1. What is GroupMaker?
2. Does it cost anything?
3. What's the big deal? I mean.. how am I going to save all that much time by using this?
4. How do I run this thing, there isn't an executable file!
5. Java, wtf are you using Java for?
6. Why are some of the buttons grayed out?
7. When will I be able to use these buttons?
8. How do I report a bug?
9. Is my Everquest Account secure?

GroupMaker is a utility for creating and managing groups for Everquest. It's main purpose is to assist with very large and complex grouping tactics for planer and dragon raids.

No. GroupMaker is a free utility, and it will always be free.

Well, the main thing that people will find useful about this program is the "Auto Group" feature. Basically, this will allow you to choose a template for a raid i.e. a Hate Raid Template. Then all the people you have set up to go on the raid will be filled into the groups automatically based on group parameters. The groups will be as "balanced" as possible. We will include templates for a few things to get everyone started. Eventually, though, we hope that you guys will start experimenting with your own templates and share them with others. 

Other features will include the ability to see who on your raid is linkdead, AFK, etc. (To use this type of feature, you will need another machine on your network, since you can't alt-tab in EQ). You will also be able to search according to any parameter. I.e. if a piece of rogue armor drops, you will be able to instantly get a list of all the rogues in the zone.

There are several other features that we feel will be extremely useful. We are also open to any suggestions you guys have for future releases. Just post your thoughts on the forum.

GroupMaker is a Java application. This means there isn't a .exe file. However, if you have Java installed properly, you should be able to double-click the GroupMaker.jar file and it will run the application. If double-clicking the file doesn't do anything, and you know you have Java installed, you can try running java -jar GroupMaker.jar from the command line. Make sure you are in the directory that the jar is in. If this doesn't work, we suggest installing the latest JRE (Java Runtime Environment). You can find a link for this in the downloads section. Installing the JRE is pretty self-explanatory. After you install it, double-clicking the jar should work. If you have any additional problems concerning Java, drop into our forum and we'll help you as best as we can.

A couple of reasons. Java is probably the fastest language to use (development wise) when it comes to making GUI applications. It's also one of the slowest languages out there, but that doesn't matter for this sort of application. Also, we wanted GroupMaker to be usable on different platforms. For this purpose, Java is king.

GroupMaker is going to be rolled out in stages. The reason for this is twofold. First, we just wanted to get it out the door as soon as possible so people can start taking advantage of it right away, without having to wait for every little feature to be implemented. Secondly, this allows for simpler debugging. The less things that are going on, the easier it is to find and fix any bugs that may exist. Ideally, most of the bugs for each version will be fixed before the next version is released. As new versions are released, more buttons will become available. The buttons are grayed out instead of just left out totally to give everyone an idea of what to expect in future releases.

Well, we don't really have a timetable right now. All I can say is that new features will be added as time allows. We will not sacrifice quality for speed, however. We intend to make this program as bug-free as possible and to get rid existing bugs before releasing new code.

You can either email us, or bring it up in the forum. Starting a thread in the forum is the preferred method because it lets everyone else know about the bug and gives us a chance to respond publicly about the status of that bug.

We understand the concern that some of you may have about your account security. With a growing number of scams and "fake" programs going around for EQ, the issue of security becomes more and more of a problem. For this reason, I'm going to explain some parts of the program.

If you only have one machine, then you will only be able to use GroupMaker outside of EverQuest. You can import some player lists and build groups then export to HTML.. then post this on a web page. But once you start up EQ, GroupMaker will be useless to you. So in this scenario, there's no way GroupMaker could be malicious.

If you have more than one machine on your network, GroupMaker will be slightly more useful to you. In the future, we plan to have support for status updates. That is, being able to tell when people go linkdead, and being able to search / filter the players currently in the zone. However, we aren't doing this with packet sniffing. Our process will be much less complicated. We plan on parsing your log. Yes, this will require that you have logging enabled, and it will also require that you do a "/who" to get updates. Whether or not parsing will be in real time isn't known yet.

The only way to be 100% sure of stuff like this is to have access to the source code. We don't have any plans of making the source public anytime soon, so everyone will just have to trust us a bit. We have all had respected characters on EQ at one time or another. We know how the game is, and we know that some people want to ruin the game for others. We aren't one of those groups of people.