So, someone can get
banned for using an out-of-game
clock??
Wow. That seems kind of silly, heavy handed, and over-bearing. Heck, that was one of the first mods to World of Warcraft before Blizzard added an in-game clock and calendar. Quite handy when you can set an alarm for X mins, say 5 or 15, and play for a quick moment.
If I use my iPhone to manually set a 15-min timer every time I enter a new instance is that bannable too??
IMO the better solution would be for the client to display the "Instance Timer" on the top left ALONG with an option to show the Current Real-Time like most other MMOs do One of the primary reasons WOW became so popular was that (almost) anyone could provide legal mods. Blizzard was able to take the best ideas and incorporate them into the native client after they had been hashed out. Gamers will happily extend the UI if you give them a chance! They just need some clear and _sensible_ rules for what is and is not allowed. A blatant "no to everything" means you WILL miss out on some great ideas / gems.
Now, on the other hands I could easily see how a 3rd party tool reading the client.exe's memory (such as XP/hour) is definitely an unfair advantage. That is, and should be a strict no-no.
Some official clarification between throwing the baby out with the bath water, over reacting over trivia display information and intrusive memory probing would be greatly appreciated.
There is a reason why player-created mods spawned _new_ games such as: Counter-Strike, CTF, Team Fotress, Tower Defense, etc. One just needs to take a look at all the mods for Minecraft to see clever and creative new gameplay.
Pity that PoE is not interested in making the game more player friendly. ;-(
