It's been posted for a month for people to grab ROF client from steam on various sites.

imho, don't waste your time trying to keep up with every patch
stop at that last version for RoF that already working, and wait till they put up next expansion. That would be logical imho.

Just they want an easy to obtain client. That is also legal to obtain.

Precisely, otherwise, how would people be able to get said client to play? They couldn't.

Then people need to pay attention and get the clients when they are released and before they get patched.
It's not like RoF was a giant surprise, but the players that do not, will not or just refuse to visit eqemu forums / server forums do not deserve to whine that they can not acquire a legal client.

But most of there driving force behind new client development is to gibe us a legally obtainable client, and I think Trev just likes doing it.

Well people should check the emu forum at least once a month.
It's not like the news posts are happening every day so people have no excuse for not being aware of the client.
The client patching people have a excuse for, no way to know if its your first time downloading it if its been patched to something newer then current emu supported version.

People "should" do alot of things. unfortnatelu they don't

one thing you learn when you develop software and systems is that the developers are the only "good" users

you really have to plan systems with bad users in mind

Or people who have not heard of EQEmu yet. How were they supposed to read a message to download the RoF client when they haven't heard of it yet?

If updates keep coming, then certain versions should be targeted at some interval ( first patch in even months, quarterly, whatever) and work on getting those fully functional , while opcodes canbe updated whenever possible for EQExtractor purposes. If people know to download latest client every two months or whatever, it would be doable. Although if updates keep coming, it might work almost as well to just off of live, pick your interval and go at it. People would need to backup clients at those intervals, which may not work out as well, but something will need to be the official plan and communicated well.

Someone needs host the Dec 2012 version on a site like oldversion.com does programs as was free I dont see why someone couldnt do that.

It is not done that way because it would violate more than a few copyright laws.

because sony would slap them with a c&d as soon as they found out.

Thats all I want to see, a communicated interval for client updates that the team will support.
However as long as the original download version from steam works I guess I can't complain.

I dont see how as it was a free to get thing they published. If that case why dont the software companies stop oldversion.com etc. And if sony cared dont you think they go after eqemulator site by now as i am sure money they got they win if wanted try. I dont think they care EQ is EOL in there eyes

Just because the software is free, doesn't mean it's legal to redistribute without a license from the copyright holder.