I am just a simple macro user. I have played Ultima Online for the last 5 years and have used every program available to that one to make money. I sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of items in UO over the last couple of years. I enjoy the income that it provided. I can tell you that the UO policy has always been, macro... but do it while in front of your computer, because if you are caught macroing unattended, you will be banned. So I used the macros to keep my hands from becoming jelly and never being able to use them for my real life work. I made some good money. It definately helped out over the last couple of years.
Now, I just started playing EQ about 3 months ago, and searched the internet for tools and utilities to use with EQ. The very first one I bought (paypal donation) was EQWindows. That, in a nutshell, is the only way to play EQ. Then I started searching around for other utilities and found this program. Macro generation, cool, this is a great utility. So I stumble around for a little while trying to figure this thing out. In the meantime, I am also checking out Xylobot. Same idea, different implementation. So anyway, I come to the conclusion that this is the utility that makes the most sense. It has good features built into and it works well.
A month or so after starting EQ (and purchasing 3 accounts from other players) and starting to really get into the game, I come to find out that 3rd party utilities like EQWindows, and Macroquest are bannable offenses. Now coming from the UO experience where they actually have an official UO sanctioned 3rd party verification system, where they authorize specific 3rd party programs for use with UO, I am thinking in my mind, "what is causing VI to be so inane. "
Then I remember a couple articles that I had read a while back on stratics.com. It was a comparison between the once CEO of Origin Richard Garriot (Lord British) and the COO of Verant Interactive (John Smedley). In the one article it described Lord British as saying how excited and mystified he was that virtual gold pieces (the only form of money in UO) were worth actual real life money. And, in fact, was worth more than the real money of many actual nations in the world at that time. He thought this was the coming of a new era. Virtual real estate, virtual money, a truly immersive virtual environment where people jockied for position as they do in real life, but this time if you fail, nobody really gets hurt.
I think he was a true visionary that literally realized that the game he created was no longer under his control, but the control of the people playing it. And he LIKED that idea.
Then there was comments made by John Smedley that led to the state of EQ today. He felt that they(VI) controlled the servers, the software, the environment and by golly they weren't about to give up those rights. So he started his legal team on shutting down all possibility of the player community from using the game to create a tie to the real world (In other words, being able to sell items for real life money.)
They succeeded on taking down the big boys, just like the music industry did with Napster, but the little guys were too quick to be snagged by the behemoth that is Sony. (Notice Sony is also in the music industry). So we have sites like Ebay.com folding to the pressure, but up pops smaller sites like playerauctions.com.
So here we are today with a company that considers it's product the complete and soul possesion of that company and you are lucky that they let you pay them to play in their playground. But what they didn't have control over was the human condition to expand beyond the confines anyone places on them. So we therefore has astute programmers who understand the way the game works, the way networking packets work, and voila, we have Macroquest and Xylobot and EQwindows, etc...
And just like in real life, people will use the tools available to do different tasks. While some like the ability to target a character or MoB anywhere on zone, or others like the /face command so that they can find that guard in front of a city and run straight to them, or others even still like it for the fact that they can earn some extra money from it. Nobody is cheating or wrong for what they do. They are just using the tool that is available. Now, VI says that any tool used in EQ is a violation of the EULA, but we are human beings for God's sake and we will find a way to do what we want to do. If we are banned by VI, we create another account. If that one is banned, we create another.
So, in the long and short of things, just like we enjoy downloading music off the internet, and companies like Sony continue to keep trying to stop it, we will continue to use 3rd party utilities in EQ and Sony will keep trying to keep us from using it. Will we lose a few battles along the way? Sure, but in the long run, companies like Sony will have to start offering the tools and utilities that people want in their games or programs like EQwindows and Macroquest will continue to flourish. And if Sony/Verant wants to keep making money in the real world, they better make sure that the virtual world they create provides for the most diverse set of players in the world.
UO started with the concept that players controlled the worlds they created, and we just need to keep hammering away until Verant has the same idea. We are not the people pods in the Matrix to be milked dry of all we have, we are paying customers that allow them to remain in business. If we use 3rd party utilities to provide that enjoyment, I say, all the better. And if we make some money off of that playing environment, I say God Bless capitalism.
Amen.
P.S. I apologize for my long post. I have been a lurker for a couple of months and that is about 2 months of pent up feelings jammed into one post.
the reason they are probably slammin u is cuz they are the ones that fuxx0red MQ in the first place.
