Sony Online Entertainment dropped the banhammer on a few unscrupulous EverQuest players this week for using MQ hacks. According to a recent post on the EverQuest forums, 17 accounts are now enjoying (not really) the sweet silence of a permanent ban and 31 others are cooling their heels in a long suspension.

Right now the bans have only impacted the progression servers, but HeadGM Kaeldread assures players that hackers on other servers will start vanishing soon as well.

We have made recent advances in our fight against the evil MQ users. Our first test run of some new information we have has resulted in the permanent banning of 17 accounts and extremely long suspensions for 31 accounts. We know this is just the frosting on the cake, but sometimes that frosting is delicious. This was just our first run, and only on two servers, we promise to keep `hacking` away at these people. For any of the non progression players who may be reading this, don’t worry. Hackers on your servers will start vanishing too, this is not something just for the progression servers.

Source: EverQuest Forums