[Ibix]

As someone who has a good deal of perspective on this, since I recently (admittedly) broke this rule out of ignorance, I feel qualified to contribute to this conversation. Here is how it went; feel free to just think I'm a newb or say that I deserved it, but remember that you likely have been involved in this project much longer than the newbs (such as myself) have been.

I was tired of all the endless patches, the grind of EQ... I wanted to play a classic server, or just ... something different... but none of the other games did it for me like the original EQ. So, I find this project called EQEmulator that seems VERY shady just because, SURELY it's illegal to emulate Sony's servers and bypass their subscription processes. I search the forums, read the Acceptable Use policy for Sony, and realize that these guys might actually be on to something; but it still seems too good to be true. I find out that I'm out of sync with the most recent working version which means I cannot currently play, which is sad. I'm FULLY aware that I cannot mention or ask for a back-patcher or anything else that I should clearly know is warez.

I post, asking if there is any way to get up and going right now with EQEmu (a somewhat common question) and I was basically told I'd have to wait by most people (though no one mentioned that I could download the version checker, install my unpatched fresh copy off of my cds, run the checker, and then see if there's an older EQEmu version that would run with it). This would have been fine, and the end of everything, but people respond both in the thread, and through pm's, telling me of certain things I could do to play. There was never mentioned a 'back-patcher' by that name, and none of the people seemed worried that their suggestion would be construed as being warez, so I thought "Great!". I see a post by Mattmeck saying no talking about back-patchers or warez, which the rules already clearly stated... but none of those messages I had seen had been denoted as being illegal references to warez or back-patchers... so I figured I had a legal solution. The next person who asked the same sort of question I had asked, I tried to be helpful and mentioned one the 'solutions' that had been mentioned to me. Next thing I know, I'm banned.

I felt it might be helpful to mention the nature, though not the name, of the illegal solutions out there, so that people would understand that just because someone doesn't say "Hey, here's a backpatcher, use it and you can play" doesn't mean that whatever solution they give you is not illegal.

Basically, it may need to be said something like:

If you do not already have an EverQuest installation that has been legally patched by Sony's patcher, up to but not beyond the date (09/13 in this case) of the most recent version that EQEmulator has caught up to, or your own backup copy of such a version, then any means by which you can modify, patch, or overwrite any of your client files in order to be able to play on any EQEmu-based server is in direct violation of the rules against backpatching and warez.

I may be an idiot such that I would need it spelled out like that, but I honestly read the rules, had NO intent of breaking them, and merely did not realize that what I was doing WAS in violation of the rules.

Sorry for the trouble, and hopefully this will clear it up for someone else out there before they get themself in trouble.

Ibix