I'm interested to hear what Cheffe has to say.  He's been awfully quiet, but I think he's enjoying the new OpenEUO too much to take it sittin down.

No seriously, they take control of their game. I secretly applaud them for it. We know what abusive scripting can do to a shard's economy if there aren't any major gold sinks built into it. If there were a good way to prevent the worst effects I would probably implement it freely.

In fact, CEO and I have had a discussion about it with the RunUO guys a few years back but we couldn't agree on a mutual solution. As author of EUO I have to side with scripters, so I'd like to have things as liberal as possible. Shard owners like to keep things as restricted as possible if they allow EasyUO at all. I'm aware that they have found other ways of keeping their couple of shards more or less free of scripting. And so far we have grudgingly respected that decision, at least as long as it's not troubling too many of our users.

With EA, we'll have to wait and see. I think they've acknowledged that some sort of scripting is to be allowed unless they want to lose a lot of customers. I'd imagine they'll add a dynamic engine that will not only detect EasyUO (which would be trivial) but which can also look into scripts and see what they're actually doing. With that, they'll be able to dish out warnings and let people gradually know what's okay and what not. At least that's what I hope they'll do.

The problem is that a mild approach also has its cost. GMs and technical personnel are expensive. It would be much easier and cheaper to simply tighten the screws more and more. And I guess their main goal is still (and should be) to have their shards completely scripting free and 100% fair for everyone. The question is if that goal is realistic.

If they indeed choose a mild course and decide not to step on scripting too hard then I might in turn decide to let them and will take no steps against it. If not... luckily I already have a project in the pipeline that'll solve that problem (and it uses some seriously delicious technology to back up any number of claims I'd like to make). I don't know if we can take over existing scripts (e.g. exevents nor any sort of memory writing will work anymore), but I can guarantee you that you'll still get most of your scripting done.

So I wouldn't worry overmuch. Let's just wait and see what happens.
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