Something that shouldn't affect most people, is another program I have written up is something similar to FairFight.
http://www.gameblocks.com/FairFight is Server side statistics of what the players are doing, and it doesn't scan your PC for files or memory or anything.
It keeps statistics on your game play, and knows what is normal behavior or not.
One extreme example of using FairFight on a shooter game is that its's highly unlikely that if either player is strafing, that they would be able to perfectly aim their weapon/crosshair dead center of their opponents head locked on AKA aimbot. Or constantly shooting people through walls that your not suppose to see through. Or traveling X distance in Y time that would be impossible without speed run hacks.
Anyways, back to what I'm doing here, is I wrote up a program similar to that for EZ Server, and was immediately successful at catching a few people afk botting in several zones. My program will not auto suspend or ban you. What it does is give me a list of people with the statistics recorded, into the format like you would view Leader Boards popup window along with output to chat window. Trust me, these are not Leader Boards you wish to be on. And its not limited to just top 10 flagged players. The most obvious afk botters that were botting without a doubt have been suspended already for 1 week (next offense is perma ban). There are other people on the list flagged as possible botting, with statistics to back it up, that I'll be keeping my eye on. There are very few false positives, and I know what a false positive would look like. I personally botted a Mage on WoW up to level 60 before getting bored and quitting. I even tested some scripts on EQ live back in the days for farming, but never really used them for any gains, was just curious on possibilities. I know what bot like behavior looks like.
EQEmu already has written into the source code something similar to catch people using MQ2, and using stuff like speed run hacks based on distanced X you traveled over Y time, flags you with date, time, location for possible speed hack. It can even be adjusted to allow how much X distance over Y time so people don't get false positive flags. Of course if you get flagged once, might be false positive with laggy server, but if you get flagged 400x per day, it gets obvious. Some of you may have already seen the messages you get for traveling too fast, and yes this means a record was made in the database as possible speed hacker.
I'm also keeping eye out for other abuses and exploits that I won't mention, but did want to mention the botting one. I am pleased to find out that the majority of players are not botting. I can understand that if people bot in their own instance and don't hurt anyone, then what does it matter. Well, if they are farming up tens of millions of platinum easily, and flooding the market with certain items, it affects the prices and economy, then normal non-cheating players have to compete with that when I balance things.
Even if I'm not available for a few days or week, my program will still be watching, and I'll be checking who's on those leader boards when I get back. I'm purposely not saying how the program works or what statistics are being recorded, otherwise people would try to find ways to cheat without getting detected.
You are allowed to use /stick to follow the leader of the group, and your allowed to use it on a mob AFTER your already within melee range of a mob. You are allowed to script a few Bard songs that will cycle through like melody or whatever that was. You are NOT allowed to have the program automatically attack, heal, or search/goto new mob without you having to press a key. You must be at the keyboard, and playing manually. People have been already suspended or banned for spam hailing their pet for buffs, or spam /say to enter guild instance that didn't exist, and were obvious bot with owner afk. Do don't do that stuff either.
Just waking up here, hope that made sense. I know I probably wrote too much. Will revise my post as needed if any confusions. As much as I would like to enjoy the success of my program catching people that don't know they can get caught, I'd rather people not get flagged so I wouldn't have to take time to see what they are up to and ban them. Instead I'd rather use my time to play games myself, or make more content for EZ Server.
