is my fathers son
Honestly, why would you want to hack in? To cheat of course! One reason I avoid online massive games is because of the rampant cheating. It drives away good customers and players and leaves the cheating scum behind who are generally people you don't like to associate with anyway (their personalities are distinctly lacking...)
/. so upset when they try to stop it? Worry more about Sony and their backing of the RIAA/MPAA and DMCA. Don't waste energy worrying becuase you can't be unfair in Everquest anymore.
So I can see why Sony wants to stop people from doing this kind of thing. Cheating ruins online gaming, so why is
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The comparison to TiVo is an interesting one. TiVo's policy is that they will gladly look the other way for some hacks, and in fact even make some of the hacks as easy as possible to pull off, in exchange for being able to declare certain hacks off-limits.
Specifically, they make it easy to upgrade a TiVo with a large hard disk by designing their single-disk designs to have a place where the second disk can fit nicely in the box. They also it possible for users who want to accomplish their "daily call" over the Internet rather than a phone line by just happening to leave the server that handles those sessions at an Internet-accessable location rather than requiring that the only way into their network is through their chosen dial-up providers. The company sponsors (but does not actually run) message boards at TivoCommunity.com where hacking discussion is encuraged, and people can compare notes and share experiences.
The tradeoff is that there are certain hacks that the company does not want to see made, and will not allow the TivoCommunity.com boards to discuss. There are the hacks that would either harm the company, like any hack that would provide another source of listings, which would eliminate the need to subscribe to TiVo's listing services, or any hack that would allow content to be extracted from the device which would surely bring down the wrath of the MPAA and friends.
By allowing wide open back doors into their system, TiVo has been able to direct hacking efforts into the areas the company wants to see them go. Yes, there are a few people trying to drill through the concrete and get the "forbidden hacks" to work, but their numbers are few and they operate in obscurity compared to the company-sponsored forums.
It's a total 180 from Everquest's "Thou shalt not hack us!" perspective. TiVo's offering carrots, Everquest is using rather ineffective sticks.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The phrase "most resourceful" in the article is a rather thin disguise. The author is trying to say "Sony's best customers are also the ones most capable of becoming cheating bastards with the potential to ruin the game for the wider and less technically adept player pool."
Hacking the protocol is great, nothing wrong with that. Actually USING the hack during public gameplay is cheating, plain and simple. I personally don't think it's something the courts should have to deal with, but it's still a game exploit and rampant cheating has ruined more than one online game in the past. Sony has every right AND THE OBLIGATION TO IT'S NON-CHEATING USERS to do whatever it can to hamper efforts to use game cracks/hacks/whatever to gain an unfair advantage over other players.
That said, Sony better come up with something other than legal action in their efforts or they will suffer an amazingly embarassing loss. Short of pulling the game off the shelves, it's unlikely they'll actually succeed in "winning" this battle.
There are many things that the client MUST know, for performance and usability reasons.
:-)
Every request the client makes for information means another round trip access to the server. Another complex decision by the server whether the client should be allowed that information. When you have 100K users online, making requests like that dozens of times a second, it can get JUST A TINY BIT LAGGY.
To alleviate these issues, the server sends some information to every client. The game map. The nearby creatures that the client may need to render at any moment. The current statistics of all the players equipment. All this information the client NEEDS to know.
Here is an example of one thing people often think the client does NOT need to know... creatures that are behind a hill, or not in the players cone of view. However, what if the player whips around to look behind them? How disorienting and unplayable would it be if every time you turned it took half a second before you saw ANYTHING other than terrain? As for obstructed creatures, would you want to go around a corner in a dungeon and not see anything for half a second until the server caught up? Not to mention the exhaustively difficult math required to accurately determine whether you have line of sight to something or not.
Thin clients DON'T WORK. At least, not in MMORPG's. Works for MUDs though. If you don't mind, I'll be going back to my DikuMUD now.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I think the only factor that prevents a Palladium-based security model from being applied here is the fact that if they did that, they would have to make Palladium the only platform on which the game is available. Microsoft has quite a lot of skeptical people to sell on that concept before that becomes a viable business decision.
Like other ShowEQ users, I'll happily admit I used it. And I knew a LOT other people who used it too.
Using ShowEQ is cheating, I'll admit that much as well. But the truth is, ShowEQ IS a benefit to Sony/Verant and they know it. Most of the ShowEQ users like myself would have quit EQ LONG ago if not for ShowEQ. It's kind of hard to explain, but I played EQ RABIDLY for about two years. I mean it was a total obsession. I had a level 60 Shaman, and level 57 Rogue...played both characters at the same time, and was pretty bored with the game. When I installed ShowEQ, I ended up playing at least 8 months longer, because EQ became FUN again.
And you'd be suprised how many ShowEQ users are out there... I'd guess nearly 20-30 percent of the current EQ users use it. I know for a fact that ALL of the high level guilds use it. It's just too powerful of a tool. Here is an example, and excuse me for not remembering the names, but there is a super rare giant turtle in EQ, that spawns in an very large and usually devoid of users zone. If he did spawn, he'd usually wipe out any players in the zone that wandered to close, and then he'd despawn. Well I happen to be passing through the zone with my two characters, when this guy spawned right next to me, way out in the water. I check my ShowEQ map and see that there is only 20 people in the zone. most of them lower levels like 30-45. The funny thing was though, all of the higher level players in the zone, anyone level 59 or 60 where running on a BEELINE to my location. I'm talking level 60 warriors with NO TRACKING ABILITY, for some reason running RIGHT AT THE turtle, from accrossed the zone. Obviously all of the high level players where using ShowEQ, because there would be NO other reason to be running way out over the water for no reason, unless you KNEW the turtled had spawned.
In the end, the "elite" guild on our server (Cazic Thule) got the kill, and I could tell all of them were using ShowEQ.
Sony is definitely in a tough spot because they know as well as I do that ALL of the elite EQ guilds use ShowEQ. If Sony ever did find a way to block ShowEQ users I'd be willing to bet 20 percent of their user base would quit EQ, because once you've used it, you'd never play EQ without it.
8 hours a day easily.... it was common for me to come home friday night from work, 5-6pm, and not log off until monday morning at 2-3am, continuously... 50-60 hours was the norm for my guild on the weekend..
weeknights were hit and miss, but usually you were on for 4-6 hours a night...
You don't start over when you die in EQ. The best scenario is you have a cleric raise you and you get 96% of your lost experience back, and you're out maybe 5 minutes. The worst is that you could lose your corpse and everything you owned was on it, but even an admin will help you out if you're honestly trying to get your stuff back and truely can not.
But start over? Not at all. You're still the same level unless you were unfortunate to lose enough experience to go back a level, but you wouldn't expect to go from level 60 to level 1.
..but the reason why ShowEQ works is because of core design decisions. Core issues are pervasive and will never be solved trivally. They will probably be in the game till it dies....
Planes of Power in general is the smoothest, best release of an Everquest expandsion yet. It does some things that render ShowEQ weaker. They've removed as much client side monekying as they could. "Cheating" now is more about information wars than gaining a tactical engagement advantage.
Information is power in EQ (there is a huge stink about the players who were allowed to close Beta POP had a HUGE advantage over those who did not). If you know what drops to look for, what monsters are key, what pitsfalls to avoid then you'll be spending more time advancing than picking up the pieces. With POP the barries for entry are quite high. Power Players who feel the crunch now more than ever are relying on external ways to farm information.
So the things Sony/Verant are fighting are the non-obvious shortcuts. They want players to hunt high and low for the 4 monsters (out of the 1,000) that live in hidden caves. ShowEQ is used as a valuable short cut. ShowEQ can show you where the 4 monsters in the zone that you need to progress but only lightly helps you kill them.
Any competent guild can survive without ShowEQ. With that being said, its something that most competent guilds use because it lets them focus on solving problems instead of farming information. How much of this is cheating and how much of it is getting around annoying RP-isms that don't work well in games is still up to debate.
One thing that is being touched on in the debate is the idea of 3rd Party programs. Every game including EQ has shown that the developer does not have enough time and energy to extend the game's functionality exactly the way the players want it. However the players do. The spiffy UI is extensible and a great boon to players. If Verant/Sony is unwilling to extend the game to match Player's requirements then why not let them? If one wants to create a bot that hooks up a character to an irc channel then why not? If one wants to create a bot that emails people who aren't online then why not? This kind of extensibility I really love and all game makers should do more to promote.
I've been playing Everquest for nearly 2 years, my husband for nearly 4 years. It is a remarkably cheat-proof game. Nothing that ShowEQ does for people really impacts us. In fact even though we have never used it and never will, it's helped us because it supplies information to the people who supply it to the sites that we go to for information.
The creators of Everquest have not allowed item duplication cheats, item stealing cheats, run speed cheats, etc. such as those described in the article referenced. In fact everquest "cheats" are things that you can do in game anyway: tracking (get a ranger of any level, or a sufficient level bard or druid), see invisible (a spell that takes hardly any mana, that casters all get at fairly low levels) etc. And things that everyone benefits from, not some unfairly (knowing what spells are available, what each spell does).
Unlike other online games that I've played, Everquest hasn't been ruined by cheating. It's also fun for all levels, and though its true that those starting today may never catch up with the uberest players, that doesn't matter: it's fun at all levels. It's fun from beginning to end. It isn't about winning, it's -- like a tabletop rpg -- about playing and having fun.
I don't think ShowEQ or its like applications (EQWin, that lets people play everquest in a window) cause any harm or help really. They are nice for people who like that kind of thing, but they are not cheats that ruin the game for everyone else.
Maps are nice, but there's maps all over the web and freely available to anyone who cares to look for them; there are maps for sale by Sony in an official EQ Atlas as well.
Basically, it's an excellent game that was well designed from the beginning to make sure the server took care of all important information exchanges. When there are occasional client side cheats allowed by new bugs introduced by a patch, they're always fixed super-fast.
There are things Sony has done not that well with Everquest, but allowing cheaters to ruin the game for the rest of us isn't one of them.
Writing is the only socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. (E. L. Doctorow)
Getting information from someone who got their information only through ShowEQ is using show EQ. You can't benifit from something and not use it. Just because it isnt running in your RAM
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
...Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast was all hacked up within months of release. I think hacking will probably put a serious dent in the number of people that play MMORPGS...and Sony knows it, hence their efforts to stop it. It's really sad that some miscreants get power trips off cheating in online games. It pretty much limits players to playing with people they know, which greatly limits the pool of available people to play with, thus stealing from us the internets greatest promise...a vast number of people from all over the world to interact with.
www.hackersquest.org
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
CPU time costs money, the more CPU time they burn on the server, the more money it costs them in terms of CPU time.
OTOH, client machines have tons of CPU cycles that they aren't using or don't really need. The more you can offload to them the better.
Cheaters can ruin a game for a lot of people, and people upset at cheaters leave and cost sony money.
So it becomes an optimization problem, (in the statistical sense, not the computational one).
Do enough to prevent cheating so that you wont lose more customers' income then the cost of the server load that's caused by your anti-cheating software.
Throwing monkey wrenches into the cheater-coder's work is a very cheap way to prevent cheating that changes the equations around.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I, Cringely: Get a Life (Which One?) A Real Battle is Brewing in the World of Everquest
The main difference between them is that 99.5% of players in EverQuest don't give a crap if someone else is using ShowEQ. There isn't a huge and overwhelming advantage vs. other players if someone's using ShowEQ. (There is on PvP servers. However, no one plays on the PvP servers because Everquest's PvP system sucks. And it has nothing to do with cheaters.)
I used SEQ when I still played Everquest. All of my friends knew I used ShowEQ. My entire guild knew I used ShowEQ. About 2/3 of the people I got experience with knew I used ShowEQ. No one ever said to me, "Dude, that's fucked up. You're ruining the game for other people." Know why? Because I wasn't.
I hate cheaters in half-life and its mods, and in quake and it's sequels and mods, but that's because the act of cheating ruins other peoples' enjoyment of the game which is an enormous difference IMO.
iirc, the "Big Deal" wasn't that you couldn't use your modchip while playing on Live, it's that MS banned you for life if your X-Box had a modchip in it, even if it's not enabled while playing on Live. It also did not discriminate between legitimate uses of modchips (playing imports, linux on X-Box- though that's not really legitimate in MS's eyes. ;)) and the ones who used it for cheating.
There is also the little issue about unscrupulous modders changing the codes on their X-Boxes and banning codes that could very well that of a customer with a non-modded box.
When I used to play on normal blueservers, I would use it all day long and it didn't bother me. There was many places where I just got lost running through it. No matter what I did, I got lost, so seq was my guide.
Well, 4 months ago, I got bored of the blue servers, and headed towards PvP. (Sullon Zek) I was using seq as a basic idea of where PKs where and such, or knowing someones level when I zoned it, to know if I am gonna be screawed. But, right before PoP was released it started getting insaine. PKs would zone in, they knew where you where, how your HPs was (if there kinda close to you, around the corner, where you can't see em) Suddenly, you didn't know what hit ya.
Each zone has some nice hidding spots, which can only be found by a druid, ranger or bard. (Those with a tracking skill) Its kinda funny how a wizard comes running from across the zone to that spot where you are. Durring which time, I shout hey, hows seq working for ya ?
Since its more or less broken now, requires you to run some programs on your windows box that are very risky, very few people are using it. People have to use there real game skill. Honestly, its much nicer that way. Belive it or not, I really hope they find an even tougher form of encryption for it.
Those who flame me from carebear servers, go try PvP before you open your mouth. You will soon learn how harsh of an enviorment it is. Things like seq make it really suck.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
What I got from your post was that you use ShowEQ as a real-time map to let you:
-Avoid challenges your in-game character was not ready to meet.
-Find people and things that would enhance the position of your in-game character or others.
You purchased a product for a fixed sum (the price of the game and whatever expansion packs were added) and are now paying for a service on a monthly basis (the maintenance of servers that allow you to play the game with others and access to those servers). What must be recognized is that you have decided that the product you purchased is inadequate, and that those who provide you with the service you are paying for are trying to stop you from changing your everquest experience.
Your use of ShowEQ is just as bad as a consumer's use of DeCSS to decrypt a dvd for backup purposes, but not for the reasons you think.
In principle, there is nothing wrong with getting full access to data that is sent to you or to a program being run on hardware that you own. In fact, it's impossible to prevent you from doing so. It's a terrible idea because the company that is providing the good or service is trying to stop you. The MPAA doesn't want you to be able to decrypt DVDs because that allows you to copy them at possible financial detriment to the MPAA. Sony doesn't want you to be able to decrypt (and read and use) everquest data...well...I can't know exactly what they're thinking, but I would guess it's either because:
1. It makes the game easier by eliminating artificial challenges they've introduced (which is all any game boils down to, artificial challenges) and thus possibly causing you to get bored and stop paying.
OR
2. It allows players to abuse the game and make it so difficult for other players that they become frustrated and stop playing (and so stop paying).
Anyway, for whatever reasons, Sony doesn't want you to do it and they're taking technological steps to make it harder. When you use any means to circumvent a limitation placed on a product or service rather than putting consumer pressure on the company to remove the limitation, you are anesthetizing yourself to the process that keeps companies from hurting consumers. The very idea that everquest should encrypt its data packets or the MPAA should encrypt dvds is totally unacceptable! The MPAA must understand that selling and renting plastic discs containing valuable data is not a valid business model in an environment that obeys the simple laws of the physics of information (i.e. if you can see it you can copy it). Sony should know that if it sends information to someone, that person can use it whatever way they choose. So what's the proper course of action in these situations, meaning the one that holds up the system that, when employed, keeps big corporations from virtually raping consumers and taking their rights?
DVDs:
The MPAA _must_ find a new way of making money - this isn't as hard as it sounds. People are _very_ willing to pay for the movie experience of sitting in a huge theater with a big screen they could never hope to own themselves and a sound system that blows them away in an acoustically managed environment for two hours while they are told an amazing audio/visual story they've never heard before, at least not in that form. In other words, it's a glorified form of equipment rental. Sure, movies can be recorded with a crappy camcorder and put on the net, but a blurry, washed out, 320x240 picture with tinny sound and the occasional crunch of popcorn as the pirate enjoys the flick can't compare to the theater experience. As for post-theater revenue, video rental stores could be converted into high-speed online digital movie wherehouses. No DRM is necessary, as high quality movies take up quite a bit of space and consumers would be forced to delete old movies to make room for freshly downloaded ones. I would imagine a modest fee per download, and perhaps a monthly membership fee. For the technophobic or those not willing to wait for the download, the current model works fine. Media to hold copies still costs money.
EQ:
Two very simple courses of action:
1. If it's not in the player's viewing frustum, don't send them information about it. That way there's no extra "EQ" information in the datastream to "Show". Perhaps characters with a special ability ("Sense Danger" maybe?) could be sent special precaching hints to make monster loads faster (it makes sense that those with a sense for danger would be able to more quickly react to it when it does become directly visable). I.e., "Game engine: preload huge_ugly_beatdown_montster.mdl, and tell the user that there's a huge_ugly_beatdown_monster 'somewhere close by'". This allows for the benefits of preloading still without giving away any extra information to a datastream tapping program. Also, since the datastream would not need to be encrypted, that's less work for the client and server cpus, possibly delaying an expensive server upgrade for verant.
2. Don't change the protocol and add the map feature you want.
Either way, it's a better solution than what they're doing now. No matter how good ShowEQ gets, if Sony goes with solution 1 there's absolutely nothing you can do - you can't see information that isn't being sent to you. If they go with solution 2, you'll get exactly what you want.
Please. Write to Sony. Organize a protest. Do whatever you can. I can't stop you from using ShowEQ, but I can guarantee you that you'll work harder for a progressive solution without it.
the asheron's call developers LIKE decal, and quietly communicate with each other
and hey, they even let you use alt-tab and windowed mode, and don't just hijack your computer! personally, i refuse to play a game that disables alt-tab
decal provides player run vendors and portal summoning bots, spam filtering, streamlined combat messaging, afk tell recording, tradelist generation, etc
plus several plugins were incorporated into the game client after they became widely popular
like he said, Decal is com based, so you can do a plugin in nearly any language you want
AND Decal is opensource with the Devs always looking for contributors
http://decaldev.sourceforge.net/
Netrek figured this out about fifteen years ago. The source is open, so it was assumed from day 1 that clients couldn't be trusted. Attempts at client authentication were added later, but those were add ons (and could be and were subverted), they weren't the prime means of preventing cheating.
The strength of the Netrek model is that the game was designed from its infancy to send exactly and only the information that each client needs to display what it's supposed to be displaying. For example, cloaked units are supposed to be shown as unidentified contacts and on the galactic window only, with erratic position and irregular updates. One of the first things a hacked client developer will do is to display them on the tactical window as well, and there's nothing that the design can do to stop that. Also, it's not perfect; an ID is sent for the cloaked units, so the client can show what they really are. However, the server does only send irregular updates, and it flat out lies about the position, heading and speed of the unit, so the client can only show so much.
One of the most controversial design decisions involved torpedo weapons. The servers sends "start" and "end" packets, but instead of sending speed and heading and letting the client handle movement of the weapon, it sends regular "position" updates, with a jitter built in. This increases the bandwidth requirement significantly, but it means that the client doesn't know the exact speed and heading of the weapon, so can't make an easy calculation about how to dodge it.
The Netrek model is replete with decisions like this. There are a few snafus (like the cloaked ship ID), but in general there is very little that a client can display that it's not supposed to. And believe me, I tried.
The reason for this tight design is simple if you think about it. Netrek, like XPilot and Xfire, was originally an X-display game. The server handled both mechanics and display. When Netrek moved to a TCP(later UDP)/IP based model, that model was preserved and the server took on a lot of responsibility for culling information that each client shouldn't know.
It never fails to amaze me that commercial games developers never seem to learn the lessons that open source projects can teach them. I know (from bitter experience) that there's a huge rush to get results on screen, but hey, guys, do it right, don't do it twice.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Funny thing, D2 also has a 3rd party show map util called, coincidently, 'maphack'. There was a big uproar in the community last year when it got released, since it would let you do meph runs faster. (Killing a boos monster Mephisto over and over again with high magic find gear, would let you "win" the item lottery easier.) Lots of people were complaing about how it was wrecking the game. I never follwed that logic since if you're in a different game then the person using it, how is it spoiling your enjoyment of the game?
...
What I did agree on, was that technically it's a cheat, since you are not playing the game the same way the designers intendend. Muddying the issue was that it had an one long-term advantage:
- Players would find their uber gear, and quite playing on bnet. Good riddance as that's one less person taking up bandwidth.
Sounds a little impersonal, but the reality is that everyone gets bored of the game eventually. Knowing how laggy bnet has been lately, having fewer players would mean less disconnects for everyone.
Nowadays, everyone is arguing over 'pindlebot' - an 3rd party util that will play the game for you, repeatedly killing PindleSkin, since he can drop any item in the game. Is it cheating, when you're using another program to play the game for you?
Will be intersting to see what Blizzard and Sony do
"For every technology, there is equal and opposite hacker technology".
The funny thing is, the orginator of the qoute is a PS2 and Xbox game developer in San Jose.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
SEQ doesn't really harm the game, as long as you don't play on a PvP server. On the blue servers, the main uses for SEQ are mapping, and knowing how many hitpoints a MOB has/where they are. Most of those feats can easily be accomplished using resources that are online.
The reason SEQ is "cheating" is that in PvP, it can also be used to tell player stats, which works as a major advantage over players without this information. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to beat the wizard you're duelling, it just means that you know where they're coming from. I can definitely see why people don't like it in PvP: my main tactic when I was duelling was to shadow step (think "Blink" in D&D/GURPS), nuke, repeat. It kept people questioning where I was, which was basically all the time I needed to nuke them without retribution. On the PvP servers, when you kill somebody, you can take one of their items.
It's for the better if they can prevent SEQ from working. The problem, though, is that this may ultimately lead to their downfall. They can't treat SEQ one way, while programs like EQWindows (which allow the user to play EQ in a window instead of fullscreen) get different treatment. Programs like EQWindows allow players to do things like play multiple accounts at the same time, which can't hurt their pocketbooks. SOE would do themselves a world of good if they just accepted that this exists, and satisfied themselves that it's on the fringe at the moment.
Incidentally, PoP was the reason I quit EQ. I couldn't stomach levelling my wizard from 60 to 65, so I parked her in her hometown, and cancelled billing the day that PoP launched.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
This article was a good one, but its eerily similar to an article that appeared on November 14 written by Robert X. Cringely.
Isn't it ironic that everyone was disputing Cringely's point this week that his column is ripped off just a day or two ago then this shows up?
$45 per U Colocation Special
After sorting through a plethora of comments, I just had to comment. It appears that the majority of people out there don't have a CLUE about what ShowEQ is and what ShowEQ isn't.
Verant, and now SOE, have had a burr in their britches about ShowEQ from the beginning. They continue to view ShowEQ as the "dark side of the force" while completely ignoring the FAR more egregious cheating tools out there.
On the "cheating index," I rate ShowEQ only slightly above EQWindows. In fact, I don't consider EQWindows cheating at all. That, however, is not SOE's opinion. An entire thread could be devoted to SOE's blatent disregard for Microsoft's development guidelines regarding Control-Alt-Delete and task-switching... Rather ironic. But I digress. More on the "cheating index" in a little bit.
MacroQuest, Xylobot, and a few others, active ALTER the client. They are the tools that have done FAR more damage to the game than ShowEQ could EVER do. People have used these other tools to flood the EQ economy with game money (plat) earned by automating the exploitation of various tradeskills. Heck, there are even macros out there that allow people to multi-box drastically easier than would normally be the case. Players can alter their run speed, have the client ignore rain in a zone to improve vision, and a whole lot more. Rumor even has it that people are able to dupe items using some of these tools. These are things ShowEQ simply can't and never will do. For those who are concerned about the integrity of the game, THESE tools are your real enemies -- not ShowEQ, not EQWin.
As a side note, even our beloved Magelo is more invasive than ShowEQ. Magelo sits on the client side and rips the character data out of EQ's process space. Of all the programs mentioned, Magelo is by far the most harmless in terms of game play.
EqWindows (EQWin) is also harmless in my opinion. It allows the user to run EQ in a window (scandal!!). What in the world is so bad about this, Sony? Ah! The argument has always been, "the player could use their computer to look up our secrets on the internet, or launch cheat tools in the background." Guess what? It is already happening and has been happening long before EQWin existed. By extrapolation, web sites like Everlore and CastersRealm are cheating.
So why are EQWin (which would be utterly trivial for SOE to discover without resorting to tasklist or disk scanning) and Magelo allowed to continue? Simple. SOE has concluded that these applications keep people playing (thus PAYING). ShowEQ, Macroquest, and the rest have a relatively high barrier to entry. Of these, ShowEQ has traditionally had the highest barrier simply because it runs solely on Linux. The fact that many people continue to play because of ShowEQ is conveniently ignored because of the relatively small number of people who use it. It doesn't matter if a few disgruntled SEQ users quit. Not enough revenue for Sony to care about.
Is ShowEQ cheating. Sure it is. It gives its user the advantage of knowing where in the zone you are, what critters are in the zone, and some basic information about the critters (notably position, movement direction, level, and class). Can it be used to give a player an advantage? Sure. However, the player using SEQ still has to have sufficient skill to actually leverage that advantage. You still have to be able to play the game with skill. To get "Mad Platz" using ShowEQ is limited to being able to find and kill rare spawns, etc. ShowEQ only helps with the find part. The player still must be able to do all the work. Ohhh look, Lord Nagafen is up -- I'm running ShowEQ, I can solo him. Don't think so. The various posts in this thread, along with the recent Cringley article show that this point is not well understood.
Heck, the in-game exploits that many players do give the player more of an advantage than ShowEQ. These exploits are typically pathing bugs that allow a player to wail away at an opponent without ever being hit. Some players have claimed being able to go from level 3 to 20 in a matter of a few hours using these exploits. In fairness, SOE does a decent job of trying to track down and clean up these exploitable bugs. However, the same pathing problems are perpetually ignored when it is to the advantage of the NPC...
This next point will cause some people to say, "look! A cheater trying to justify himself." Perhaps, but I want this angle of the story to be told.
* ShowEQ has exposed COUNTLESS lies and half-truths from Verant/SOE about the game. Many of the changes for the better that have been made to the game over the years are due to the persistence and vigilance of ShowEQ users (who, ironically, seem to care a great deal about the game.)
* ShowEQ has helped expose the incredible inequity that exists between the rules that NPCs follow and the rules that govern Player Characters. In essence, we've gotten a better window on the way the NPCs "cheat" us.
* ShowEQ and its users have been responsible for identifying and reporting countless bugs.
* ShowEQ users have done countless favors for their fellow players; leading hopelessly lost and frustrated players out of confusing, perpetually foggy and rainy zones, and assisting with the recovery of corpses that otherwise would have been lost.
* Directly or indirectly, ShowEQ has made Everquest more enjoyable in some way to *thousands* of players.
Bottom line is this: ShowEQ is FAR from the "Ultimate Evil" many have portrayed it to be.
I think a lot of ShowEQ users would abandon the use of the tool altogether if EQ included a mapping function, "heads-up radar", and an opponent assessment system that was actually worth something. I've played other Online RPG's that had these basic features, and the thought of writing a ShowEQ equivalent for these games never crossed my mind. It simply wasn't necessary.
I don't know what's more arrogant, that you think you are in the right doing this or that you assume others will naturally align with your position. You're disruptive activities are not noble, you're no better than virus writers who get a kick from releasing their products in the wild. Your windows version threat demonstrates this.
All of this discussion of ShowEQ, but I'm amazed that on Slashdot we're not discussing things like the difficulties with the encryption, the ability to create and hold a long-term playerbase, etc. Oh well, I guess debating the morality of ShowEQ sounds more fun :)
bitch, bitch, bitch.
Geez!
To the "It's ok to cheat!" group (Group One):
No it isn't. If it were, it wouldn't be called "cheating".
To the "cheating is bad" group (Group Two):
no shit. But someone will always cheat. This isn't the simple, clear cut right-and-wrong thing that some people make it out to be though. It would be if everyone was Dudly Do-Right, but they're not and they never will be.
If it were automatic for everyone to do-the-right-thing, banks would not need safes and locks and guards and all else. There is always, in human nature, the struggle between what society says you should do and what you actually want to do. Note that things get even more confused because certain elements in society will say that it's okay to do what you want to (i.e. Group One). For some people, some of the time, there is a temptation to cheat.
Suppose, for example, that you and I are playing a game of cards. Now suppose you've got to get up and leave the room for a bit. I stare at your hand lying face down on the table. Do I look at it and see what cards you've got? In my case, no I don't because I have a certain ethic about cheating in games (that have human opponents--when the opponent is a computer, whether I cheat depends on how much respect I have for the game and other factors) and I'm pedantic and I want to try to play by all the rules. So no, I don't look at the cards.
But another person might look at the other guy's cards and rationalize it as being a "more technically advanced style of play". Note that it becomes easier to rationalize cheating when you don't actually see the person that you're screwing over. It also becomes more tempting when there's money on the line. Don't people still pay big bucks on eBay for high-power EQ chars?
When you look at it that way, it's easy (for me anyway) to start to see the EQ "cheaters" as "power users", even though I know they're not. It becomes easier to lie to myself, because it becomes increasingly tempting to become on of them so I can set myself up a nice little business on eBay and make money (this is human nature in action, folks) out of little bits of data and other people's gulibility. :-) But making money off of people's gulibility always leaves a bad taste in my mouth (so to speak). That's why I'll never be a politician or a lawyer.
But the point, Group Two, is that there is no need to let Group One get away with so much in this situation. The server could, perhaps, be better written to give away less information. That would be a perfect example of doing the Right Thing. (But also note "deserves to lose". I suppose this is where some of the Group One people are coming from.) Yes, unfortunatetly, that might require some rewrites and it might increase the required bandwidth, but... Think of the Children!! (sorry, couldn't resist. ;-) )
So how can we get to that point? What would get Sony to rewrite the code some more so that the client has less info to go on? Simple. Release WinSEQ. Then they won't have much choice.
This is not a new battle. It's just the age-old war of access to information being played out AGAIN . Other examples include: illegally copying mp3s, application programs, games programs, ALL programs. Where do YOU draw the line? What level of information access do you think is okay, and what do you think is wrong? Does your philosophy have any contradictions? Are you aware that arguing for illegalization of spam whilst also arguing for legalization of file trading implies that your right to privacy is greater than the right of copyright? But copyright is explictiy referred to and defined in the Constitution and, AFAIK, the right to privacy is not. Have you ever thought about the implications of that? How many more times will we have to go through this, I wonder? A hundred times? A million?
I think fifty years from now, people will look back on this age of poorly defined/handled information access rights and laugh. Heck, I live in this time and I already laugh at it!
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Sony is not trying to prevent cheating. You encrypt the data to prevent others from listening in on what a player does. That's the purpose of encryption. Since the player has to have the encryption key you'd have to be rather 'logically challanged' to use encryption as a way to prevent cheating.
If Sony were trying to prevent cheating they'd stop sending any data the player shouldnt see. That would be an effective way to prevent cheating.
Now, if you want Sony and/or other game companies to prevent cheaters you should contact them and tell them to hire someone who actually has a clue about how to prevent cheating or you'll refuse to play their games.
This isnt rocket science. Writing (close to, as in the cheater wont get any significant advantage) uncheatable client-server games is possible and it isnt even that hard. It's been done since the beginning of online gaming in opensource online games (kinda hard to implement security in the client when the player has the source). Place one of the system architects in front of a screen and tell him to read through project development mailing list archives and actually learn something about software design for once in his life and you've solved the problem.
The blame lies squarely with the companies who spend maybe 10 minutes total considering the issue during the design phase. The failure to implement a secure design is just as bad as if inventory suddenly disappeared or characters just went poof. Complain about it and maybe they'll actually do something about it. But _they_ are the ones who decide wether to make cheating possible or not, and encryption is not one of the ways to prevent cheating.
... but the "right" to screw with another company's hard work, sweat and tears, i.e. their "software, intellectual property..etc" is one right I am absolutely sure I am not going to miss.
MMORPGS are set to become an extremely large segment of the video game industry. That means a lot of jobs, not only from the company that makes the game but from all the mom and pop companies that will pop up to sell guides, start web forums supporting the game, merchandise...etc. It would really be sad to have all of that put in jepordy for some little teenaged pissant who wants to mess with the "code" and be able to play for free, or with unfair abilities that turns others off to the game and causes the company and the MMORPG industry as a whole to lose money.
And about rights, you really demean the value of the word when you use it on stuff as triffling as this. Rights are things like the freedom to speak, the freedom to assmble peaceably, to be free from random searches and seizures, the right to a speedy trial. The "right" to screw with a company's products pales in comparison.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Everything I've seen about Everquest seems to indicate that SOE caters to the "Haves" while screwing over the "Have-Nots" - For example, at one point raising the level cap from 50 to 60, and now to 65, something that only benefits the most hardcore. Also, the EQ economy is riddled with holes and massively inflated so that only macroers and hardcord players can afford anything.
DAoC (which I play), on the other hand, has a level cap of 50. Period. Mythic has repeatedly stated that this will never change. (You can progress a bit beyond 50 with "Realm abilities", obtained in realm vs. realm combat rather than player vs. monster, but it isn't THAT much of a difference.)
Also, in DAoC, except for jewelry items, there is no such thing as rare armor/weapons anymore. Players can now craft the best items in the game. Yes, it'll cost you, but it's a fixed price (the materials needed from merchants) that will never change.
To combat inflation, Mythic has always kept the money supply tight in DAoC (and in fact recently made it tighter by removing the closest thing to an exploit the economy had - Certain items could be salvaged for a pretty good profit, and now are only worth 75% as much. You still had to work for them though...), and also has plenty of cash sinks in DAoC (Both crafting, which is VERY expensive, and keeping your realm's keeps in good repair - Probably 50-75% of the money in the economy is used to buy wood for keep doors that just gets bashed down by a ram in a day or two.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
As I see this, this is a double-edged sword:
a) It means that lowbies can be warned about threats such as that uber mob. I would love to be warned by a "radar" user than be ganked out of the blue.
b) It gives guilds using ShowEQ an advantage in killing "uber" mobs. That's the bad thing. Of course, if ShowEQ is as rampant as it sounds, overall it benefits people since no guild is really getting that much of an advantage, since they all have access to it.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
No, not even the judicial branch of the real-world or game-world government. They can punish the players if the are able to detect it, but that still does not prevent them from doing it.
For any normal contract you are told the terms before you pay.
I agree that most EULAs are on shaky ground because they break the "terms before money" rule, but aren't you shown the terms before you sign up for a monthly EverQuest account?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It still wont stop cheating. They are probably not able to detect it, especially not passive cheats that just use the info sent to the client. Most of the active cheats are also hard to detect, and it can be hard to tell them apart from natural actions from the players.
Further, the cost to society to manage such a thing in courts would be huge. It's like having a video monitor in your house and leaving the front door wide open. You might maybe perhaps be able to catch the burglars if you can identify them but you're still going to end up having been robbed.
For something that could be solved in a week or two of competent engineering it sounds like an extremely costly and inefficient way to attempt to deal with the problem.
Instead disabling Alt-Tab just irritates me
In fact, any game that disables standard Windows shortcuts such as Alt+Tab and Ctrl+Esc is not a conforming Windows application and may not carry the "Compatible with Microsoft Windows" logo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
But copyright is explictiy referred to and defined in the Constitution and, AFAIK, the right to privacy is not.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" (U.S. Constitution, Amendment IV).
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" (U.S. Constitution, Amendment IX).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why do people insist on using `!=' in such a way?
The expression "!=" is derived from the C language. Slashdot users use "!=" instead of "isn't the same as" to save fifteen bytes because Slashdot limits comment subjects to 50 bytes.
(You point out the `unlawful search and seaz
Your comment got cut off right where it got interesting. Please continue.
Btw, how come all this DRM junk seems to be for corporations only?
Because you need to buy the encoder. The major publishers (RIAA, MPAA, etc) are rich enough to afford to pay the digital restrictions management companies for the research and development of DRM technologies. Once the R&D has been paid off, the price will fall to where anybody can buy a one-seat license for the encoder software off the shelf at a local computer store.
Open DRM tools are in development as well. Creative Commons is creating an open digital format for restrictions description.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The only way to win a MMORPG is to quit. ("winning" being defined as "the point beyond which one cannot play any longer") All other actions simply lead to increased play.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey