Showeq = safe

[Smog]

Well, I know everyone has said time and time again that showeq is safe. But I just wanted to add my experiance to the pile.

I was in South Karana a while back and someone had gotton bugged and couldn't log back in. Their friend petitioned and a Guid showed up. Well, the guide brought another guide because he was a guide in training. They couldn't fix it so they brought a GM. The GM tried a few things and then called a "higher level" GM or something.

Mean while I was running around killing every mob in the zone to try and get Quillmane to pop. I decided that even if it did pop I couldn't run strait to it anyway for fear of the GMs so I decided to check out the GMs.

I ran over and chit chatted with them for an hour or so untill they got the problem fixed.

The moral of the story is: I was standing 5 feet away from 2 GMs and 2 Guides for over an hour and they had no clue that I was using ShowEq. I later realized that I had run strait to the GMs (I only knew their loc because of SEQ) and that didnt even tip em' off!

To tell you the truth, the program doesnt give you the huge advantage that people think it does. It just removes some of the more anoying parts of everquest. (getting lost, losing your body, runing right into a level 60 mob... etc.)

[raalee]

Attention:

There is absolutely no way for soe to tell if you are reading packets off the wire.

[RSB]

To be honest the GMs would have to be watching for suspicious behaivor first. If they are trying to fix something I don't think they'd be monitoring for this behaivor.

How you could get caught is something like.
Constantly killing rare wandering mobs with others in zone hunting the same thing (and not being a tracker)
The other people in the zone /petition ing about your behaivor.
GM investigating and obsurving your unusual behaivor.

That or just Shouting the zone "I'm Camping Quill and I'm using ShowEQ so stay away"

RSB

[Alwayslost]

Maybe Mr Suspicious is rubbing off on me, or maybe I'm just naturally paranoid. But I adopted the following practices:

1) When possible, I'm grouped with a tracker while hunting mobs and I never Bee-Line to the mob.

**This is where my paranoia comes in**
2) I NEVER, EVER, EVER use terms that can be associated to SEQ (seq, showEQ, Filters, CVS, etc.) If talking with another SEQ user I brake up the word with spaces, like "fil Ter"

It really isn't that hard for The Man to set up a machine that ONLY scans conversations and throws up flags on key words... Then tosses that flag onto the account that used it. Then, *IF* an EQCS is -already- investigating you for some reason, they see the flag and pay a little more attention to your behaviors.


Just my .02

[casey]

2) I NEVER, EVER, EVER use terms that can be associated to SEQ (seq, showEQ, Filters, CVS, etc.) If talking with another SEQ user I brake up the word with spaces, like "fil Ter"

if you are afraid to say CVS because of showeq, you might want to also take another look at using words like "computer" and "software". CVS is not an uncommon thing, nor something that anyone but the paranoid-never-used-CVS-only-uses-linux-for-showeq types are going to get a red light over.

[Mr Guy]

I follow the same beliefs on paranoia. You aren't paranoid if they really are out to get you.

I'd add 3) Never ever ever take credit for doing something amazing. Repeat after me:
"Cool! I didn't even SEE him there, I got aroed."

"Wow! I had no idea that was a PH! I was just clearing the area!"

"Man how did you do that? What? I pulled him? I thought you pulled him! lol"

(When en route directly to your group across the zone) "What's your loc again?" (repeat, turning slightly each time)

[Alwayslost]

I never saw CVS before I started playing with Linux... Ok, I'm a noob. Regardless of my noobish paranoia on anything that can be associated with ShowEQ, even CVS which is COMPLETELY alien to 95%+ of the EQ players -could- be a trigger to a flag.

Remember I did not suggest that triggering the flag was an automitic attention getter ensuring immediate GM focus... I have zero grounds for that assumption. All I said was it would be easy for them to set up a flag system based on words you type in chat. I merely suggested that this was EASILY accomplished and something that I myself would have set up long ago were I in their shoes.

Because 95%(+) of the EQ players have no idea what grep is, anyone that make any reference to Unix or Linux is potentially suspect in the eyes of VI. So yes, I will still refrain from using CVS, Linux, or any other word -I- associate with ShowEQ.


LOL, Deny Deny Deny...


Yesterday as I was running through a zone someone was asking for help locating a corpse, I got the name of the corpse and told him, "Look in the area of nX,pX"

A few minutes later he tells me how did you do that? I said "You got lucky, I had just run by it and was guessing as to the location... how close was I?"

[RSB]

Many people have not heard of Grep & CVS because they are not IT Geeks. But many of us are. 8)
I'd spit the dummy if I got banned from EQ because I was talking about a source control program.

True they can monitor what you say but I have a feeling they only turn that feature on for people/groups under investigation. Think about how much spam there is out there by people talking
/auc /shout /tell /gsay /gu now channels - thats a fair bit of data to collect of very little benifit.

[Dedpoet]

I used to run and code for a text based mud back in the day (remember those?!), and although it's obviously different, EQ has its roots there. They already parse everything you say on channels through their "talk" code which contains, just off the top of my head, the swear word filter. So they take every text line, do a string compare to a list of swear words, replace those words with other characters, then pass the changed string to the clients(at least that's how a mud would do it...I'm no MMPORPG coder).

It would be ridiculously easy to also string compare for words like "seq", "showeq", "sourceforge", etc. and direct them to a file and it wouldn't add much overhead.

I agree with RSB and casey though, that words like "grep" and "CVS" are not incriminating, but I think we all know better than to say "seq" or "showeq." The guy I normally duo with also runs seq and we will say things like, "Is mob X up?" or, "pull the level 35 one." Nothing more specific than that. I was actually grouped with a guy once that was talking about percent experience, like he had 94% of his level...gee, I wonder if he's a user.

[EQDoze]

The badword filter is in the client...

If you use ShowEQ for channels, you'd see this.

[Dedpoet]

That's what I get for speaking on something I didn't look into. I deserved it!

[RSB]

I talk formulas in game all the time. One time a mage friend was wondering why he was getting 1/2 the xp as normal. Thinking that when I joined him we'd easily beat the pet's dmg (which we were) I looked at my numbers did some calculations ask him to take some SS and send them to me and he was getting the xp we'd expect for 2 people. Turns out that soloing with his pet he was getting in more dmg then the pet but was doing less than 1/2 the total dmg to the mob. Turns out mobs where doing more dmg on the DS then the pet was doing to them. Thus we've figured out that the pets DS does not apply in the calculation on how much dmg the pet does. So on very fast hitting mobs the pets DS out dmg the pet and the mage gets full xp 8). If they went to change this it would effect PL alot as right now if you DS someone and they do no dmg to a mob (all dmg being done by the DS) then the mob poofs and no xp is gain.

I'm not that paranoid

[JackOfAll]

Anyone who's used SEQ (GM's have the equivalent) can see right through it if you're not careful. For instance, I zoned into Kurn's tower right after I got SEQ working to see if the Jester was up. (thought I was being sneaky) What do I see...a 52 SK sitting in a corner. A minute later, one of the special mobs spawns and the SK makes a beeline for it halfway across the zone. Anyone who's been in Kurns knows it's a maze of rooms and hallways and it would be impossible to locate a mob unless you just ran across it. The SK did this a few times and I was tempted to send him a tell...then again he could be a spy

The best thing to do if you see a rare spawn is check and see if anyone else will get it first and if not, then take your time and make it look like you randomly bumped into it.

[cbreaker]

I really don't think it's anything to worry about, SEQ.

They can't tell if you are sniffing packets. It's a passive activity.

You would have to be real dumb to "get caught" using it. Even if you run straight for mobs, tell your groups what is camped in the zone or not without a camp check, and say what level a mob is, all this information could have been had from elsewhere.

No GM is going to kick you off, because they won't know. And I really believe that the percentage of people that use it is low.

It's not like Xylobot, where you can get afk exp.

[showeqnewb]

I dont care if it is flagged or not. I never use anything associated to SEQ. If I am talking to someone about SEQ, I am on my SEQ machine on AIM. Linux = Netscape = AIM