Ok, I'll throw my 2cents in the mix. It is hard to draw a line the sand when it comes to cheating. In the hands of a responsable cheat these hacks could be harmless to the over-all eq experiance. Unfortunately there is no way to seperate the responsable from the abusive. I personaly would love to get my non-raid alts in gear that would make them funcitional in my group but would like to know that in 3 months the guilds are not going to dry up due to hacks allowing any mq2 player to raid by them self.
Releasing this kind of power to players will greatly increase the popularity of Mq2 again possibly bringing in the kind of people who will contribute nicely to the entire community. The downside is that it is a gamble, if it comes back and mq2 becomes to popular sony will break out the banning sticks. I'm ok with people abusing thier power getting banned. I just dont want to see sony going after the few hacks we have left over something this contavertial.
I guess one option could be puting back in the monthly timestamps on these plugins and test the waters. This would allow some impression of control.
The problem here lies in that you think you'll be responsible with the hacks. I started small, a friend invited me to tag along and get a few pieces anguish gear. I had heard of "monk hacks" but never knew there was a no delay until he sent me MQ2 and told me to /glock on to avoid lockouts. Then we only cleared anguish like twice and I got like 3 loots. I was happy with just these minor upgrades, but I dared not wear them because my guild (3rd guild on Zek at the time) might see me with the items.
So they remained bagged. I attended raids, grouped with friends, still did the normal thing. Then my hacker buddy started playing daily and I loved the daily upgrades.
And just like a kid who gets hooked on drugs, I couldn't stop myself, I put off old friends, left my guild, and distanced myself from people I would group with all the time so that I could hack with my new friends. For a long time my character was "off the radar" so to speak.
Then one day everything hit the fan as I described in that article.
So yea, my first time ND hacking I had no intentions of going as far as I did with it... but I was consumed by human nature and blinded by greed.
Or let me put it another way:
"Yes!! I got 1000 AA's and full anguish... hmmm I could probably use another 1000 AA's, so i can max out my innate dex, you know, just in case. Hrmm, and I really want a vish rod for my monk. Oooooh! look at the brumal fist from Frostcrypt... I bet I could kill that mob! Hrm, FC flagging doesnt look too bad... owow Solteris flagging looks really easy I could do that in 20 minutes with these hacks! I just want that neck from solteris... and I guess I could get some of the armor with the phosphenes... and the augs i could get rather easily from Frostcrypt would go great in them!!" and so forth
Deep down, I'm glad they banned us and nerfed No delay. I'm just happy I got the experience.
I rather enjoyed your article Naes. It's funny how notorious your guild was. Even on my server we had heard about them. =p
Yea, it's surprising how far that news made it. It's the first time something like that has happened I think, just a publically obvious no delay hacking guild running rampant for months and whatnot til Sony finally gets off their ass and breaks out the ban stick.
Seriously, I think it would be impossible to get banned for hacking if you are low key. I mean shit I probably got petitioned 100+ a day and was able to slide by for a loooooooooooooooooong ass time lol... and I was constantly harassing general chat and not really "admitting" to everything, but at the same time not really denying it... just kinda "haha theres nothing you can do about it". People lost faith in GMs and the game, I think we drove alot of people to quit and that's the only thing I'm sorry about.
edit:
VVV
@darkeros
I recently saw the thread where you were trying to sell your wiz. I at first assumed it was hacked, until you explicitly stated all the gear obtained was 100% legit. Just goes to show you how much the game was changed over no delay hacks... a year ago if someone had an item you know they worked hard or earned it or whatever (99.99% of the time). Now its hit or miss.