Hello Everyone!
This newsletter may be a bit long, but it contains important information that will relate to everyone who is a current BJ Scripts customer. Please read through it carefully and if you have any questions email me at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Terms of Service Update
Effective November 1, 2015 you will be forced to read through and accept my new Terms of Service in order to continue using my services. This will be a single popup when the game is launched on IS1 and will only reappear if you decline it or changes are made to it in the future. If you are a current subscriber and no longer feel that you agree with my Terms and Conditions, you may contact me by email and I will reimburse you for any remaining time on your subscriptions.
Quest Bot Subscription Changes
On November 1, 2015 I will be merging Quest Bot: Solo Edition and Quest Bot: Heroic Edition. The new product name will simply be referred to as Quest Bot. Any remaining subscription time that you currently have will be added together (if you have a 4 week sub to both QBS and QBH, your new sub would be 8 weeks of QB). Both old editions will be removed from my store (This process started back in September with the removal of Quest Bot: Solo Edition 12-52 week subscriptions) and the new combined product will be added. These changes will be behind the scenes and you shouldn't notice anything different subscription wise. However, if you do not log in/update ISXBJ by December 1, 2015 you will be required to manually download the dll again as I will be cleaning up my user database and removing the unused columns. In addition to the merging of the two editions, the following things will be changing:
- The loop limit for everyone will be increased from 5 to 1000. This should provide virtually infinite looping (EQ2 sessions typically crash way before they hit this limit). If in the future EQ2 is more stable and people are actually reaching 1000, I can increase it further. The idea is to make this a high enough number to never be reachable.
- All zones (Overland, Contested, Solo, Advanced Solo, Heroic, and Raids) will be unlocked for use.
- The group size limit for non-heroic zones will be removed. You may bot as many characters per group anywhere you want provided that you adhere to my Terms and Conditions.
And More (My Opinion)
I joined the ISXEQ2 community during the EoF expansion and followed the typical path at the time of downloading scripts from the SVN and trying to get EQ2Bot to work for the 2 accounts I had. There was a large learning curve, but I followed the sticky at the top of the ISXGames forum that instructed me to read through every post for help before asking a question. It took a lot of reading, but eventually I felt sure enough that my question had not been answered before and I posted my questions. Most responses were polite, but also harsh. As my proficiency with using EQ2Bot and the little scripts that went with it increased, I started to notice most people followed a set of unwritten rules:
- Don't openly draw attention to yourself in game while running ISXEQ2.
- Don't afk while botting.
- Limit the length of your play sessions to something that is reasonable for most people.
Amadeus has said in the past on IRC that he dislikes full automation, and unlimited looping (Tradeskill writs were limited to 10 for a very long time and ISXEQ2 had very limited functionality on PVP servers). He has always advised that we as botters should keep a low profile to avoid detection and potential problems for the entire community.
The above rules and Amadeus' opinion were how the majority of the playerbase used ISXEQ2. They were careful to not draw attention to themselves and everything went smoothly. I set limitations on my scripts because i agree with the above way of thinking. There are people out there who will ruin everything for all of us if allowed full control of our scripts.
This past year has seen a specific addition to our ISXEQ2 community. There is a new extension available that provides very similar functionality to what ISXBJ does. This new extension was developed to use ISXOgre/OgreBot as it's combat bot, just like ISXBJ/Movement/Quest Bot was. Both full automation extensions are a collection of paid for scripts, however, before developing Quest Bot, I asked Kannkor for permission to use OgreBot as the combat bot. If I was going to be profiting from a product that built on the great foundation that OgreBot provides, I wanted to make sure I had it's creator's blessing. The people who developed the new extension did not ask for permission. Before I continue, I would like to apologize to the developers of this new extension. I posted some things on the ISXGames forum that were personal attacks against them when I was angry and I shouldn't have.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that many people have private raid scripts that they create themselves for their personal bot raids to use. They spend their time making them and are smart enough to keep them private (especially if they are able to progress into the high-end/difficult raids). My raiding style usually gets me into the mid-tier of difficulty raid encounters before I get bored or frustrated and stop raiding for the expansion. I have always been vocal about me releasing my raid code on a delayed schedule to allow non-bot raids to farm those zones before I make it easier for botters to do the same content. I don't care that some people feel that they are entitled to that raid code because they pay for my scripts. It has always been my philosophy that you get access to what I make available and certain things I will keep for myself or delay their release. Back during Chains of Eternity we received a warning from SOE that we either contained the mass botter high end raiding or face consequences as a community. We chose to delay or not release at all, high end raid encounter coding.
Some people like to throw tantrums when they don't get their way. They approach the creators of these raid scripts and ask for access to them. When the answer is no (because the we don't know them well enough), they get all upset and stomp their feet. These people believe that everything that is created should be freely shared to everyone. This new extension is the result that answer of no. It's great that they have the ability to write their own raid code to help them succeed. It isn't great that they are ignoring the warnings we gave them about what we were told and sharing it with everyone. The same goes for full afk automation with looping as well. The unwritten rules we have followed in the past were against the mass public having full afk automation with unrestricted looping.
At this point you might be asking, "But didn't you just unlock full looping anywhere with Quest Bot?". Yes, I did. Amadeus does not want to get involved with the dispute happening between the new extension and Kannkor. I feel stuck in the middle. With Amadeus not getting involved and enforcing his rules, I feel the need to change how I operate going forward. I REALLY dislike doing this, but feel that I need to in order to remain competitive. If things continue to escalate, I could see the end of us being ignored by DBG and the termination of ISXEQ2.
Looking forward to coding for Everquest 2: Terrors of Thalumbra!
bjcasey
