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Request - How should we respond to suspension waves? (4 Viewers)

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I've been talking with a few people about this for months, but ultimately MacroQuest is an open source project, so I'd like to open this conversation to everyone.

How should RedGuides respond to the recent 7-day suspension waves? We don't have the resources of a $300,000,000 company, but we certainly have passion. What should we focus it on?

Some things to keep in mind:
  • When reading this thread, you'll notice up ▲ and down ▼ arrows next to each reply. Use them to upvote ideas you agree with.
  • While a lot of us are upset about suspensions (people are venting on here and social media) we need to keep in mind that we're EverQuest fans. We're here because of the work and creativity from Darkpaw Games, so please show them respect even if you disagree with their judgement.
  • We assume several thousand people use MacroQuest, though this is a very rough estimate as we don't log anything in game nor are we the only distributor. DPG has a much better idea about usage than we do.


EDIT & SUMMARY

If you took the time to vote or reply, thank you. Here's the primary action suggested in every post with at least two votes:

Add detection safeguards to MQ + 149
Communicate with DPG + 101
Boycott / Stop playing altogether + 55
Stay the course / No change +49
Focus on Emu +20
Stop promoting our playstyle +20
Remove Truebox restrictions +9
Add more "anti"-features such as anti-AFK checks. + 7
Turn on safety features by default: audible alerts on say, tell, /ooc camp checks, etc. + 4
lol +2

The highest two suggestions have been heard loud and clear. I imagine an effective boycott would need organization, I'm open to it but not just yet. Staying the course has already been tried 😅. Emulator is attractive for many reasons, and work has already begun on MacroQuest for emu clients. I don't think we'll take down our youtubes or relax truebox restrictions anytime soon. I wouldn't push for anti-features without some type of assurance they'd help our cause. Some safety defaults like those hotpocket suggested will probably be in a commit soon.

Again, thank you all for the replies and for sticking with us to this point. If there are any ideas I missed, or improperly summarized, please reply!
 
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Giggles said:
Well im at work and was looking at my email and looks like they are starting to ban not just suspend. Been a good run folks, without RG i would have never returned. i had more fun than i ever did playing this game. I dont know which act it is but they are all 20+ years old. my question is can i get some money back? Because i did 6 yearly subscriptions and im going to go ahead and cancel it all.

Thanks all for the fun and gluck!!!
Click to expand...

Damn, that sucks man. Clearly they are not fucking about at this point. I have had multiple suspensions but have never had a ban yet. But, if they do, I will take the same route you are. That will be my sign from God that its time to stop dumping time and money into this game. :shrug:
 
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Giggles said:
Well im at work and was looking at my email and looks like they are starting to ban not just suspend. Been a good run folks, without RG i would have never returned. i had more fun than i ever did playing this game. I dont know which act it is but they are all 20+ years old. my question is can i get some money back? Because i did 6 yearly subscriptions and im going to go ahead and cancel it all.

Thanks all for the fun and gluck!!!
Click to expand...

Did they do a 7-day suspension, then a 14-day suspension, then a ban the account(s)?
 
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L8erGator said:
Since

Closest you can get to current content and be "live like" is Omens of War.
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SO many good games out there...I don't know about anyone else but I'm hooked on the PS4 Skyrim virtual reality version. You don't wanna get close to me, i will put two arrows in each of your eye sockets :)

So realistic!

the elder scrolls GIF


"Trinkets, odds and ends, that sort of thing."
 
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I preemptively canceled all 6 of my active accounts. No suspension yet, but I'm sure it's only time.
This was the only thing I can think of as a response (in a way).
I have quite a few projects to work on outside of EQ.
Maybe if we get enough people to temporarily cancel / stop playing, it will do something? Not sure if our numbers are enough, or if they are it would put EQ on the choppin' block.
I kinda feel like we done this to ourselves though. Made it super easy to fire up an afk crew and let it rip for weeks and lock down whole camps / parts of zones.
This puts me in mind of when I first saw MQ2Gmail years ago. I thought it was insane that people would leave things running by itself.
 
Upvote 2 Downvote
Canceled 4 account and forego buying TOL on any account.

That said, it was also due to the terrible quality of their last expansions lately, I am just not enjoying them.

DPG’s revenue will decrease in any cases also because of the end of confinement measures everywhere.

Nobody can play this game by the rules unless one have a massive amount of time to put in it.

I Will check next year, if i am in the mood of playing EQ, what the status is on live.

I switched to other hobbies.
Actually there are a few decent games and it is much cheaper.
I will have a go on EQEMU later during cold season.
 
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Upvote 1 Downvote
I am starting to think that maybe emu's won't be safe much longer either. IIRC there was an agreement reached with P99 around the same time that there was an agreement about not running MQ on True Box. All bets are off now I suspect
 
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InvisigothMT said:
I am starting to think that maybe emu's won't be safe much longer either. IIRC there was an agreement reached with P99 around the same time that there was an agreement about not running MQ on True Box. All bets are off now I suspect
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I'd be surprised if they went after emu. MQ usage on their servers are much easier to target with their resources. They have direct control. There are a lot more emu servers than just P99, I would imagine it's not the best use of their resources to shut all of them down. Especially with emu servers literally being something someone can just host on a home PC. It's a lot of different things to try and track down and minimal return.
 
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InvisigothMT said:
I am starting to think that maybe emu's won't be safe much longer either. IIRC there was an agreement reached with P99 around the same time that there was an agreement about not running MQ on True Box. All bets are off now I suspect
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Emu's will be fine. Since they haven't done anything about them for like 20 years now, they have basically given them their blessing.
 
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InvisigothMT said:
I am starting to think that maybe emu's won't be safe much longer either. IIRC there was an agreement reached with P99 around the same time that there was an agreement about not running MQ on True Box. All bets are off now I suspect
Click to expand...
P99 does not, at all, enforce any rules on any other EQEmu server. Think of EQEmu as tool. P99 took that tool and used it to create their own playground. Other EQEmu servers can do as they please.

As @EvilBarny said, the most that DBG could do is send a C&D but they cannot enforce rules on any EQEmu server.

My feeling on this is: RG keeps doing our thing. Making sweeping changes won't matter unless you purge automation from MQ which will leave us with a /stick program. It is clear they don't want automation, MQ or really any third-party software in any form.
  • The vast majority of players using RG have a few actions to take:
    • Continue playing with MQ and understand you will possibly be suspended/banned for breaking the rules.
    • Continue playing the game without MQ. It isn't impossible, you don't need to box 6+ characters to progress even at a very casual pace.
    • Stop supporting the game by cutting your ties with the company.
  • DBG can create, change and enforce rules however they want. Anyone who disagrees or wants to enact retaliation of any level needs a reality check. You agreed to their rules by accept the EULA. Stop trying to justify breaking their EULA. You broke it - that is all that matters. What you do or what your intention is with MQ doesn't matter. By using third-party software you are breaking the rules.
With all of that said, I will still support RG every month with my subscription. I will also still support DBG with my subscriptions as they aren't doing anything "crazy". I support everyone's decisions to keep playing or quit. There are no right or wrong answers outside of lashing out like an asshole to the company that just punished you for breaking one of their rules.
 
Upvote -3 Downvote
Hulkman said:
Does it help if we run MQ2 after the characters are loaded into the game ??

this might help ? no , any ideas ?
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You gotta read previous comments. Sic has stated RG cannot protect you if you don’t have it started prior to loading EQ. But at this point there is 0 protection. No matter when you have it loaded, they can detect it at this point. Sorry but SOL or just get use to the vacations.
 
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runordie said:
People let their accounts go AFK and use MQ on truebox TLP servers and we wonder why they started suspending/banning?
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That's what I've wondered. How have we 'normalized' botting? Why do we think that is ok for 'normal play'?
We have shot ourselves in the foot with this.
I understand that people can play how they want with what tools are available, but at this point we need to police ourselves.
I know there are other flavors or MQ available, but the RG community is a cut above the rest.
We should set a higher standard of play and respect.
 
Upvote -3 Downvote
The dev’s will do what they do. The gm’s are out of control imo I have not played eq in 2 months it’s not worth it atm. Half the fun was the risk but you can stand in the lobby and be suspended this is no longer risk it’s a way of dpg saying we don’t care anymore use it lose it….. so I wish there was a way for me to really use it like the old days I would use every back in the book we are getting suspended ne way …. Give them a reaso. To come back to the table cowering is not doing it
 
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runordie said:
24/7? So you're letting your accounts run while you're AFK?
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Yes.
runordie said:
People let their accounts go AFK and use MQ on truebox TLP servers and we wonder why they started suspending/banning?
Click to expand...
I don't play on true box. My posse runs wide of other people. I haven't seen another player in days. My logs show it's just my group(s) alone in a zone for days. EQ is huge.
 
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I read alot of people cancelling subscriptions which is probably a great start wish there was a way to maybe get a hit counter on how many people are doing that. this forum to me kinda like how reddit controlled GME stocks simply by putting in together as a lot then fluctuating the market to their advantage *cough* made alot of money on that one lol our only advantage being to cancels subscripts and maybe not buy new expans and holding fast as a team. lots of great minds in here though i think we might think of something :) keep at it guys! also i really appreciate mq as it breathed new life into the game for me i was on the verge of quitting and have always used it to help people get items or into my group swapping people and boxes in and out. ive never used it at all to grief anyone and now that they have burned my hand i will be unsubscribing as well till i hear more news.

TLDR Band together by unsubscribing and not buying expans as a community much like they did on reddit with GME stocks lol
cheers!
 
Upvote 2 Downvote
shearhack said:
TLDR Band together by unsubscribing and not buying expans as a community much like they did on reddit with GME stocks lol
cheers!
Click to expand...
You know I get it, and it makes a lot of sense to hit a corporation in the wallet; that's all they really care about (and are REQUIRED to care about legally for the shareholds). But there is definitely some irony in a situation where they seem to be saying "go away if you use xyz tools" and so the people using xyz tools say "okay bye" as their only way to fight back. Wait that's not irony that's just kind of sad.

-M
 
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mrmelkor said:
You know I get it, and it makes a lot of sense to hit a corporation in the wallet; that's all they really care about (and are REQUIRED to care about legally for the shareholds). But there is definitely some irony in a situation where they seem to be saying "go away if you use xyz tools" and so the people using xyz tools say "okay bye" as their only way to fight back. Wait that's not irony that's just kind of sad.

-M
Click to expand...
They're banking on addiction to their game meaning people won't actually say ok bye. Just go free to play, continue playing how you want without investing in it, cost them the same amount in customer support.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
runordie said:
24/7? So you're letting your accounts run while you're AFK?

People let their accounts go AFK and use MQ on truebox TLP servers and we wonder why they started suspending/banning?
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "started suspending/banning"? Suspensions and banning have always been on the table for cheaters since EQ went live. It is nothing new whatsoever. I have been suspended multiple times over the past 10 years since I started cheating with MQ. (fortunately never banned)

What seems to be "new" is the rather sustained focus on hitting cheaters with suspensions and bans lately and I dont think that has anything to do with people AFK or anything else other than change in perspective on cheating by DPG in general. :shrug:
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I didn't even actively play, just logged in to move some KR and both the accounts I logged in got suspended.

Most of my MQ use was just to automatically set my bazaar prices before I went offline, so it wasn't even actively changing prices hours or days even. This is just stupid.

I think I'm done. Covid is coming to an end and we're no longer trapped inside and there's other options to try out there instead of grinding old content.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Most people are talking about Rizlona as if it's the only boxing friendly TLP, but Ragefire--which requires subs or krono to play on--has been plugging along since May 2015, and that was without AOC for a very long time. We are currently in ROF and I, personally, am loving it, as I never went beyond GOD back in the day. We have around 3-4 raiding guilds and we generally get along well server-wide with each other. We don't do the grief play that always happens on every single new TLP at all.

So what I would like is:

1. Better detection protection
2. Leave Live, Ragefire, and Rizlona as the servers that are approved to use RG VV+CWTN plugins/Lua

I started using RG around OOW, and frankly the nav, melee, autologin, and maps were such QOL additions that I'm finding it very difficult to not play with VV now that I have had three of my seven account with their first suspensions. This year, I added CTWN class plugins and I love them. As it is, I'm only logging in as my main to raid, which is HELL since I can't see the mobs that the RL is talking about in voice chat, and I don't have NAV which was such a QOL for me.

For what it's worth, I have 7 accounts: four are lifetime, the rest are yearly subs. Two of my lifetimes I've been playing since 1999. The third since Ragefire launch in 2015. The rest came just a year or so later than that. In April 2022, three of my seven were suspended, and none of them (NONE) had been outside the guild hall for quite a while because I was busy IRL and only had time to raid with my main, and the only thing I did on them was overseer macro. One of the three that was suspended I had JUST upgraded to yearly sub from every three months sub the month before.

Anyway, make it harder for DP to detect RG VV is my number 1 request.
 
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Upvote 2 Downvote
honestly im not the most knowledgeable person to join this discussion. but from what i see there is only a few things that redguides and the community behind it can do to try to solve the issues.

1 be responsible when boxing and using any macro's or other helpful things that might not be looked upon fondly by the company. what do i mean, well 99% of the people here all ready do this. we give up camps when some one comes up even if we just got there 1 pull before and took 40 min to get out group there. we help the other players even when we get nothing out of it by spamming buffs on those we see leveling as we travel. I've soloed on fv enough to be the benefactor of this and have replicated it. - but this we all ready do, wont change much but doubling down on your strengths is always a good idea when dealing with these situations.

2 take a look at the macro's and other aids on the site that might be overly flashy. hate to say it but when you got 6+ characters in the tutorial zone all running mob to mob and killing the mobs and your just trying to get one toon through and they come up and ks you because they are on auto mode to farm or run a macro that automates the kill quest that doesn't promote good will. if the zone is dead you likely would never been seen, but when there's 15+ people in the zone and more then a few are active your just hurting the others on this forum.

3 try to keep an open line of communication with the developers of eq and hope that they can see that honestly korno's likely wouldn't sell with out mq2 and redguides. and from what i can see of korno's for sale on ectc they have to make up a real portion of their revenue. i mean who else but boxers could even need the max 25 at once that is the limit to buy for a measly 1$ off per. not to mention the boxers that buy every expansion that comes out, and lol actually sub to the game.

4 we could always just all quit for one month and give that sub/korno money to red and let them buy stock in the company and try to open their eyes? i mean it couldn't hurt.

5 one last one, the subject of eqemu has come up, I've made my own server when i quit eq the last time. and honestly while a lot of the game isn't there to the point that i want it to be. some zones need some serous scripting. there is the option of forming a group here who work not just to make mq2 able to run on the emu better, but to start a server that actually pushes to the full extent of the data that is there. i mean even with level 90 if i remember right being on the server, there are no spells or pets past 70. if dpg don't want your blood sweat or cash, why not make it where you don't need them and can still enjoy the game that you do like?

that's about all i can come up with been thinking about this since i came back a few weeks ago and honestly i just hope redguides will be here working to make the game playable that i have 21 years of memories of (yeah i started in 2001 not 1999).
 
Upvote 2 Downvote
MadaSnave said:
honestly im not the most knowledgeable person to join this discussion. but from what i see there is only a few things that redguides and the community behind it can do to try to solve the issues.

1 be responsible when boxing and using any macro's or other helpful things that might not be looked upon fondly by the company. what do i mean, well 99% of the people here all ready do this. we give up camps when some one comes up even if we just got there 1 pull before and took 40 min to get out group there. we help the other players even when we get nothing out of it by spamming buffs on those we see leveling as we travel. I've soloed on fv enough to be the benefactor of this and have replicated it. - but this we all ready do, wont change much but doubling down on your strengths is always a good idea when dealing with these situations.

2 take a look at the macro's and other aids on the site that might be overly flashy. hate to say it but when you got 6+ characters in the tutorial zone all running mob to mob and killing the mobs and your just trying to get one toon through and they come up and ks you because they are on auto mode to farm or run a macro that automates the kill quest that doesn't promote good will. if the zone is dead you likely would never been seen, but when there's 15+ people in the zone and more then a few are active your just hurting the others on this forum.

3 try to keep an open line of communication with the developers of eq and hope that they can see that honestly korno's likely wouldn't sell with out mq2 and redguides. and from what i can see of korno's for sale on ectc they have to make up a real portion of their revenue. i mean who else but boxers could even need the max 25 at once that is the limit to buy for a measly 1$ off per. not to mention the boxers that buy every expansion that comes out, and lol actually sub to the game.

4 we could always just all quit for one month and give that sub/korno money to red and let them buy stock in the company and try to open their eyes? i mean it couldn't hurt.

5 one last one, the subject of eqemu has come up, I've made my own server when i quit eq the last time. and honestly while a lot of the game isn't there to the point that i want it to be. some zones need some serous scripting. there is the option of forming a group here who work not just to make mq2 able to run on the emu better, but to start a server that actually pushes to the full extent of the data that is there. i mean even with level 90 if i remember right being on the server, there are no spells or pets past 70. if dpg don't want your blood sweat or cash, why not make it where you don't need them and can still enjoy the game that you do like?

that's about all i can come up with been thinking about this since i came back a few weeks ago and honestly i just hope redguides will be here working to make the game playable that i have 21 years of memories of (yeah i started in 2001 not 1999).
Click to expand...
1. Only logged in and never ran a macro and got suspended a 2nd time.
2. Never used anything flashy. bazaar.mac (sets bazaar prices and only ran it once before going offline) and mq2melee plugin
3. They seem to be both fixing and f'ing things up that have been working one way or another. Often taking away/nerfing classes/abilities that have existed for 20+ years.
4. I honestly doubt there are that many using MQ overall, but when it comes to boxers though, I'm guessing most are and that could be 10% of all characters being played, so this might get them back in line, but doubt it.
5. Emus have been decent and honestly EQ has been stealing idea's from them and MQ for years, the ungrateful bastards.
 
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im not saying that eq should keep stealing from eqemu, im saying that there are some talented coders on this very site that if they pulled their resources together could have a better eq server then much of what we experience on eq. Quality of life features for sure.
 
Upvote 2 Downvote
If you took the time to vote or reply, thank you. Here's the primary action suggested in every post with at least two votes:

Add detection safeguards to MQ + 149
Communicate with DPG + 101
Boycott / Stop playing altogether + 55
Stay the course / No change +49
Focus on Emu +20
Stop promoting our playstyle +20
Remove Truebox restrictions +9
Add more "anti"-features such as anti-AFK checks. + 7
Turn on safety features by default: audible alerts on say, tell, /ooc camp checks, etc. + 4
lol +2

The highest two suggestions have been heard loud and clear. I imagine an effective boycott would need organization, I'm open to it but not just yet. Staying the course has already been tried 😅. Emulator is attractive for many reasons, and work has already begun on MacroQuest for emu clients. I don't think we'll take down our youtubes or relax truebox restrictions anytime soon. I wouldn't push for anti-features without some type of assurance they'd help our cause. Some safety defaults like those hotpocket suggested will probably be in a commit soon.

Again, thank you all for the replies and for sticking with us to this point. If there are any ideas I missed, or improperly summarized, please reply!
 
Upvote 2 Downvote
Anyone who thinks talking to them at this point would matter is in denial. They have made it clear where they stand. They have no reason to talk at this point. And yes all of you should STOP posting youtube videos using MQ. No idea wth you were thinking in the first place.
 
Upvote -2 Downvote
Sifter228 said:
There is nothing gained by RG by not talking. Talking with DPG would be the best course of action. Diplomatic solutions should always be pursued.
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You're delusional if you think talking to them will change anything. You have no leverage to make them compromise there position on MQ. Years ago we had leverage they wanted to launch TLP servers MQ free so they had something to gain from it. If we're not willing to open MQ up to TLP servers we have no leverage period.

They want basically everything that makes MQ useful gone. Map, Automation, etc all of it.
 
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Request - How should we respond to suspension waves?
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