Posted by The Arcane on September 27, 1999 at 11:47:24:
In Reply to: Yeah I hate that crap. posted by Tat - Malner/Favaratah/Jisuah on September 27, 1999 at 11:25:31:
Just because someone has really good gear hardly means they've cheated. I think every single lowbie warrior I've ever played has been accused of cheating at one point or another. Always fun to hear "Soandso tells you 'having fun with your multichar'd eq, cheater?'" after you kill them. I used to respond and tell them where I got each and every piece of gear I was wearing, but now I just ignore them.
It's true that a character with great skills and *great* gear at low levels can be unbalancing (some may remember Athrakagar's predecessor, Thragkar--yeah, yeah, I know... cheesy, but he never got past level 17 and a few months had passed--having perfect skills and a 67 damroll at level 16... it was sort of ugly).... I know I'd blink a few times if I took a straight ***DEM from a level 16 warrior.... But there are legit ways of getting great gear:
1) Looting--the mainstay of the deperate
In my experience, a suit like the one above really isn't that suspicious. Here's what is suspicious:
When you see a lowbie (level 10 or lower) with a perfect suit of non-limited lowbie gear, almost as if custom-made... for example, a full suit of red dragon, two nightwings, a chameleon poncho, two amethyst rings, two adamantite bracers, and a jewelled broadsword. That screams "my high-lvl got together this suit for my lowbie." Of course, it's not always cheating, but more often than not, in my experience.
When you see someone get really rare gear over and over after dying at a very low level. The most frequent thing I've seen in this regard is Pwent gear. Six months ago or so I remember some dwarf warrior who was level 13 and went through about 4 full suits of Pwent in one week.... Stuff like that.
2) Killing people who looted but lack the basic skills to hold onto their gear
3) A combination of 1 & 2