Avoid RedGuides.com for EverQuest at ALL COSTS!

 If you've seen my previous posts about the topic of games to avoid, you know that I don't post very often and when I do, it's pretty serious and I have all the receipts to back it up.

To give some information into what some of these terms and things are, EverQuest is a MMO currently maintained by Darkpaw.  EverQuest is an older game and not many people still play and those who do, have to have many accounts (which is allowed) to "box" which means to use multiple applications to play different characters.

Red Guides redistributes MacroQuest.  MacroQuest makes boxing a little easier with some of the plugins that comes with it which some have different levels of TOS violations for EverQuest.   The one plugin I can't live without is the one that renames the window title to show you what character it is that is logged in.  Having 6 windows running, you can't always remember which is which when holding ALT to select the window you're needing to heal.  There are also bots and such that come with the Red Guides version of MacroQuest but MacroQuest by itself from the MacroQuest github repository isn't very cheaty at all.

Red Guides, however charges a fee to redistribute the MacroQuest software which is licensed under the GPL v3 License Agreement (this is a violation of GPL v3 to lock the program behind licensing software).  Red Guides will argue here that they give you the source code so therefor they're not violating the terms of the GPL v3, but that is not what the GPL v3 limits "freedom" to.  They can charge for the download, but they cannot charge to use it.  The litmus test for this is simple:  Can you use the software after you cancel your subscription? The answer is no and should be yes.

But it gets far worse.  I bought a plugin from Sic, who is supposed to be just a Moderator but pretty much acts like and seems to actually be the person who runs the entire show.  After I bought the plugin I pointed out to him there was a flaw in that program with how it programmatically used certain abilities inefficiently.  In essence, I provided constructive feedback so he could improve his plugin.

I later found the plugin is a rebrand of a plugin found on MMOBugs that Sic had added an interface to and rebranded as his own.  But before I go casting dispersions on that, I have no confirmation that the original author of MQ2Bot did or did not give him permission for that.

That was a mistake.  He became instantly defensive and started lobbing insults at me who began playing this game in 1999 when spell books covered the entire viewport of the 3-D rendered part of the game using nothing more than a dialup modem - in other words, I've been playing the game before he was likely a twinkling in his daddy's eye.  But, I was far nicer, but I did defend myself and pointed out the character who he said was "shit", was maxed out in AA's and in full raid gear from TOL (this was end-game at the time, he couldn't possibly get better gear or AA's, so if there was a problem with the toon keeping mana, it would be a problem with the plugin).

He then locked me out of the plugin and said he didn't want to do business with me and being I had recently bought the plugin, he then offered to refund it, I took him up on his offer and then he only wanted to refund about half claiming restocking and refunding fees.

I pointed him to PayPal's merchant agreement that specifically pointed out that the fees that PayPal doesn't refund is the liability of the seller and they are NOT supposed to remedy that through the buyer as part of the PayPal refund policy.

I then opened a PayPal dispute, politely explained that I was supposed to be refunded after 24 hours of using the plugin and I only got a partial refund.  PayPal decided I was right that I do not bear whatever fees that were imposed.

I was fully refunded and the day that happened I was entirely locked out of my Red Guides account, that included the $180 worth of Plugins I had bought and the main subscription was instantly worthless.

What was the reason?  I was sassing the mods through PayPal according to the warning which was 99999 points beyond the 30 required to perma ban someone.

I then contacted an attorney, they gruelled through their website and could only find the above terms which does not specify that the service can be cut at any time, only that content you upload can.  They began preparations for filing a notice of intent to sue, but then they hit a roadblock when they found the company was actually a fake company.  There is no valid address on record for their Secretary of State's website and the address used was a fake address.

This is highly illegal and has been reported to the Attorney General of Colorado by my law firm's sister firm that is present in that state.

Within 24 hours I then got a notice that someone using a Red Guides email tried "reporting" me to my place of business.  Little did they know, I own the company (which a valid address is listed on our Secretary of State's website) and the employees all got a good laugh out of it.

However, Sic did get a notice from my lawyer a little later, and within 48 hours that I was told it was confirmed to have been delivered, I got a slew of more warnings all described as "Dogpiling the developer", "Malicious", and "Don't sass the mods".

It's like they don't know what a legal warning is or they don't care because they know they're anonymized - but one of them made the mistake of having a LinkedIn profile and we're currently pursuing that avenue of getting a subpoena to LinkedIn so we can service the proper notices.

But it's not just me, their own "moderation log" is filled with people who complain about a plugin that Sic has created and each one is "Don't sass the mods" and "Dogpiling the developer" and each is more than 30 points to ban them.  Just in the past 30 days, I count over 20 individuals who have been Sic'ed. 

Red Guides came to me as highly recommend.  However, I was poorly advised, even the group of people who had referred me to use Red Guides have since said it was a poor recommendation on their part.  They have also since canceled their subscriptions and are now using MMOBugs.