2 Boxing w/ Virtual Machine?

[expmonk]

Does anyone have any experience in successfully two boxing on a single PC with a virtual machine program of some sort? I've never personally experimented with VM's and was curious about how this would work for a server like Project 1999 what with their custom anticheat .dll and all.

Is it possible to have an eq client loaded in your regular windows session, using your standard internet connection, at the same time as an eq client running in a virtual machine boot that connects to the internet through a VPN?

Would it also be necessary/possible to spoof your MAC address for either of the two as well?

Any feedback would be appreciated, thank you.

 

[warking]

You can host a EQ EMU server on a VM easily enough but if you wanted to play EQ on a VM it would need to be able to support 3dVideo rendering.

You don't need a VM just to run multiple EQ Clients for live and/or project99. Just have one EQ Client Install for Live and one for P99 and launch the application once per character. I have 4 different EQ installations: Test, EMU, boxing, then just a regular live install.

Also, you can use a VPN or your normal direct internet connection. However, if your VPN changes IP addressing randomly you may have some issues keeping a good connection. In addition, many public accessible VPNs could reduce your internet connection bandwidth.

As for MAC spoofing... I can't see any reason why you would need to do that for EQ.

On a anti cheat note. I host my own EQEmu server and it's pretty easy to associate accounts/characters with cheating. There are tables in the database that have cheat alerts written to it. Changing IP addresses won't make you safe. As with anything regarding cheating there is a risk.

 

[zdozbou]

Holy tags

Reminds me of:

 

[expmonk]

Thanks for the reply warking but you misunderstood my meaning. I'm wondering if its possible to connect to a server like p99 with two separate clients running on the same PC, but with different t IP addresses and/or Mac addresses.

I've worked around the IP restriction in the past simply by running a regular session from one PC and another session from a laptop connected to a VPN to achieve a different IP.

I've heard of VM's being used to achieve this goal from a single PC but I don't know how it works.

The reason I bring up the antihack DLL is that I'm fairly certain it reports your Mac address back to the server when you connect to P99, thus why I think it would be necessary to spoof the Mac for one client.

 

[warking]

You would need to create a VM under your game PC. Can use VMWare workstation or player. They are free. Or can use Microsoft. The VPN software needs to be running and active on the VM.

It's important to understand your VPN. Many VPN software will not keep the same IP from one session to the next.

 

[devestator]

It depends on how your VM is setup. VMWare workstation can do 3d rendering and run EQ (you have to change the mouse options to game mode other wise the cursor moves your camera way to fast).

I have ran games out of it through a VPN before to do essentially what you are talking about and mask it behind another IP and such. But I've never done it for just boxing in P99. I've done it for things like botting accounts in WoW and such.

If your VM is setup so that the connection to your network is bridged and not shared, nothing outside the VM should be aware that the packet is coming from the same NIC as your desktop really. The mac address on the VM will report as the virtual mac address.

That said, P99's anti cheat checks are really past the gray area and venture into the illegal territory IMO. But, there aren't enough players on there concerned about it to actually do anything about it. Their anti cheat stuff though will actually scan your computer and running programs and things like that and report it back to the server. The types of things no other gaming company can get away with without invasion of privacy suits and the like. There are some other things that P99 stuff does, there is a post about it on these forums somewhere but I don't recall where offhand. Anyway, point being, I would not be surprised if they have that anti cheat coded to detect a VM or VPN software and to flag you for a probable cheater due to that. And if you are flagged, they don't really care about proof over there on P99, they will just straight ban you.

I've been in a situation with them on it before, I bought plat, siphoned it through other characters on different IPs. Even used a good portion of the plat as burn plat to buy items and transfer to other accounts (running on yet different IPs) to make the trail to my main character less obvious. It didn't matter, they banned all the related accounts based purely on the trades. There were even some characters that weren't mine that got banned because of it, because I just gave away some items in the EC tunnel lol. They just assumed they were right and all parties were guilty, but they had no real proof of it.

Moral of the story, if you enjoy playing on P99, it's not worth the effort to cheat there. Best case scenario is you can get away with it initially, but if they ever suspect it and decide to take action, you are hosed no matter how well your tracks are covered.

 

[expmonk]

The above two posts are exactly the information that I needed. Thank you both very much!

 

[expmonk]

Well, try as I might, I cannot get my virtual machine session to connect to the internet when I attempt to set up a bridged connection. NAT configuration works, but that of course defeats the entire purpose of using the VM as it maintains the IP and MAC address of the host PC.

 

[devestator]

Are you using VMWare Workstation? If so try setting a network adapter assigned to the bridged virtual network.

Edit -> Virtual Network Editor

Select the VMnet with Type Bridged, then set Bridged to: to the network adapter on your PC that your internet is connected to.

Sometimes if your computer has more than one NIC or other virtual adapters present, Automatic does not correctly select the correct network adapter and you have to specify it manually.

This is also assuming you don't have any other network limitations in place that would prevent this from working. For example, if you were on dial up (I really hope not), your internet probably isn't connecting through the network port and a bridged connection wont work. Or if you have a device limit if you were on something like a Mobile hotspot then it could cause issues. Lastly, your network card (as well as the drivers and router) has to support running in Promiscuous mode. I don't think I've seen a network card incapable of it in a long while, but I suppose it's possible. What Promiscuous mode does is allow the network card to receive and read all network packets in their entirety, this way it can be properly routed to the virtual machine even though the packet doesn't identify as something that should be routed to that physical network device.

 

[expmonk]

Yeah I am using VMWare Workstation 11. I have it set to bridged and manually selected my network card. The thing is, I appear to be connected to my LAN fine, I just can't seem to get out to the internet on my VM. I can successfully ping my host pc from my VM, I cannot ping anything over the internet though.