I'm pretty amazed, sometimes.
1. Yes I'm aware third party programs don't have souls and can't contemplate existential terror, good and evil, moral relativism, etc. etc. Why this needs to be explicitly stated is beyond me.
2. The use of illegal third party programs is, by definition, illegal, isn't it? I'm not aware how arguing that something can be "benevolent" makes it okay to break the TOS or use illegal third party programs just on an individual's subjective say-so. If you think something is totally benign, petition EA to make it an approved feature. Or, break the rule and use it in secret. But don't try to rewrite the rules and say that actually you aren't doing anything wrong because you, personally, have decided that an illegal third party program you run isn't harmful to others. Try that argument if you work in electronic money transfers or when playing electronic games in a casino, see how far it gets you.
3. Yes I am sure there are a large number of third party programs which do not confer, on the player, any advantage that is not normally present in the game. However that does not "cancel out" the negative impact on the overall game community that the ones that DO provide cheats or exploits have. Nor is it an argument that we should keep the cheating and exploitive programs and view them as non-harmful because I want to keep my UO Assist or UO Macro or whatever.
4. Any program which in any way allows a player to perform actions quicker, more effectively, or in some way bends or exploits the rules or game bugs in such a way that it gives them an advantage (let's just say, as an example, something that lets you swing your weapon 2x as fast as anyone else holding the same weapon, or something that somehow tweaks with the game to make monsters drop 2x as much gold, or allows you to click an item and click an open inventory slot and dupe an item, or whatever) harms the game. It may be good for YOU. It may be good for your FRIENDS. It may make you perceive that YOUR game experience is now easier, more enjoyable and more rewarding. But any of those actions harm someone else's game, or everyone else's game. Maybe you're the best PK on the shard. Maybe you have millions upon millions of duped gold and you routinely buy out all the rares, driving the prices up for everyone else. Maybe you can duplicate rares and other desirable objects and load them onto your Luna vendor everyday in large quantities, leaving dozens of people who earned the item legitimately trying to sell it on their non-Luna house vendor for 7 weeks.
Basically, if your third party program in ANY way allows you to do something the average player could not do, without superhuman reflexes and abilities or in the in-game provided macro program, and confers any other sort of extra-regular advantage to your gameplay..... you are harming the game. No, you're not harming the code, you're not making the soul of UO bleed, and people are just tossing out scarecrows by even trying to drag the argument off into making those distinctions. But you are conferring an advantage on yourself which affects the economy, the game balance, the availability of in game resources, the cost of goods and the value of gold, for everyone else. You are the person chugging along at 85 in an area with a 45 mph speed limit everyone else is observing. Or the person who flies up a lane that says "lane closed ahead" and forces his way into the front of a long bumper to bumper line of people who were waiting their turn. That's what you're doing, either directly or indirectly.
