Happy 10th Banniversary!!!

[Snprphnx]

Was a great time. All those people saying the game would die without the 1337 players carrying on the cheating. I think Minidragons response was the best. He admitted to it, as well as other things he did, like duping elemental ores from gardening, accepted it, and moved on.

[NynJa]

Second best would be the players “who would never play XI again”

Narrator: they started a new account and played XI again.

[Ophannus]

I did my share of speed hacking before I quit. Mostly just to get from point A to B more quickly, especially when running through old zones. Never really to kite solo shit unfairly, which many people I know did. Yes, you get the old "You cannot enter this area" message when zoning from one side to the other before a certain amount of time has elapsed. I'd always do it invisibly and never exceeding like 200%. I know some people would do 800% and I think they got slapped. As long as you didn't go over the speed limit a character could go naturally (Flee=200%) I think you were fine. I never got banned but I was reported at least once by a guy who caught me. Nothing ever happened--I think GMs needed to actually see it in real time, and only the STF could go through logs, but they were so few I think they didn't give a fuck about QoL tools like speed hacking as long as you weren't griefing people or printing gil. I mostly used it in town and on the field at +15-20% because I didn't feel like always having level 75 pants on when I had 119 everything else, just for movement speed.

Other QoL bots that I thought were benign were early crafting bots, which worked just like quick synthesis in FFXIV. You load your inventory up with large amounts of stackable ingredients, set your recipe, then go do something else for a while, come back to reload more ingredients or do something else. Was great for batch power leveling synthesis (like loading up on 40 stacks of Selbina Oranges and spamming Orange Juice) without having to sit on your menu every 13 seconds to enter in ingredients manually for each attempt, the bot would also drop select items when your inventory was maxed. People abused this though because newer bots came out that could interrupt the craft animation and thus rapidly attempt and complete synths without having to go through the animation (so imagine crafting every second instead of once every 15 seconds).

The other thing they didn't (or maybe couldn't ban) are the leveling bots. There were bots that people could set up algorithims for (think FF12 gambits) to control their character so they could solo merit/job points for days on end. It could summon trusts and monitor your HP/MP and set conditions for casting spells, using abilities, weapon skills, etc. People used to go all the way out to Razkanar and solo Fluturinis for days on end while leaving their PCs on 24/7 and come back to capped job points. There was never any danger of dying because the butterflies died fast and didn't aggro or link. The cool thing about this bot was it made stunning shit infinitely easier. It didn't really read packets like the other bots, it read chat logs. So you could set it up such that if it reads "X readies Y", it would react with "/ma "Stun" <bt> or something. Was great for Legion or early Umbral Marrow farming where one missed stun would cause a wipe and piss off your LS.

[Yuffy~]

Cheating is fine, the problem is when you cheat to avoid actually playing the game and then act tough about it.

This mentality is rather wide spread even to this day. The people who were kept out of endgame activity because they were shit have now replaced those people who were banned/who quit along the years and are keeping this mentality alive.

I dont think they ever tracked speed hacking, other than the “you are unable to enter this area” for zooming through a zone too fast.

Never.

The message you get isn't even part of the speed hacking policy and has been/is foreign to any and all GMs/SGMs/LGMs (and above, since they evolved now).

The way they determine speed hacking is down right stupid and they changed the policy along the years to add so much leniency (in part due to the plethora of speed+ items we got) that getting caught for speed hacking requires being actually really stupid.

[Karbuncle]

I can only tell you relating to their "Speed hack" detection that I got thrown in Jail for Fleeing between the one Al Zahbi Port to the BCNM area, or something around there.

[Yuffy~]

It happened because you missed certain packets. Before I got hired, I got jailed while sleeping when I was in my MH, not doing anything (no afk bot or anything). When I woke up, I was in jail, called a GM, got out in the minute.

When I got hired, many people would have the same issues and there was a pattern: either they speed hacked and skipped certain packets (the server couldn't sync properly) or they had a very unstable connection.

I guess it's a speed hack detection to an extent but it's strictly monitoring the packets, not the position or your actual speed (which all clearly appear in logs, which is why you can't lie your way out of it when it says speed 8000 lol).

[Sirious]

That sounds like it's what happened to me on my very first temp ban.

I sent a yahoo message to someone, and forgot to close it out. Started up the game (never had windower). She came online and messaged me back, 30 seconds later I was in GM jail for speedhacking.

[Xerlic]

I'm surprised by how level headed I was in my response on the original thread 10 years ago.

[Diablokiller]

gone but not forgotten rip wafik's mandau :'(

[S N K]

It happened because you missed certain packets. Before I got hired, I got jailed while sleeping when I was in my MH, not doing anything (no afk bot or anything). When I woke up, I was in jail, called a GM, got out in the minute.

When I got hired, many people would have the same issues and there was a pattern: either they speed hacked and skipped certain packets (the server couldn't sync properly) or they had a very unstable connection.

I guess it's a speed hack detection to an extent but it's strictly monitoring the packets, not the position or your actual speed (which all clearly appear in logs, which is why you can't lie your way out of it when it says speed 8000 lol).

Oh wow Hi Yuffy!

[atom0s]

Was in Mercury/MercuryX (Niki's shell) on Diabolos and Phoenix when we moved servers. He was a great player, enjoyed my time playing with him and the entire shell since we were highly efficient and productive. Will say though his posts are gold and made him look like a total idiot lol. Was always fun to skim the forums to see what insane things he was saying.

When the Salvage bans hit, the entire LS except like 4-5 of us were banned. Logging in the next day to see my entire shell gone was hilarious.
RIP to all my old friends' accounts lol.

I didn't get hit though since I didn't bother with Salvage.

But yea, Merc was heavily bot oriented, not that anyone didn't know it. You were expected to bot if you joined, kicked from the shell if you didn't basically as you were seen as useless/waste of a party slot for claims otherwise.

[Spicyryan]

Well, at least thanks to the botting/cheating of the past we now never really have to deal with bullshit NM time spawns ever again. The only part that still sucks to this day are the few time spawns in Abyssea when they started making ???s the defacto pops.

[S N K]

Also putting drops on World Spawn NMs like Tiamat with Rare/Ex drops helped a ton also.

[Spicyryan]

Also putting drops on World Spawn NMs like Tiamat with Rare/Ex drops helped a ton also.

They had done this with Lizzy and others. It was about time, and another common sense step. Too bad it took them a decade to gain a bit of sense.

[Yuffy~]

Oh wow Hi Yuffy!

Hello!

Seeing your name made me so nostalgic and made me want to post haha.

[Kalmado]

Also putting drops on World Spawn NMs like Tiamat with Rare/Ex drops helped a ton also.

And even tho now no one camps those NM's I still can't get a V. Belt. Seriously, I want to say at this point I'm 0/25 ish. This is 2008 Simurgh for me!

[Ophannus]

I'm surprised more people were not banned for the rampant Neo Nyzul Isle cheating. My LS members and I blitzed it really hard the first two weeks and capped our gear. Combination of turning off textures (to see through walls to find that one "Impossible to Gauge" mob and the lamps), clipping through dead ends, and running at flee speed, combined with nearly fulltime Embravas, it was a cinch. It was funny because SE originally tuned the floor 100 gear to be extremely powerful, thinking that only 1% of players would ever attain it (needed really fucking good luck on floors, voice chat, and perfect setup to do this without cheating). Too many complained so they nerfed it and also added a token exchange so legit players could achieve it. I think SE learned their lesson about gating powerful gear behind shit that required a ton of luck AND skill. I still remember how fucking good Phorcys body/Thaumas body/Nares legs were. They were OP even up to, and during some of the i119 era. Hell, do mages even have an i119 refresh leg? I quit before Ambuscade and new abjurations, so idk.

[Isiolia]

Hell, do mages even have an i119 refresh leg? I quit before Ambuscade and new abjurations, so idk.

Several options these days. Setting aside Dark Matter augments, most can use Assiduity/+1 from UNM, which are easy to get, and BLU can augment Rawhide to have it. It's also a potential augment on Lengo Pants from Sinister Reign, or a +1 from set bonus on Inyanga (though that's only WHM/BRD/SMN). Really not hard to come by in some form for any mage job.

[Fondue]

Stearc subligar gang

[Ophannus]

God it took me forever to get that augment...and then I got Nares.