I’m going to have to disagree strongly here. I am going to quote Raph here.
First, what is cheating? Really with a solid definition it make debating a point much easier. I looked up on various SOE support, Blizzard website and got something similar to this from both to this defection.
A computer application, password, or disallowed technique used to advance to a higher skill level in a computer video game.
Strategy guides, and quest walkthrews do not violate what these companies consider cheating. Theres no rules against strategy guides, or website with quest walkthrew. And most of these companies encourage them. And hence reading a quest walkthrew or a strategy guide is not cheating as it dose not meet the requirement of the definition.
NOW a different company or person might have a different definition of what cheating is. And Raph does have a different definition.
Any info you get that isn’t presented to you by the game in normal gameplay sequence is not supposed to be available to you.
So Raph may consider me a cheatwe all he wants. But that does not change the fact that in Everquest 2 or World of warcraft i am not a cheater to the players or to Blizzard Because i am following and rules and i am not doing anything they consider cheating.
RTM specificity BREAKS the rules on ALL SOE servers (minus station exchange) and ALL blizzard servers. Breaking the rules to advance your character is Cheating.
So cheating in the end is dependent on the rules of the server/game.
So i am NOT a cheater in eq2 for looking up quest info because it is not against the rules, and it is encouraged by SoE them selfs.
Someone who buy a level 70 charater and then buy 100 plat in Eq2 IS a cheater, because it is against the rules