Hmmm, you must not peruse the various EQ related boards very often, as cheating as how you described (run speed, duping, etc) has occurred quite often over the course of EQ's lifetime.
Granted, most dupe methods are found out after a time, but those that were able to take advantage of them while they lasted (and avoided getting caught) contributed to damaging the game economy by introducing many rare drops that generally wouldn't have been in the game.
Most of what you say about ShowEQ's benefits not being that great are true. Tracking, See Invisible, and a map program like Xylobot will get you most of the functionality that ShowEQ gives.
Personally, I wish Sony Online wouldn't spend so much time fighting ShowEQ. What I believe is _truly_ hurting the game is the use of automated macroing programs to gain money at a ludicrous rate.
Currently there's a program called Macroquest on sourceforge which allows you to control most everquest actions via scripts. Industrious folks have been able to find special tradeskill recipes that, when automated, can generated 6000-35000 platinum pieces an hour. For those that don't play the game, I belive 10k pp goes for $100 or so on playerauctions.com (check the web site for real numbers).
So what happens is you get these asshats that have 10-15 computers & accounts all running macros generating hundreds of thousand of plat an hour, and then they go to playerauctions.com and sell it to other people for big $$$.
This _huge_ influx of money into the game economy KILLS it for everyone else. When someone spends $250 to get a massive amount of platinum and can overpay for uber-item #10123 in the bazaar, those of us who don't cheat and only have 2k in the bank are screwed.
Sony Online needs to spend the couple of days it takes to remove/modify the tradeskill recipes that sell for more than the component cost. This only has to be done for vendor buyable items, since those are the only ones that can be macro'd easily.
The reason you see the spells you need for 10's of thousands of plat (C3 for 35k?!) is because people will pay for it.
It might be likely that Brian could go to NVIDIA, considering his past experience with 3DFX and his previous.plan's extolling the company's virtues. But personally, I think he might go to a game company where he has more of a leadership/architectural position. 911 Studios with EverQuest? Doubtful considering the game's done and mostly upgrades are all that are left.
I do have some lovely "overheard" conversations to back up my claim. A few months ago during the GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Jose, Brian was heard to have made a few cracks about how great it is to be at the GDC; mainly because when he goes back to ID, he's Beta Male to John Carmack's Alpha Male. It was a lot funnier the way he said it, and it sounded more joking than anything.. But with the recent events, perhaps there were seeds of wanderlust already sown by that time.
BTW, he gave a great keynote/seminar on Q3A technology! Though Brian may not be the game architect/technologist that John C is, he's definitely no slouch in the 3D Programming department.
If you take a look at the sourceXchange web site, there's a peer review process to handle "enforcement" issues. They don't go into much detail, which is unfortunate, but the basic gist is that a peer reviewer, who is an expert in a particular technology, is assigned to the appropriate project, and makes the final call whether a milestone has been met. It says these peer reviewers are compensated, but I'm curious how many people will actually sign up for it.
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Hmmm, you must not peruse the various EQ related boards very often, as cheating as how you described (run speed, duping, etc) has occurred quite often over the course of EQ's lifetime.
Granted, most dupe methods are found out after a time, but those that were able to take advantage of them while they lasted (and avoided getting caught) contributed to damaging the game economy by introducing many rare drops that generally wouldn't have been in the game.
Most of what you say about ShowEQ's benefits not being that great are true. Tracking, See Invisible, and a map program like Xylobot will get you most of the functionality that ShowEQ gives.
Personally, I wish Sony Online wouldn't spend so much time fighting ShowEQ. What I believe is _truly_ hurting the game is the use of automated macroing programs to gain money at a ludicrous rate.
Currently there's a program called Macroquest on sourceforge which allows you to control most everquest actions via scripts. Industrious folks have been able to find special tradeskill recipes that, when automated, can generated 6000-35000 platinum pieces an hour. For those that don't play the game, I belive 10k pp goes for $100 or so on playerauctions.com (check the web site for real numbers).
So what happens is you get these asshats that have 10-15 computers & accounts all running macros generating hundreds of thousand of plat an hour, and then they go to playerauctions.com and sell it to other people for big $$$.
This _huge_ influx of money into the game economy KILLS it for everyone else. When someone spends $250 to get a massive amount of platinum and can overpay for uber-item #10123 in the bazaar, those of us who don't cheat and only have 2k in the bank are screwed.
Sony Online needs to spend the couple of days it takes to remove/modify the tradeskill recipes that sell for more than the component cost. This only has to be done for vendor buyable items, since those are the only ones that can be macro'd easily.
The reason you see the spells you need for 10's of thousands of plat (C3 for 35k?!) is because people will pay for it.
Yw
It might be likely that Brian could go to NVIDIA, considering his past experience with 3DFX and his previous .plan's extolling the company's virtues. But personally, I think he might go to a game company where he has more of a leadership/architectural position. 911 Studios with EverQuest? Doubtful considering the game's done and mostly upgrades are all that are left.
I do have some lovely "overheard" conversations to back up my claim. A few months ago during the GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Jose, Brian was heard to have made a few cracks about how great it is to be at the GDC; mainly because when he goes back to ID, he's Beta Male to John Carmack's Alpha Male. It was a lot funnier the way he said it, and it sounded more joking than anything.. But with the recent events, perhaps there were seeds of wanderlust already sown by that time.
BTW, he gave a great keynote/seminar on Q3A technology! Though Brian may not be the game architect/technologist that John C is, he's definitely no slouch in the 3D Programming department.
Yw
If you take a look at the sourceXchange web site, there's a peer review process to handle "enforcement" issues. They don't go into much detail, which is unfortunate, but the basic gist is that a peer reviewer, who is an expert in a particular technology, is assigned to the appropriate project, and makes the final call whether a milestone has been met. It says these peer reviewers are compensated, but I'm curious how many people will actually sign up for it.