Exporting Zones for use in????

[Bluezone]

I know this hasn't been touched on in forever, but I thought I'd comment here again in case it sparks any interest.

Now that Half-Life 2 and some other FPS's are out, Wouldn't it be beat to have EQ themed maps? Kelethin would be such an awesome HL2 - deathmatch map :|

Previously, I had messed with some of the zones in 3Dstudio and imported random objects into Hammer.. but it would be nice to import all of the world geometry from, say, North Freeport into the HL editor.
What kinds of legalities might get in the way of that?

[RangerDown]

If you're making it just to send to a few friends, you won't run into legal issues. If you distribute it publicly, SOE has every right to take legal action, as you're creating and distributing derivative works without their consent. Whether you charge for your zone or not has no bearing on their right to take legal action against you.

Under various laws such as the DMCA, SOE may even be able to argue that since the primary goal of a zone converter is to create derivative works of their zones, then the tool itself is illegal. You are effectively asking others to risk their neck creating a tool whose primary objective is to infringe copyright.

Maybe somebody will make one for you. Will it be me? Not just no, but HELL NO!