BEFORE YOU USE MQ2 (Be aware of the risks)
This is all TurkReno's post, and is a brilliant writeup. If you want to use MQ, you should seriously consider reading this.
THIS IS BY NO MEANS A GUIDE TO HOW TO MQ WITHOUT THE POSSIBLITY OF BANNING YOUR ACCOUNT. THIS IS A GUIDE TO SHOW YOU WHAT TO LOOK FOR AND WHAT TO NOT DO. IF USED CORRECTLY, YOU CAN SAVE YOURSELF A HEADACHE AND A HALF.
Here's the know all, see all personal guide to what to-do and what not to-do using MQ regarding GM's. This is to help you distinguish a Guide from a GM. Guides are volunteers, players just like yourself. GM's are in one of the three SoE admin offices.
1. How do I know who a GM is?
GM's come in all shapes, forms and sizes from level 1-70. There are rankings for the volunteer Guides, which most of you hate because their stock answer is "No, we can't help" or "Please /petition the matter".
2. Ranks for Guides are as follows:
Apprentice Guide - lvl 50.
Quest or Event Characters (i.e. Riddle_Master) - 1-70 and usually /anon or /role.
Guide - lvl 50+.
Senior Guide - lvl 50+.
SWAT (Server-Wide Action Team) Guide - Typically lvl 50, sometimes +.
Elder Guide - Usually at least lvl 65+. *Elder Status is a very high status and has near GM (CSR) Powers. You usually won't see them on as they do mostly administration for the SoE Guide Program.*
2a. What does all that mean:
Well, here's how you identify them. Apprentice Guides aren't allowed to wear almost half their armor, including arms, hands, wrists and back items. Easy to spot. The next easy way to spot them is that Guides 99% of the time have a title that is bestowed upon them from the Senior after buffing.
Guide+'s, as SoE refers to them, have all of their armor on. Any and all of these people are capable of alerting a CSR of your actions on MQ. From the level of Apprentice+ for a Guide, each are required to post on the Guide website a DSR (Daily Shift Report).
2b. Interesting Facts:
- What some of you may not know is that when you contact a Guide, your Player ID is logged into this DSR. The Player ID is how CSRs can track you no matter what character you're playing at any time. Unfortunatly, MQ does not have a way of displaying this PID directly, but it would be nice if it did if you felt like really screwing with someone. Flag your account, this is how they track you, regardless of what character you're on.
- For those of you new to MQ and EQ alike, each character on the account has what is called a "Soulmark". GM's and Guides read these things and its their way of temporarily tagging you for changes to your account.
- Guides are REQUIRED to not use /anon or /hideme at any time unless directed by a Senior+ guide. This does not include quest/event characters. Most of the time when you do a /who GM all and a "GM" shows up, 9/10 times, its just a Guide.
- *GUIDES ARE POWERLESS*...but they can generally raise more hell than a regular player. They too have to /petition if they want something done most of the time. Again, this does not give you the go-ahead to act like an asshat infront of them. However, Guides are restricted to stay in most Old-World zones. At no point should anyone except a GM-Admin+ Ever EVER be in PoTimeb or an instanced zone. In addition, Guides are also subject to the level restrictions of their avatar. For instance, a Guide who is level 50 can not zone into Plane of Valor as that zone is restricted to levels 55+.
3. REAL GM's.
- Guides no longer answer the /petition queue. If you /petition it goes directly to SoE CS. If you want to bother a guide, use the /guide command, which most of you use in error when typing /guild. Usually these /guide petitions are just deleted.
- There are two types of GM's in my opinion. The ones in the US and the ones in India. All in all, the ones in India are closer to EULA Nazis than the ones in the US.
SoE Defined GMs work this way:
GM-CSR - Typically lvl 65+ and wearing the same gear as Senior+ Guides, always /anon and won't show up to the non MQ'er on /who GM. They usually will pop into a zone to hand a player an item that was lost in error or otherwise.
GM-Admin - Typically lvl 65+ and wearing full gear of the class to blend in. I've even seen GM-Admin's wearing Epic 1.5. Same rules apply to the GM-Admin except they do not become unhidden unless they are dealing with an escalated CSR issue that requires their known presence in the game.
GM-Admin Lead - Rarely on a server, same rules apply as a GM-Admin. These people are the people MQ'ers hate the most because they have almost the direct authority to do suspensions.
4. So what the hell does all that mean to me?
Well, basically, to help you identify when you need to /unload your MQ client. But, if you're already flagged as an MQ'er then you're screwed if he's there to /kick you anyway so unloading won't do you any good.
One other point that I wanted to include was that GM's, regardless if they're on the GUI side of the server or not can still watch your commands and logs sent to the server as a true Admin should. Rarely do they get this bored or gunhappy. But for safety issues, if you feel like your botting is at risk or could be at risk and know how to change what your bots response is in a channel, change it to something other than "I am ready to do thy bidding, Master".
5. Alright, so when shouldn't I use MQ?
1: When you're in a guild full of backstabbing assholes that are trigger happy to report anyone for the sake of starting in-game drama. If you think you're in one of these guilds, leave it for your own sake or stay /anon.
2:
DO NOT WARP OR ZONE THROUGH PoKnowledge or use Macros in PoKnowledge! I don't know how much I can stress this. If you do, you're a retard that doesn't belong in the MQ community. As much of a paranoid freak I may sound about this zone, and as much controversy about how there's too many people in this zone to monitor at any point of the day, its NOT TRUE. Using /zone will cause you to jump mid-air away from where you zoned, visible to other players. If it is a magus and you're chain-zoning, then you will warp to the magus, /say <location>, and be visible to other players for a short period of time.
3: (and most of you will hate me for this but its true) Complete AFK XP Macros are a RISK in any zone.
I've heard it posted and I have to agree: MQ doesn't ban you, angry players ban you. Generally you need someone to /report and /petition you for your account to have attention drawn to it, but that's not always true. The rotation went from Vxed, to Monster Missions, to LSMM's, to DLTasks. In an isolated instance, such as Vxed, The Lost Notebook or Forgotten Temple, the isolation is trackable much easier and faster for them to figure out what you're doing. Where they plan on stalking MQ'ers next, I don't know for sure. As a personal opinion, AFK XP Macros are good for VERY short term use, no longer.
4: Don't /warp to a GM or Guide. Obvious reasons. If you do, I don't think anyone here will have any sympathy for you at all.
5: Don't do anything MQ related in a group you don't know IRL or trust with every minute you've put into your account. This could be something like /sumc'ing an entire raid for your guild to get a CR done faster. If you're going to take the risk, try and be as quiet as possible and don't abuse what you can do. If in doubt, dont.
6: Players can from time to time randomly get flagged as a GM for no apparent reason. At this point, it really depends on what you want to do: Ban your account or freak people out and have a little bit of fun. Both have their consequenses. Either way, it's going to be systemwide known within TOPS of 4 hours that you're flagged as a GM. So, for those of you who ask "Is so and so a GM?", well that's not always the case. Generally these people have no idea what kinds of power they have...don't PM me asking what you can do because I'm not going to attribute to the havok that can happen.
7: If you have a surname or name that violates the EULA Naming Policy, change it ASAP. If you have a surname that violates the 1st or 2nd policy...
1. Vile, profane, rude, or racist names including common swear words, anatomical references, racial slurs, and homonyms of these words.
2. Combinations of words that produce an offensive result (e.g. Hugeaz, Tug Mcgroin).
...there will be a systemwide note if they see you with it and it will draw attention to your account. Also, having a surname such as "Thewizard" or "TheXXXX" (XXXX being whatever after 'The') will draw attention to your account as well.
8: Lets not confuse GM events with Guide events. 95% of the time, when you see something like a Halfling Highdive or a Tradeskill GM Quest, that's a Guide running it and the last thing they're paying attention to is MQ. This however is not the case when it is an Event such as the Werewolves spawning in some random zone and you start warp killing them. A GM-Admin has to trigger the zone to spawn something like that and they do stay to watch sometimes.
9: Guides have an ability to /become anything they want, but their names stay the same. By the way, if one is stupid enough to do it on accident and doesn't suddenly /zone to CSHome, he's completely attackable and usually has no more than 2k hp. His corpse would be lootable at this point. This is also just a note for the quest/events that happen.
10: If you see a serverwide emote or an MOTD Change for your server, there is a GM online. Typically the serverwide emote such as "You feel an icy breeze coming from the depths of Permafrost." is generally from a SWAT or Senior+ Guide. All of it depends, but its still a flag to keep a heads up for hidden GM's.
11: Turn off SysInfoSend. (*In-Game* Options, General Tab, push button for SysInfoSend and make sure it is OFF) A long time ago there was a lawsuit brought upon Verant and SoE in regards to the EverQuest client actively scanning users computers for information without the users consent, just like the Warden application for WoW. The system scan tends to be a little more passive, but if enabled, GM's can check your memory offsets. Primarily what they say that this is used for is when you send a /bug report in, everything about your system goes with it. I've come to learn that the SysInfoSend can also include the applications running in the background.
TURN IT OFF. If you have to /bug something, just simply decline when you submit the report.
12: Farming. In light of recent reviews of suspension and ban e-mails that SoE has been putting out, the specific wording of "usage of third-party programs to farm" has stuck out in my mind. I would really reconsider using something like hunter.mac or the like to farm anything with. Usually after asking these people what did you farm, they usually reply "I farmed something for like 4-5 hours or so and that was it". Because of this, I believe that SoE is putting MQ'ers in the same catagory as "farmers", except those of us who exploit or hack. If you're going to use something like hunter.mac, please try to find yourself some code to implement into that macro or an upcoming MQ2 plugin that stops a macro in the event that someone enters the zone, GM or not.
13: Macros. After some serious insight, this is what I believe is SoE's take on Macros is: "You abuse them, you lose." Why do you think they have a "Play Nice" policy? Sorta makes sense if you put two and two together. That doesn't mean go macro to your hearts content something that is an AFK XP Macro, but just make sure you know your surroundings. Moderation in anything is always a smart thing. And if you're not sure what the macro does, don't use it. Study your macros. Make sure they have player, tell, and GM checks.
A: AFK Macros. Verant (Now SoE), a long time ago in the time of Luclin, was sued because a parapalegic player was using MacroQuest1 to do most of the work while he was at his computer the entire time as he was suffering from loss of limbs. The player, according to what I've been told, was approached by a GM and was asked "Are you Macroing", and the player responded with "Yes, I am". The GM banned him right there on the spot. The player turned around and nailed Verant with a lawsuit that settled out of court for $500,000.00 because of his disability and their impeeding his ability to play the game. Now...not everyone here is missing all their fingers, toes, eyes, ears or brains...well most of you...But my point is this...AFK macroing techinally will be a reasonable ban. A macro that you run and control while you are at your computer, such as MQ2VIP's Autobot.mac, can't do you any harm. Look at the e-mail reasons as to why people have gotten banned:
Use of Third-Party Software to Farm
Use of Third-Party Software to Warp
Use of Third-Party Software to gain experience while away from your computer.
I digress. The farming part is speculative and very fightable. The warping part...well, you get caught on that and you're screwed. The AFK Macros are the same way. It is a risk that you must accept and once you get up from your computer, you take full responsibility upon yourself to know that you can be banned for letting it run itself.
As I've mentioned before, for the vigilant people in the community and for the complete n00bs...make sure that the macro that you run has a GM Check, a Player Radius Check, and a Tell Check in it. If it doesn't, go put it in there or ask someone how to do it and then test it out to MAKE SURE.
