eula

[pooka]

The EULA has some grey area, and I'm looking for opinions regarding modifying the choice window to always accept group invites. If it's just a modification of the UI, would it still qualify as violation of the EULA? Thanks!

9. You may not use any software to modify the Software to change Game play. You may not create, facilitate, host, link to or provide any other means through which the Game may be played by others, such as through server emulators. You may not decrypt or modify any data transmitted between client and server and you may not use, post, host or distribute macros, “bots” or other programs which would allow unattended game play or which otherwise impact game play. You may not take any action which imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure. You may not buy, sell or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell or auction) any Game account, characters, items, coin or copyrighted material or any other intellectual property owned or controlled by us or our licensors without first obtaining our express written permission.

[Sir Taleisin The Seer]

I would say that it does not infringe on the EULA, The part that reads "otherwise impact gameplay" having simple windows that offer information like the mapPOI mod would be a violation. I've doubts SOE would ban over half their population for it.

~EDIT~ Also SOE offers the ability to autodecline group invites in the default UI so you could claim that as a loophole if needed.

[Krylosis]

just looking at the idea: sounds like great functionality, but though you might get a loop hole in the auto decline, the question is now: what does this do, how does it affect the game. I'm no lawyer but I would agree that something like this isn't what soe is looking for i dunno perhaps the coding is there just not used, many times there are things they put in the game that is not used till a certain time and then they activate it.

Krylosis

and this is JUST my thoughts here nothing official at all

[Drumstix42]

I do not see it as an infringement.
Only as an annoying for blind invites

[lordebon]

I don't see it as being a violation, although I don't see why you would want it unless you're multiboxing or (god forbid) multi-botting. And in the first case (since I won't even go into the second) how hard is it really to just swap on over and click accept?

Also sounds like it could get very annoying... unless perhaps it could be set up to check the name against a user-created list of auto-accepts.

[Landiin]

I don't understand your concern really. What ever you can do through UI scripting is OK.

Now if you was using a 3rd party application that monitored the games data packets and then manipulate EQ2's memory to accept then yes you would be in violation of the EULA.

[pooka]

Let's stir the pot some. I do dual-box, but that's not the point of this. It's not at all difficult for me to accept an invite and the obvious problem of spam invites makes this a bad idea.

I'm in a guild with lots of altaholics. I am often asked to log an alt to allow mentoring or provide a port somewhere or for a 45% SoW.

I am able, just by modding the UI, to auto-accept group invites, cast SoW, water-breathing, various druid rings, etc., all on demand. No outside program, no third party software required.

It's not a mod I'm going to release for public consumption. It's as much an exercise for myself as anything else.

My ultimate question is, is Landiin right? If I do it just with UI modding, is it ok?

[lordebon]

Well...

If it's done with the UI I think it's "legal" unless/until someone from SOE tells you otherwise. If you want to be sure, why not petition and ask (probably wont help) or try and get a hold of a Dev to ask?

I'm curious to know how you cast the various rings... I can see doing something on a group invite or what have you but how do you differentiate which ring to pick?

[mother9987]

There's a lot of things you can do with the tools SOE has provided. They might not all be a good idea.

I declinded modding my timer window to do a group or a raid say when the warning bell goes off. It's trivial to do, but from there it's really trivial to change it to kicking off abilities after a time delay. It was just a whole grey area I didn't want to go into.

I'd like to think that the EQ2 police would ask us to take a mod down nicely before doing anything nasty. But I think we have some responsibility to think about the things we do ourselves and whether it would be abuse or not.

Back to the original question, I don't think that crosses the line.

Oh, and I would think that with a combination of duel invite, trade invite, and group invite, you could make a decent portal bot... (which I'd think is over the line)

Just group invite = (decline) then cast ring of commonlands
Trade Invide (decline) then group invite (decline) = cast ring of antonica
Duel Invite (decline) then group invite (decline) = gfay
Trade then duel then group = butcherblock
duel then trade then group = kylong plains

Hmmm, is there another window you can open on the remote person's screen? really need 1 more bit to get all the portals Maybe trade, trade, group? and duel duel group? Then you can make sequences as long as you want...

[lordebon]

Hmm interesting. And just with three you have 2^3 = 8 combinations, which is more than you'd need for ports. But also I think you'd not want to have it accepting duels and such.... and can you store the sequence and then compare it later?

[mother9987]

Ok, you could for example use the trade invite as a '1' and the duel invite as a '0'. Have some variable that starts at 0... every time the "so and so has invited you to a duel", you just click decline, and multiply your mystery variable by 2. When it's a trade invite, you multiply by 2 and add 1.

When the group invite comes, you execute the script associated with that number and resets the counter to zero. With 6 window pops, your buff-bot could execute any of 32 scripts. And the leading duel invites aren't necessary, so your frequently executed scripts would require less - just give them lower numbers.

But the UI windows never accept the trade or duel or group - so you're not in danger of dying or getting robbed.

I should probably stop thinking along these lines... and anyhow, it'd be pretty easy for SOE to detect all those invites. I was just using it as an example of how you could go too far using nothing but the XML tools we're provided.

[pooka]

I'm on a PvP server, where no same faction duels are allowed. It's much simpler than all that and uses only one window (well two if you count altering the choice window to allow auto-accept of invites). There are virtually unlimited possibilities. The druid rings don't even require grouping. SoW does because of useabilityonrt. If you're really curious as to how I did it, PM me.

[tknarr]

My sense is that SOE's always interpreted that clause as covering character actions. So, automating UI tasks (eg. auto-looting) is acceptable. Things that control a character indirectly (eg. hydra hardware or software) is acceptable as long as there's a human player initiating the action somewhere. But once you reach the point of causing the character to take an action within the game without it's player initiating that action in some way, you're onto the side of the line SOE frowns upon. Things that don't impact other people's gameplay aren't a priority, but from talking to CS there's a concern about what happens if the automation goes haywire without someone at the keyboard to fix the problem.