Well, according to John Smedley Verant has decided NOT to snoop our systems so I will be able to play again.

Thanks to a lot of very concerned, mature, and very well-spoken players the 1984 of EverQuest was stopped.

Quoted text from John's Post:

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Ok. We put the poll in, and with roughly 15,000 people participating the poll came up with 83% of the people being fine with us running the check for cheating.
DESPITE THIS POLL we have decided that it's the wrong thing to do. Enough people have convinced us that it's chipping away a little too much at people's privacy EVEN if they do consent for us to implement this policy.

Therefore, the change to the EULA will read as follows:

Solely for the purpose of patching and updating the Game, you hereby grant us permission to (i) upload Game file information from the Everquest directory and (ii) download Game files to you.

Now, before anyone wonders exactly what this is, let me explain. Technically speaking we probably should have had this language in there from day one for you to consent us to even download new game files to you in the first place. We apologize for not realizing that we should have gotten this consent, but live and learn.

We can admit when we make mistakes, and I believe this is a case where we owe an apology to our Playerbase. In our haste to try and thwart people from damaging the game we went overboard.

There will be absolutely no scanning of anyones computer for any reason other than the normal patching process (which won't do any sort of checking on what you have running).

Regards,

John Smedley
President and CEO
Verant Interactive, Inc.

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Hurray for right to Privacy being upheld!

Lyrnia Jongleur, Bard of Norrath

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