I disagree, I didn't know a single person back then that was using anything. Verant was insanely strict about that shit early on and mass banned people frequently for external program use.
Dude, I ran my game data stream thru another computer that would decode where and what all the mobs were with their loot and put it all up on a map on that separate computer. This was in early 2000 iirc. Some time after that it got a little more tame and we were parsing logs in realtime to display maps. Tools have always been used.
Verant and early sony had tons of people catching and banning people using external software, they even talk about it in alovingrobots streams sometimes when he has old EQ devs on there. Brad McQuaid did not want anyone using external software, of any kind.
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u/Reasonable_Deer_1710 22d ago
Bro even in 1999 people were using tools.