Sieger
Trakanon Raider
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MQ2 use is a lot more common and non-controversial outside of truebox TLPs, albeit there are still people that hate that it exists. I'm not sure how many people care at all about the MQ2 inside baseball, but MQ2 has not actually been that easy to use on a Truebox server. It's been somewhat difficult to use unless you're a programmer with extensive C++ and reverse engineering experience, or a programmer who has maintained a "parallel fork" of MQ2. The tldr is, Mule went and actually met Daybreak and came back to the MQ2 developer community with the claim that he would need to create a plugin--MQ2IC that would be closed source and required to actually build MQ2. There was talk that this would "keep MQ2 off of Truebox servers and would represent an agreement with Daybreak that on all other EQ servers using this version of MQ2 was safe and approved." I don't know Mule well enough to know if he lied or if he misunderstood, or maybe he told the truth and things have just changed, but the reality is Daybreak never really viewed this as any sort of agreement. MQ2 is, always has been, always will be "hacking' the game client to edit its in-memory variables and etc, and the company views it as intrinsically illegitimate.
However with the understanding that there was an "agreement" the other developers involved in MQ2 (guys like Dannuic, Brainiac, Knightly) more or less went along with it. A big issue is Mule was doing a majorly disproportionate amount of the work on the project, including being solely responsible for every new build on patch day where he would work to get it up and running within a few hours of most patches. So way back in 2015 the other Devs could've told Mule no and gone their own way, but they ultimately kinda caved to it because of that workload issue. Over the years the other devs have asserted that Mule put more and more of MQ2's basic function calls into MQ2IC, or required a call to MQ2IC to function, this made MQ2 harder and harder for anyone who didn't have MQ2IC's source code to work on or understand the project. There is an assertion by these devs that this was a concerted effort by Mule to eliminate anyone else who really touches MQ2 code as he doesn't actually want an open source project (as Plazmic who created MQ2 originally intended and released it) because a truly open source project of this nature would be much more difficult for Mule to monetize.
So for about 5 years the typical MQ2 offering is a Mule build distributed through MMOBugs or Redguides (he does builds for both, and both include MQ2IC--MMOBugs includes a number of plugins that are called "active hacks" and people view them as more likely to get you banned.) If you run these versions of MQ2 out of the box you simply aren't playing on Truebox with them. However enterprising people (including some of the other MQ2 devs I've mentioned in this thread) reverse engineered MQ2IC years ago and could work around this no problem, none of those devs I mentioned (to my knowledge) are your typical TLP MQ2 krono farmer trash, but they were able to RE it because...theyr'e experienced at reverse engineering shit. Anyone with similar experience could reverse engineer MQ2IC and make a version of it that runs in their build of MQ2IC that lets all the other handy plugins from Redguides etc work, but without actually preventing you from using Truebox. I suspect most of the automated krono guys on truebox servers were simply using a custom reverse engineered replacement for MQ2IC as that is the "most direct" route to getting by.
The other route, and I know of like 2 people in all of EQ who were doing this (but there could be more), simply took the pre-MQ2IC versions of MQ2 (where everything was open source) and simply updated and maintained a version without it, that has worked ever since. This sounds simpler but is actually much more work than the reverse engineer step--if you go this step you're basically "your own Mule", meaning all the work he has to do every patch to get the software running again, you instead have to do yourself. By just reverse engineering IC you can basically utilize the work Mule does for you.
To my knowledge most people who had or used these "Truebox" versions of MQ2 were people who krono farm heavily or specific griefers, who have no interest and never had any interest in widely sharing it. A few people have sold these builds for hundreds of dollars, but most were kept close to the vest. So the reality is a casual person, for example a Foaming or a Yerm i.e. Rizlona players, were not going to be using these versions of MQ2 that basically require they be programmers and/or have a close friend that is one.
The difference in ease of use with MQ2 that just "works out of the box" versus one where you have to get around Mule's shenanigan is significant, as literally some of the dumbest people I've ever known are automating large groups of characters on live with out of the box Redguides MQ2, but virtually none of these people would be capable of reversing engineering an IC bypass or maintaining their own "private fork" of MQ2.
MQNext takes us back to the world of pre-2015 or so MQ2 basically, in that there's no real lock down to prevent it from running, out of the box, with all the user friendliness of Redguides MQ2, on any server (including a truebox server.) The only singular hitch is the actual compile version that Redguides is going to distribute will basically have a simple flag that disallows it to run on a truebox server. But unlike Mule's blocker that was embedded in a closed source DLL, MQNext is truly full open source, so you can literally just pull down the source from github, compile in Visual Studio (and do this every month after the Redguides team patches) and you'll be good to go. For tech novices this may sound hard, but right on the home page of MQNext on Github are step by step instructions for doing this that I can assure you virtually anyone who is able to get ShowEQ working will be able to do. This is a very major and significant simplification of using MQ2 on Truebox servers, and as awareness of it spreads throughout the community my expectation is that its use will become massive on these newer TLPs.
I sit with my popcorn to see how it all turns out.
However with the understanding that there was an "agreement" the other developers involved in MQ2 (guys like Dannuic, Brainiac, Knightly) more or less went along with it. A big issue is Mule was doing a majorly disproportionate amount of the work on the project, including being solely responsible for every new build on patch day where he would work to get it up and running within a few hours of most patches. So way back in 2015 the other Devs could've told Mule no and gone their own way, but they ultimately kinda caved to it because of that workload issue. Over the years the other devs have asserted that Mule put more and more of MQ2's basic function calls into MQ2IC, or required a call to MQ2IC to function, this made MQ2 harder and harder for anyone who didn't have MQ2IC's source code to work on or understand the project. There is an assertion by these devs that this was a concerted effort by Mule to eliminate anyone else who really touches MQ2 code as he doesn't actually want an open source project (as Plazmic who created MQ2 originally intended and released it) because a truly open source project of this nature would be much more difficult for Mule to monetize.
So for about 5 years the typical MQ2 offering is a Mule build distributed through MMOBugs or Redguides (he does builds for both, and both include MQ2IC--MMOBugs includes a number of plugins that are called "active hacks" and people view them as more likely to get you banned.) If you run these versions of MQ2 out of the box you simply aren't playing on Truebox with them. However enterprising people (including some of the other MQ2 devs I've mentioned in this thread) reverse engineered MQ2IC years ago and could work around this no problem, none of those devs I mentioned (to my knowledge) are your typical TLP MQ2 krono farmer trash, but they were able to RE it because...theyr'e experienced at reverse engineering shit. Anyone with similar experience could reverse engineer MQ2IC and make a version of it that runs in their build of MQ2IC that lets all the other handy plugins from Redguides etc work, but without actually preventing you from using Truebox. I suspect most of the automated krono guys on truebox servers were simply using a custom reverse engineered replacement for MQ2IC as that is the "most direct" route to getting by.
The other route, and I know of like 2 people in all of EQ who were doing this (but there could be more), simply took the pre-MQ2IC versions of MQ2 (where everything was open source) and simply updated and maintained a version without it, that has worked ever since. This sounds simpler but is actually much more work than the reverse engineer step--if you go this step you're basically "your own Mule", meaning all the work he has to do every patch to get the software running again, you instead have to do yourself. By just reverse engineering IC you can basically utilize the work Mule does for you.
To my knowledge most people who had or used these "Truebox" versions of MQ2 were people who krono farm heavily or specific griefers, who have no interest and never had any interest in widely sharing it. A few people have sold these builds for hundreds of dollars, but most were kept close to the vest. So the reality is a casual person, for example a Foaming or a Yerm i.e. Rizlona players, were not going to be using these versions of MQ2 that basically require they be programmers and/or have a close friend that is one.
The difference in ease of use with MQ2 that just "works out of the box" versus one where you have to get around Mule's shenanigan is significant, as literally some of the dumbest people I've ever known are automating large groups of characters on live with out of the box Redguides MQ2, but virtually none of these people would be capable of reversing engineering an IC bypass or maintaining their own "private fork" of MQ2.
MQNext takes us back to the world of pre-2015 or so MQ2 basically, in that there's no real lock down to prevent it from running, out of the box, with all the user friendliness of Redguides MQ2, on any server (including a truebox server.) The only singular hitch is the actual compile version that Redguides is going to distribute will basically have a simple flag that disallows it to run on a truebox server. But unlike Mule's blocker that was embedded in a closed source DLL, MQNext is truly full open source, so you can literally just pull down the source from github, compile in Visual Studio (and do this every month after the Redguides team patches) and you'll be good to go. For tech novices this may sound hard, but right on the home page of MQNext on Github are step by step instructions for doing this that I can assure you virtually anyone who is able to get ShowEQ working will be able to do. This is a very major and significant simplification of using MQ2 on Truebox servers, and as awareness of it spreads throughout the community my expectation is that its use will become massive on these newer TLPs.
I sit with my popcorn to see how it all turns out.
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