ShowEQ

Infobox Software2
name = ShowEQ

latest_release_version = 5.12.3
latest_release_date = April 21, 2008
operating_system = Linux
license = GPL
website = [http://www.showeq.net] |

ShowEQ, or simply "SEQ", is an open source program originally released in 1999. It allows players of the MMORPG game EverQuest to view useful information about the game which normally wouldn't be available to them. While ShowEQ can provide information about a players statistics and a list of enemies in the current game area (zone) amongst many other things, it is predominantly known for its mapping feature. The map displays a player's location, along with the locations of surrounding enemies (NPCs), items, and player characters (PCs) in the area.

History

ShowEQ was highly controversial from its introduction. Simply using the software is a clear violation of Sony Online Entertainment's (SOE's) End User License Agreement, and is an explicitly bannable offense. The program was a Linux-based program, but there was a port developed for Microsoft Windows. There have been several Windows programs that do similar things.

ShowEQ was created by Megaton as a private project that started off as a simple text interface to a packet sniffer. Megaton later joined Ashran from Hackersquest in 1999 and released the program with a graphical interface to the public. Originally Everquest had no encryption on the player packets. Because of ShowEQ and because of some of the hacks that were going on, Verant Interactive started encrypting the player packets. It was quickly broken by Ashran, Megaton and the community at Hackersquest.

Shortly after this, someone decided to port ShowEQ to Windows. The program was passive, but the process for the program was visible. Verant discovered that they could detect the windows version of ShowEQ (AKA "WinSEQ") by scanning the end user computers task manager list. There were mass bannings of people who used the "WinSEQ" version. This had an unintended side effect: the program became widely known to the EverQuest community and brought in many new ShowEQ users. Verant tried to prevent its use by rotating the client's encryption several times a week. Eventually however, Ashran and Megaton worked out an "unofficial" deal with Verant by putting an end to the "WinSEQ" program.

Ashran and Megaton moved on to other projects and left the project in the hands of its followers to continue its development, "fixing" it when Verant patched EverQuest.

In 2000, the project was revitalized by a developer known as Ratt. He moved the project to SourceForge; organized ShowEQ again; and supervised the project. The project flourished under his direction and continues to this day.

Many of ShowEQ's features were useful and made their way into the designs of other MMORPGs and even EverQuest itself. Without the development of ShowEQ, in game maps, the "find" feature, remaining time on spells and many other features may not have been seen as a priority or developed for the EverQuest client. While ShowEQ's usefulness has diminished, it still remains a valuable tool.

Encryption

SOE has used a number of encryption techniques to defeat ShowEQ, but because of the enormous bandwidth and latency demands placed on their servers, there is a point of diminishing returns with respect to strong encryption of the EverQuest protocol.

Because of this, it has been easy enough through most of ShowEQ's existence to simply crack the session key in use by the client that ShowEQ is watching in real-time.

However, for a brief period around the release of The Planes of Power expansion, SOE did go to a stronger encryption scheme (actually, stronger key selection). During this time a number of tools were written to recover the key directly from the client computer's memory and share it with ShowEQ, thus circumventing the need to crack the key in the first place.

MacroQuest

In 2002, the introduction of MacroQuest (a tool for directly controlling the EverQuest client) began to bring closer scrutiny on the community of EverQuest hacking, and SOE began making in-game changes as well as perform some high-profile user bannings.

Regardless, MacroQuest introduced a new era of EverQuest hacking with more developers getting involved in both projects.

Windows Ports

During April 2003, two developers known as Lyenu and cavemanbob decided to revisit the options of creating a windows port. The two developers each released their own programs, LEQM and MySEQ respectively. These new windows ShowEQ ports work slightly different than ShowEQ itself, by reading the EverQuest memory space instead of the EverQuest network packets. The applications were each consisted of two sub-applications, server and client. The server being the application which read the memory, and the client being the application which showed the data obtained through the server. This allowed users to view the information of separate computers.

MySEQ

MySEQ was only maintained by Cavemanbob for a short time, when another developer, MYSEQ2, picked up the reins. With this he moved the project, renamed as MySEQ2, off sourceforge/showeq.net and to its own site. Shortly after the developer, MYSEQ2, quit development on the project. Development was later resumed by two developers who attempted to make it into a commercial venture. In December 2004 another new developer, Seaxouri, began development on the original MySEQ from it abonded state on sourforge/showeq.net. He is currently the only active maintainer the project has.

LEQM/EverSight

The LEQM project was abandoned by its primary developer, Lyenu, in the first half of 2004. It was then picked up by another developer who renamed the project to EverSight. Before EverSight ever saw public light, it was again abandoned, this time to be taken over by Carpathian. Currently the project is being actively developed by Carpathian on sourceforge.

Guilds and ShowEQ

Many "raiding guilds" have been known to use ShowEQ in order to coordinate raids on high-end content. So much so, in fact, that SOE introduced a number of special features only visible to ShowEQ that taunted the guilds for making use of it (e.g. the infamous "ShowEQ Users Are Lame." message in the Plane of Hate).

Changes in usage

Initially the name ShowEQ specifically referred to this program, however, over time people have come to use the term as a general reference to any program that has the same purpose.

External links

* [http://www.showeq.net ShowEQ Website]

* [http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/seq ShowEQ on SourceForge]

* [http://www.showeq.net/forums/index.php Primary ShowEQ Forums]

* [http://www.hackersquest.org HackersQuest]

* [http://www.showeq.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=60 MySEQ on ShowEQ Forums]

* [http://eversight.sourceforge.net EverSight on SourceForge]