1. Developing a client would not be illegal, as long as none of Sony's names, models, etc were used at all.. which is in effect creating a completely new game, and therefore has nothing to do with EQ...
2. The devs COULD catch up with live right now and yes that would open the doors to several new people... HOWEVER... if they decided to catch up with live every 6 months, 5 months from now, there'd be people complaining that it's been 5 months, etc. Unless they match up to live every single patch, on the night of the patch, then there will ALWAYS be some people left out. FNW and company are doing their best right now to balance the maintaining of a live compatible version with fixing all the bugs that exist in the current version. They chased live for a very long time, and have now entered into a phase during which they hope to fix a lot of the bugs... once the bugs are to a point that they are comfortable, I hope and believe they will start chasing live agian.
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