Something for those who claim EA and other gaming companies can't prevent cheating

[Dot_Warner]

So do you still play? If you do then where is your integrity?

Yes I still play. My integrity is fully in tact since I don't encourage cheating, nor do I brook Mesanna's bull. When she says something asinine I'm more than happy to call her on it. Nor do I sit silently when players come on here and make lame excuses, false equivalencies or outright encourage more cheating with their twisty illogic.

 

[Dot_Warner]

And they are supposed to know that I'm multiboxing, how? Multiboxing doesn't inject anything in to the clients being used, so it can't be tracked other than by IP, so if I'm at my house & me, my girlfriend, my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister, and my entire family are on UO at a single EM event, we couldn't be allowed drops?

Visually detecting multiboxers is dead simple. All the characters are same template and are usually equipped near identically. They move as one entity, generally on the same single tile. They cast/attack as one entity on the same target at the same time. They're also most likely cross healing via script. A decent analogy is they look like a player with "mousetrails" turned on.

Noticing them, especially at EM events, as I've stated before, is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS.

 

[Herp!]

Nor do I sit silently when players come on here and make lame excuses, false equivalencies or outright encourage more cheating with their twisty illogic.

I've not seen any lame excuses, false equivalencies, or outright encouragement of cheating... I also only see logic, not illogic. Please point out an illogical statement, I believe your idea of logic may be skewed.

Visually detecting multiboxers is dead simple. All the characters are same template and are usually equipped near identically. They move as one entity, generally on the same single tile. They cast/attack as one entity on the same target at the same time. They're also most likely cross healing via script. A decent analogy is they look like a player with "mousetrails" turned on.

Noticing them, especially at EM events, as I've stated before, is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS.

I understand how easy it is to spot em... but there is no way for UO to prove anything, nor do they have a reason to bother banning the person for 'No reason given.' For instance, I knew a guy who ran 25 elemental shaman in WoW all through multiboxing programs. He would run around world pvp ganking and such because he could and he found it fun. He had 387 flags on his account at the last point we spoke, the GMs used to enjoy watching him play, he was never banned a single time. He was thanked by Blizzard for his extreme fandom with every collector's edition. Do I need to keep going about how it's not cheating? I can keep giving more examples. I've multiboxed in the past and a lot of people I've known have or still do mutlibox.

 

[Dot_Warner]

It's not insane,
On one hand you have a Tos that says all programs other than these are illegal and you can be banned simply for using them irregardless of what you do with them, but nothing ever happens and if you can respond to a gm literally nothing happens. And Gm's ONLY show up if a player pages.

On the other hand you have F2P developers who just say that macroing is okay within reason, but that there are anti scripting counter measures in place to protect the economy of the game, and gm's have tools to see the duration of clients logged into the game and tracks things like resources,runics,quests, etc for them to see. And they police the servers irregardless if a player pages.

One of these is insane, and it's not the freeservers. Your stance on it is exactly what freeservers stance is too. Not trying to advertise freeservers here, but what the majority of players want as far as policing goes is already done by people who aren't paid with a subscription model.

*Note, I'm not saying this is how all freeservers work, but this is usually how the more successful ones are done.

If a free server polices their players like that, then BS should be taking notes.

I'm not against what many of the free servers have done, as a scary number of them have managed to do things to the world and clients that OSI/EA/Mythic/Bioware/BS have claimed was impossible. Some of the free shards seriously put UO, even at its best-staffed heyday to absolute shame.

Buuuut...I'm not willing to say that because some of them allow cheating that real UO should as well. And when I say cheating, I'm not talking about some guy bashing an arctic ogre lord in his house to gain skills or repetitively crafting X item because its boring - especially if its attended. I'm talking about the script kiddies out 23.5/7 strip mining/logging, scripting PvP because they want epeen cred, or the multiboxers trying to dramatically up their chances at making millions.

 

[Boba]

Awww... I broke the civility of the thread again. Seriously, explain to me how it's cheating? How does it give a person any unfair advantage(because if you're cheating you get one of these) at all? I can solo anything right now on a sampire or a dragoon or really anything if I've got the patience.... Why would it be cheating if I just opened 9 more accounts and started soloing these things a bit faster? It's the same as if I were to join a guild and run things, but instead of having to rely on other people, I just have myself.... I'd still have to make 9 more sets of gear, 9 more sets of weapons, etc etc... What about that is cheating?

WOW, are you serious? The mental gymnastics necessary for you to come to this conclusion... Please don't have children. Our world is already filled with enough idiot's as is.

 

[Boba]

I've not seen any lame excuses, false equivalencies, or outright encouragement of cheating... I also only see logic, not illogic. Please point out an illogical statement, I believe your idea of logic may be skewed.


I understand how easy it is to spot em... but there is no way for UO to prove anything, nor do they have a reason to bother banning the person for 'No reason given.' For instance, I knew a guy who ran 25 elemental shaman in WoW all through multiboxing programs. He would run around world pvp ganking and such because he could and he found it fun. He had 387 flags on his account at the last point we spoke, the GMs used to enjoy watching him play, he was never banned a single time. He was thanked by Blizzard for his extreme fandom with every collector's edition. Do I need to keep going about how it's not cheating? I can keep giving more examples. I've multiboxed in the past and a lot of people I've known have or still do mutlibox.

Your logic is ridiculously flawed.

 

[Dot_Warner]

I've not seen any lame excuses, false equivalencies, or outright encouragement of cheating... I also only see logic, not illogic. Please point out an illogical statement, I believe your idea of logic may be skewed.

While I don't feel like rereading the entire thread to respond to you, I will cherry pick a particular quote...

It's not cheating to multibox, it gives no unfair advantage

This is demonstrably untrue and you know it.

I understand how easy it is to spot em... but there is no way for UO to prove anything, nor do they have a reason to bother banning the person for 'No reason given.'

UO can, at any time, ban anyone for absolutely NO REASON. They aren't required to have one.

From the ToS regarding termination:

Either you or Electronic Arts may terminate your Account at any time without further obligation to the other. Further, Electronic Arts reserves the rights to terminate the Service at any time without further obligation to you. IF THE SERVICE OR YOUR ACCOUNT IS TERMINATED OR CANCELED AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON, YOU AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING: (1) YOU WILL NOT BE ENTITLED TO ANY REFUND OR PRORATION OF ANY FEES OR UNUSED ACCESS TIME; (2) YOU WILL NOT HAVE ACCESS TO ANY CHARACTERS DEVELOPED OR ITEMS ACCUMULATED AND YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO TRANSFER, SELL OR ASSIGN ANY CHARACTERS OR ITEMS TO ANYONE ELSE; (3) YOU MAY NOT ACCESS THE SERVICE IN ANY MANNER OR FOR ANY REASON, INCLUDING VIA ANY OTHER ACCOUNT. IN THE EVENT THAT AN ACCOUNT IS TERMINATED, Electronic Arts MAY TERMINATE ANY AND ALL OTHER ACCOUNTS THAT SHARE THE MEMBER NAME, PHONE NUMBER, EMAIL ADDRESS, INTERNET PROTOCOL ADDRESS OR CREDIT CARD NUMBER WITH THE TERMINATED ACCOUNT.

Enforcement of the rules is really the main issue here.

For instance, I knew a guy who ran 25 elemental shaman in WoW all through multiboxing programs. He would run around world pvp ganking and such because he could and he found it fun. He had 387 flags on his account at the last point we spoke, the GMs used to enjoy watching him play, he was never banned a single time. He was thanked by Blizzard for his extreme fandom with every collector's edition. Do I need to keep going about how it's not cheating? I can keep giving more examples. I've multiboxed in the past and a lot of people I've known have or still do mutlibox.

Personal anecdotes from other games aren't relevant. Your making excuses for cheating and that's it. Morally bankrupt it is.

 

[MalagAste]

I'll say it again. It doesn't give any advantage you cannot take for yourself under the ToS. It is not cheating because it is not unfair in any way.

The average auditory reaction time of a human is 170 milliseconds. It is 100% possible. It takes practice, but it is possible to refine that reaction time down a bit. In reality though, there is also the fact that it's a game, over the internet... so everyone hitting a button within .17s of each other will appear as all hits at once once the server handles all the data. I can keep going about it all day.... It's no different from being with a group of folks. Multiboxing isn't cheating at all, it's just a different way of playing than some people prefer or see as 'right'

Like hell it isn't unfair... No ..... I take ONE character to an EM Event... Like most "normal" players... I do NOT CHEAT using multiple computer and multiple clients acting as one. And if I have to resort to this kind of crap just to play this game and be able to compete with this level of (*&*$*$(&$&$(*&$ from other players then by gods I would rather UO was shut down permanently... and if you feel that this isn't cheating than you sir..... are a fool.

 

[MalagAste]

WOW, are you serious? The mental gymnastics necessary for you to come to this conclusion... Please don't have children. Our world is already filled with enough idiot's as is.

OMG thank you! Thank you for saying what I been pussyfooting around... OMG it hurts...

 

[Herp!]

@MalagAste Competition or no, it's not cheating. You can all assume otherwise but, the ToS clearly doesn't say anything about multiboxing being illegal.

@Dot_Warner I am aware that UO can ban anyone at any time for no reason, I was more stating that they do not have a reason to do so... Why ban the hand that feeds you for taking advantage of the ToS?

@Boba Please don't have kids, it's not good for the environment. I have a degree, I have 3 Journeymanned trade licenses with 2 on the way to Mastership, my kids would be smarter than 90% of the people in this thread by age 8... I choose not to have them because I don't want to bring new life to a world that is already overpopulated & dying. I also like how you say idiot's(possessive) instead of idiots(plural) when calling someone else dumb... Great job bud.

0 mental gymnastics involved at all, you're all just blind as ****.

 

[MalagAste]

@MalagAste Competition or no, it's not cheating. You can all assume otherwise but, the ToS clearly doesn't say anything about multiboxing being illegal.

@Dot_Warner I am aware that UO can ban anyone at any time for no reason, I was more stating that they do not have a reason to do so... Why ban the hand that feeds you for taking advantage of the ToS?

@Boba Please don't have kids, it's not good for the environment. I have a degree, I have 3 Journeymanned trade licenses with 2 on the way to Mastership, my kids would be smarter than 90% of the people in this thread by age 8... I choose not to have them because I don't want to bring new life to a world that is already overpopulated & dying. I also like how you say idiot's(possessive) instead of idiots(plural) when calling someone else dumb... Great job bud.

0 mental gymnastics involved at all, you're all just blind as ****.

Yet you can't see how multi-boxing not only is unfair to other players but it's ILLEGAL??? *drops metaphoric mic*

 

[Captn Norrington]

(Puts on moderator hat)

This thread is starting to go down the personal attack road, please refrain from using personal attacks like the whose kids would be smarter thing, the thread was doing great before there were any insults and attacks like that in it.

Thanks.

 

[Herp!]

Yet you can't see how multi-boxing not only is unfair to other players but it's ILLEGAL??? *drops metaphoric mic*

It's not illegal, I went over that previously... multiple times and in multiple ways. The ToS states NOTHING about using a VM or multiboxing to play the game on multiple accounts at once.

You see it as unfair that they multibox. I do not. Both arguments are completely valid on this subject.

I cannot say that it is illegal to multibox. I am speaking from experience in multiple games with the exact same ToS statements that have been quoted. I also cannot say that it would EVER be viable for any game to ban someone who pays for 2-10+ accounts monthly unless that person is paying with counterfeit/illegal funds or breaking ToS(which multi boxing does not do).

 

[Tjalle]

There will always be people grasping for straws when defending cheating. Using smoke and mirrors and whatnot.

Why Stratics keep giving the cheaters and the pro-cheating posters a voice is beyond me.
Nothing good for the game can ever come from that...

 

[Tjalle]

There are currently to many players using third party programs. Banning all of them would shut down UO. Period.

That is just fearmongering. You don´t know that.
And I would love for the devs to actually test that theory.

 

[Herp!]

I'm not promoting or condoning cheating... I'm explaining that it's not against ToS to multibox. No need for smoke and mirrors or anything.. just reading text and explaining how it reads legally. Whether multiboxing is unfair or not, is up for argument.... but it's definitely not against ToS or a bannable offense.

 

[King Greg]

Buuuut...I'm not willing to say that because some of them allow cheating that real UO should as well. And when I say cheating, I'm not talking about some guy bashing an arctic ogre lord in his house to gain skills or repetitively crafting X item because its boring - especially if its attended. I'm talking about the script kiddies out 23.5/7 strip mining/logging, scripting PvP because they want epeen cred, or the multiboxers trying to dramatically up their chances at making millions.

Not some of them. All of them. You literally need programs deemed illegal just to log into a freeserver. These programs have all the same capability of other scripts, so it's hard to say "hey come play my server, but no you can't use that thing you literally just used to log in with". Well, not sure on multi-client side, but at least for single client, it's capable of the same things.

They know players will Macro and acknowledge it. That's the first step OSI needs to take. Then they need to figure out where to draw the lines. Everyones view of where the lines should fall will be different, but it has to be somewhere between BAN THEM ALL and Only ban them if they can't type "Hi"

With multiboxing, It's a whole other bag of worms.

 

[King Greg]

That is just fearmongering. You don´t know that.
And I would love for the devs to actually test that theory.

They don't have to test that theory. They can literally go. Oh if we shut down everyone who uses programs against the tos, we will lose XX% of our subscription revenue. Refer to the spreadsheet, punkbuster, whatever it takes to win, mesannas cracks about how few players there are that aren't flagged for 3rd party programs, etc etc etc.

 

[MalagAste]

They don't have to test that theory. They can literally go. Oh if we shut down everyone who uses programs against the tos, we will lose XX% of our subscription revenue. Refer to the spreadsheet, punkbuster, whatever it takes to win, mesannas cracks about how few players there are that aren't flagged for 3rd party programs, etc etc etc.

My guess is that it tells an awful lot about the people she hangs around with in-game... as many of the people I hang around with do NOT use any of them. Just saying...

 

[MalagAste]

I'm not promoting or condoning cheating... I'm explaining that it's not against ToS to multibox. No need for smoke and mirrors or anything.. just reading text and explaining how it reads legally. Whether multiboxing is unfair or not, is up for argument.... but it's definitely not against ToS or a bannable offense.

Your argument is basically everyone is able to do it.... well everyone can build a pipe bomb... does that mean we should??? Just because it can be done does NOT make it right.

 

[Herp!]

Your argument is basically everyone is able to do it.... well everyone can build a pipe bomb... does that mean we should??? Just because it can be done does NOT make it right.

Whoa, whoa... I never said anything about it being RIGHT. I said it wasn't illegal.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Git gud? I really can't say anything else... I've played in the same room as up to 25 people and we were all capable of doing everything within milliseconds of each other on command. The instance given was 8 v 3: In order for them to kill all 3 enemies at once, they'd have to have split damage ahead of time, set up a countdown, and would have been perfectly capable of just shooting all at once, allowing many shots to hit multiple targets within milliseconds. It's completely possible.

 

[Dot_Warner]

I said it wasn't illegal.

And that is still just your opinion.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Yes I still play. My integrity is fully in tact since I don't encourage cheating, nor do I brook Mesanna's bull. When she says something asinine I'm more than happy to call her on it. Nor do I sit silently when players come on here and make lame excuses, false equivalencies or outright encourage more cheating with their twisty illogic.

Sorry to say that your integrity is about the same as most UO players in the fact that we may not cheat but we do support a game that allows cheating by paying our subs.

 

[Dot_Warner]

Sorry to say that your integrity is about the same as most UO players in the fact that we may not cheat but we do support a game that allows cheating by paying our subs.

True...and I'm not denying it

But that doesn't mean I'm going to be quiet about it when I feel BS is...well...spouting bs.

It's kind of like how I loathe EA as a corporate entity (pronounced: evil), but I still play games distributed by them when they strike my fancy. UO... Sims... Mass Effect...

 

[Herp!]

And that is still just your opinion.

No... this is a fact...

 

[Lord Frodo]

I'm not promoting or condoning cheating...

Multiboxing is controlling more than 1 account at the same time to do the exact same thing. Is that a fair and basic description of what the multibox program can do? Here is the ToS that that program breaks

Use or distribute unauthorized software programs or tools, such as "auto" software programs, "macro" software programs, "cheat utility" software program or applications, exploits, cheats, or any other game hacking, altering or cheating software or tool.

You yourself can not control more than one account without using an auto program to do it so yes it is ILLEGAL to do so. There is no spin what so ever you can say that will prove to anybody here that multiboxing is legal so please stop or maybe in your mind/universe it is ok but in the real world it is not.

 

[Dot_Warner]

No... this is a fact...

Alternative facts will be the bane of the 21st Century. Thanks, Conway.

 

[King Greg]

You yourself can not control more than one account without using an auto program to do it so yes it is ILLEGAL to do so. There is no spin what so ever you can say that will prove to anybody here that multiboxing is legal so please stop or maybe in your mind/universe it is ok but in the real world it is not

You can control more than 1 character at a time. without the use of any software programs. That's what Herp has been saying this whole time. His wow reference is to a guy who controls a **** ton of dudes with nothing but his keyboard and some equipment that hooks it up to computers.

 

[Herp!]

Multiboxing is controlling more than 1 account at the same time to do the exact same thing. Is that a fair and basic description of what the multibox program can do? Here is the ToS that that program breaks
You yourself can not control more than one account without using an auto program to do it so yes it is ILLEGAL to do so. There is no spin what so ever you can say that will prove to anybody here that multiboxing is legal so please stop or maybe in your mind/universe it is ok but in the real world it is not.

It's not an autoprogram in any way, whether you are running a multiboxing program/service or just a bunch of VMs(exactly what the service does). You can simply force your keyboard/mouse to output to all windows/VMs... Not illegal.

 

[MalagAste]

It is an autoprogram as you are not directing each and every individual account you are only directing ONE action for all.... therefore all of them are on autopilot... whether you use software or hardware to achieve it.

 

[King Greg]

It is an autoprogram as you are not directing each and every individual account you are only directing ONE action for all.... therefore all of them are on autopilot... whether you use software or hardware to achieve it.

What herp is talking about is different from what we are used to and think of with multiboxing. This is literally the characters only perform actions in game when you push a button commanding them to do so. Without the use of any software that actually plugs into the game.

 

[MalagAste]

What herp is talking about is different from what we are used to and think of with multiboxing. This is literally the characters only perform actions in game when you push a button commanding them to do so. Without the use of any software that actually plugs into the game.

reading 101... fail.

 

[Lord Frodo]

You can control more than 1 character at a time. without the use of any software programs. That's what Herp has been saying this whole time. His wow reference is to a guy who controls a **** ton of dudes with nothing but his keyboard and some equipment that hooks it up to computers.

You can not make more than 1 accounts IE 2 or more accounts do the EXACT same thing at the same time with out using some sort of AUTO PROGRAM.

 

[Lord Frodo]

It's not an autoprogram in any way, whether you are running a multiboxing program/service or just a bunch of VMs(exactly what the service does). You can simply force your keyboard/mouse to output to all windows/VMs... Not illegal.

BULL You are using some sort of app/program to do this so please stop trying to BS us.

 

[Great DC]

Funny part is the oversight of the main reason people multibox PVM. @Herp! The faster people can do things with the multiple extra drop chances leads to much more gold in sales of the items. This in turn leads to that player making mass amounts of gold per month. Then these players take that pile of gold and buy game time codes. Which in turn means they are playing all ten accounts for free and are not adding any value to the game whatsoever. There is no good reason behind using a multibox program other then to destroy the game its used in period. Even if they still paid for their accounts they would be the cause of too much influx in the games economy, which only benefits them due to theyre gold hoarding while using such program. There is literally no grey area, people should be permabanned for it.

 

[Finley Grant]

Funny part is the oversight of the main reason people multibox PVM. @Herp! The faster people can do things with the multiple extra drop chances leads to much more gold in sales of the items. This in turn leads to that player making mass amounts of gold per month. Then these players take that pile of gold and buy game time codes. Which in turn means they are playing all ten accounts for free and are not adding any value to the game whatsoever. There is no good reason behind using a multibox program other then to destroy the game its used in period. Even if they still paid for their accounts they would be the cause of too much influx in the games economy, which only benefits them due to theyre gold hoarding while using such program. There is literally no grey area, people should be permabanned for it.

Thats BS. Someone has to buy the Codes in the First Place with Cash.

I cannot believe that so many people are so delusional when they really think the devs will start to ban Accounts in a Moment when the game needs each Dollar to justify in Front Of EA Not to Shut it down.

The Producer Herself gave some Kind of rule/advice in the M&G. WE can like it or Not but this is fact.

So if you are so offened by those people I suggest you Look for a game which do Not Provide this possibility.

You can Post and discuss this Back and forth here as Long as you like but you could spend your time better.

I cant hear it anymore that people accuse the devs to be completely donkeys and that they "cannot" do anything. I think the cannot do Not mean cannot in Terms of skill but cannot in Terms of WE ****ING need the Cash to keep the lights on.

Furthermore its funny that some really say "Oh I have it rather get closed down as Long as the multiboxer are banned".

Yeah you are the donkeys as NO ONE of you would put your own Job in danger to Not get poor/homeless instead of making a compromise which will save your Job if you would be in that very Situation.

Iam surprised that all of people who are complaining since this M&G still Play when the world is so Bad. No one force you to... But no one got the Balls and stand his Ground and actually leave because he or sehe cannot accepted thd devs call.

I already apologize that I used drastic words or if my English is Not very good.

There are a Lot of ways to Deal with a Situation but Using the Red pencil and Banning people who May pay 20 Accounts is Not a good one.

Edith: and before someone ask, yes I have actually ideas to improve Situation but it makes no Sense to Repeat myself. If the devs are interested they can contact me. Or not

 

[Capt. Lucky]

I really think the game is at the stage where unless your duping mass gold I highly doubt anyone would get banned. Just be happy everyday the server comes back up.

 

[petemage]

What herp is talking about is different from what we are used to and think of with multiboxing. This is literally the characters only perform actions in game when you push a button commanding them to do so. Without the use of any software that actually plugs into the game.

It's still ********. You might use this to cast a couple of spells while standing still. As soon as you start moving your army of toons, lag and client/server syncronisation will let them drift apart and you *need* some logic to keep the client synchronized (e.g. all toons standing on the same spot and the like). You can't run 10+ toons as we see it in today's UO by just blindly sending commands to the clients. Total BS

 

[Dimi]

I work in a studio, which develops web-browsed online games.
We have close to 100,000 users, who log in and play on a daily basis. The game is free to play with microtransactions. We are in business for 12 years already. We have cheaters, scripters, bot-selling sites, everything you could possibly imagine.
We have a team of 60 people, who are responsible for developing the game. Half of them are top-notch, highly professional programmers, hackers and testers. The other half are artists and Commnunity Managers. As you can see we are quite a team. And we are responsible for supporting just ONE game. If all you say is true about how big BS is, we are 10 times bigger. And we still cannot deal with all the cheaters. As soon as you figure out how the script is working and you apply a hotfix, on the next day you have a modified script and you have to think new hotfix. The noisiest part of our community was making a huge fuss about it. Our bosses were quite upset at the start, because cheating was a big deal. Then they decided to take a different approach. They ordered the dev team to make statistics, so they can get the big picture:

1. How many players are actually cheating?
2. How many players are making the fuss?
3. What do the players actually want in game as priotiry? Fixes? Anti-cheating measures? New content?

The results were:

1. Less than 1% of the daily active players are cheating.
2. Lest than 1% of the community is actually making fuss about it.
3. 75% of the players want new content as a priority (3 months of in-game polls).

Then the bosses were like: Excuse me? And we are budgeting half of our man-hours to fighting scripters and applying hotfixes? Everyone is on new content as of tomorrow!
And the daily active users actually started to grow... So, the bosses told us: "See? We are correct again. The numbers are rising, money is more. Trust us on this."

This is the typical way of making business, when your business is online gaming - you read the statistics and then, based on these statistics, you prioritize your team's working hours.
Now, apply the same logic for BS and you will understand the truth. Yes, UO has cheaters. But they don't bother the large % of the players in it. They only bother small fraction of the playerbase - those, who log into Stratics. Not more than 100 people, at most, for example.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Archnight]

The results were:

1. Less than 1% of the daily active players are cheating.
2. Lest than 1% of the community is actually making fuss about it.
3. 75% of the players want new content as a priority (3 months of in-game polls).

Very interesting info there, i'm sure UO might have a bit higher numbers for 1 & 2 being almost 20 years old however you pretty much nailed it! I feel the same way and that concentrating too many resources on cheating will actually kill the game in the end

 

[Smoot]

We have close to 100,000 users, who log in and play on a daily basis. The game is free to play with microtransactions. We are in business for 12 years already. We have

the difference is you have 100,000 users. in UO, there are single digit players that are "problem cases". Everyone with half a brain knows how to identify these players. a single GM could go thru and manually deal with the situation. It wouldnt require any "resources" at all more than we have.

The other option would be to remove GMs entirely, since they do so little now, or stop paying them and have it volunteer only. or pay them in game-time or UO.store items (other games do this)

In the end Mesanna has chosen to not require that very low amount of work from the GMs (not sure what they are paid for, they do very little these days, it should be volunteer position now)

 

[Merus]

IMO, the "all or nothing" approach is just an excuse/distraction.

The truth of the matter is this: the appearance of enforcement will reduce the need for enforcement.

Let's take multiboxing for example:
Action 1: Mesanna publicly states (on the UO website and the splash screen for logging in) that they consider multiboxing a violation of the TOS and to be detrimental to the game. That accounts found to be multiboxing will have all pack drops suspended for a period of 7-30 days depending on the severity of the incident (more accounts or more infractions = longer suspension).
Action 2: Train GMs to truly understand what multiboxing is, what it looks like, and how it differs from multiclienting. Review the current months EM event schedule and staff a dedicated GM to monitor the events. GMs would use screen capture to record suspected multiboxers and the pertaining account info, which would then be sent to the Dev team for review and account action.
Action 3: Dev team reviews the evidence and issues account action... then posts the videos on UO website for all to see what they were doing and inform the players that action was taken.

Result: multiboxing becomes less profitable without the need to ban accounts, even though some accounts might get closed or sold by those directly affected. Multiboxing also becomes much more risky to those who do it, but didn't get caught (yet). Fewer people are willing to take the risk, and the drop in those who multibox at events drops by more than the number of people who had action on thier account. If you were to repeat this process for 3 months, I would wager that virtually all of the multiboxing at EM events would disappear. It simply wouldn't be worth the risk. Surely people would still bring multiple characters to events... but they would need to be controlled independently.

 

[Tina Small]

Official statement was made back in April 2011: [UO Herald] Official Response to Multiboxing.

 

[Smoot]

The problem is that you have a group of only about 10 people who make the vast majority of content in UO not worth doing.

why would i do doom if i know that the vast majority of the items will have price driven way down by multiboxers in the next week?
Id actually do doom if i had to do it to get a Scholar's Halo. but you can just buy one from multiboxer for 150m

Same with EM events. they are such a joke now that basically no collectors keep those items, we all sell them for pennies just to save up to buy the more desireable items. I used to never skip an EM event. now its really not even a reason to log in.

So it ruins game content. Something you just dont have in other games because the most desireable items cant be traded or sold. this is why its particulary bad for UO, and maybe not so bad for other games.

When theres no reason to do new game content, whats the point of making it at all? Please dont say for "the experience". we all know that just isnt the driving factor in why most people play. they play games to get the gear / items.

 

[GarthGrey]

I'm not promoting or condoning cheating... I'm explaining that it's not against ToS to multibox. No need for smoke and mirrors or anything.. just reading text and explaining how it reads legally. Whether multiboxing is unfair or not, is up for argument.... but it's definitely not against ToS or a bannable offense.

Dude stop already, multiboxing, imo, is a term for multiple accounts all controlled by the same SCRIPT..we're not talking about multiple instances of UO running, it's more than that and you know it, so please ..stop already. It's as old and tired as the people who say they're not scripting, they're using UO Assist, when we all know what UOA can and can't do.

 

[Merus]

Official statement was made back in April 2011: [UO Herald] Official Response to Multiboxing.

And after 6 years I have never seen, or even heard of, any action against a single one. Enforcement MUST follow the statement, and IMO needs to be publicly visible (think the old burns houses) for the "rule" to have any impact.

 

[PaulCH]

The results were:

1. Less than 1% of the daily active players are cheating.
2. Lest than 1% of the community is actually making fuss about it.
3. 75% of the players want new content as a priority (3 months of in-game polls).

Your insight is very interesting but it's not about the amount of people that are cheating but rather their impact on the game. *If* it's having an impact on the game then it's not relevant how many people are complaining about it because it could be affecting them without them knowing it.

My personal priority for UO would be for the them to stop cheating, fix bugs, existing systems & content (prioritizing it based on the impact on the game) and then provide new content but I think that I'm in the minority. I agree with you that most people want new content but would their priorities change if they knew the impact of cheating on them?

I'm not sure it's relevant if Multiboxing is legal or not but rather if it should be. My questions are how serious is the impact on both PVP and PVM? Is the game balanced for multiboxing? IMO, there is no question that AFK scripted multiboxing is bad for the game.

 

[Lord Frodo]

the difference is you have 100,000 users. in UO, there are single digit players that are "problem cases". Everyone with half a brain knows how to identify these players. a single GM could go thru and manually deal with the situation. It wouldnt require any "resources" at all more than we have.

The other option would be to remove GMs entirely, since they do so little now, or stop paying them and have it volunteer only. or pay them in game-time or UO.store items (other games do this)

In the end Mesanna has chosen to not require that very low amount of work from the GMs (not sure what they are paid for, they do very little these days, it should be volunteer position now)

Are you trying to tell us that you think that there are 9 or less players causing all the cheating, ok whatever. Mesanna had an impromptu meet with some players and I think it was %60 of the people there had used some sort of cheat program and that included her also. So where are you getting this 9 or less players?

 

[Lord Frodo]

Official statement was made back in April 2011: [UO Herald] Official Response to Multiboxing.

And then the most recent statement is
Mesanna: yes if you are fighting
Mesanna: in game and running multi characters
Mesanna: I told everyone that we can't really do much about multiboxing (because we will lose to much money if we do)
Mesanna: but you better be in game if you run it
Mesanna: so
Mesanna: I warned everyone
Mesanna: its already 20 seconds by the time the GM appears and speaks