Talk:ShowEQ

Macroquest

I do not believe that the entry for ShowEQ should have the reference to Macroquest in it. These programs are totally separate and have nothing in common so should be removed from the entry.

I also feel that you should point out that the developers resisted adding the features that ShowEQ had because it was not in "The Vision". The developers of Everquest felt that maps took away from the immersion in their fantasy world. There was a strong outcry from the gaming community for these changes and the developers finally recanted. -(unsigned edit by 198.143.201.112)

Macroquest is mentioned here as context for the change in relationship with Sony/Verant. If you wish to create a good Macroquest article, I could edit this page to reference it in keeping with WP:STYLE. As for the rest, I'm not sure I see your exact point, but go ahead and be bold. If others disagree, they will bring what they know to the table. -Harmil 19:23, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Macroquest had nothing to do with any kind of change with the relationship with Sony/Verant. The encryption key didn't hurt MQ at all since the key is pulled from memory. Sony/Verant just never liked ShowEQ.

Even though there was an unspoken truce for a long time, there never was peace. Sony even hired SEQ's main person who was responsible for decrypting the packets (now known as Rowl) after Ashran and Megaton moved on. Rowl then did some new encryption which broke SEQ for quite some time. Rowl had even taunted us in the old IRC channel saying that we would never break it. If my memory is correct, SEQ was broken for about a month or so, around this time that Ratt picked up the project. With some help, they got SEQ fixed.

Rowl was also involved with the session key encryption. I don't believe he was the one spearheading the decision to break ShowEQ. He visited the IRC after the new encryption when into place and taunted the people working on getting around it. It was specifically aimed at ShowEQ. It wasn't because of MQ. Sony wanted an end once and for all to ShowEQ. I believe Ratt and Sourceforge were slapped with lawsuits too before the encryption went live. Sourceforge backed Ratt and decided to fight Sony. This may have lead to Sony's decision on the encryption. I can only speculate. Their plan backfired though. It did open the door for windows versions of ShowEQ and did not stop ShowEQ. ShowEQ even got slashdotted! For some unknown reason, possibly because of the Lag they created with this encryption, Sony backed down and they changed the encryption back to an xor.

Also since the truce had been broken, Ratt also decided to release the source code of the decryption routines. Since libEQ.a could not be licensed under the GPL, it was moved out of the tree of ShowEQ. This led to the possibility of non authorized versions which could contain malicious code. The decryption routines had been released as a library as part of the original agreement with Verant to kill off the WinSEQ version. Ratt saw no reason to continue with the compiled library. (-unsigned 198.143.201.112)

Hello again. I'm not sure when you were using ShowEQ, but between 2002 and 2004 when I was hacking on it and playing EQ, there was HUGE tension between Sony and the ShowEQ folks, mediated by a Sony developer who used to work on ShowEQ before he was hired (that might have been Rowl, I don't remember the names involved). Macroquest was ALWAYS a sore point because, no matter how hard ShowEQ tried to evidence wanting to play nice with Sony, the "EQ hackers" were seen as one group (and indeed, the one other ShowEQ developer that I knew personally was one of the Macroquest developers as well).

Macroquest's use in generating plat for sale was, at the time, the number one source of friction between Sony and the ShowEQ developers. My interpretation of events at the time was that the encryption work was because of MQ, and yes, I know that didn't make any sense (which is why Sony eventually abandoned the new keygen that was slowing their servers and which their management had finally clued in made no difference to MQ which was the real threat, not SEQ). SEQ was, for most of its history, fairly benign.

I hope that makes sense. I was only hacking on ShowEQ for a short time, but I remember this particular period and my conversations (both online and off) with one of the core developers on this point quite clearly. You are right that MQ had no need to get around encryption, but it was Sony's inability to see SEQ and MQ is different tools that lead to the escalation on the encryption front.

PS: Please consider creating an account, but at least do sign your posts with -~~~~ like this: -Harmil 09:58, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I've been around since almost the begining of ShowEQ. I do remember the whole thing. Absor had posted on Graffe's board (which is no longer there or at least the thread isn't) that it was solely to break SEQ and that Macroquest wasn't a concern (at least publicly). Rowyl, sorry I had misspelled his name before, had confirmed this in the IRC too.

In fact, MQ was running the very next day if not the same day the encryption was changed to 64 bit session key. There were no other programs that relied on breaking the encryption other than SEQ. Magelo, MQ, Xylobot all pulled the key from the clients memory. You could have a 512 bit key and it still wouldn't have mattered. I don't see how Sony could have thought that this would have stopped MQ. They aren't that dumb and I know Rowyl surely isn't and he was/is the lead developer for Everquest.

I believe MQ was also sued (or threatened) and I believe that there was an agreement made by them to remove the ability to combine tradeskill stuff. Since I am not associated with the creators of MQ, I can only say what I have heard.

There has been much more hatred for ShowEQ than for MQ. I am not sure why, but there is. MQ is much easier to detect (the program uses memory hooks to change information and is thus very detectable if they chose to look for it) than SEQ ever was or will ever be. Sony has yet to do anything about MQ other than ban stupid people who are using it wrong. Even with the their message boards full of requests to do something about it, they haven't. -Mike Roprocessor

So what the hell does it do?

Throughout entire article, it does not state what ShowEQ does. What's the point of this article?161.253.40.203 21:54, 3 December 2006 (UTC)