TrapperDave wrote:I'm sorry but this does not answer much for me, a post about shards dated 2006
You asked about which shards are sanctioned, that post gives an answer.
Sanctioned ≠ supported. Support is what each respective shard admins do. The post is dated 2012, by the way.
Regarding “Cyan’s cooperation with certain people”, you could e.g. look at a
post by Chogon on the OpenUru forum. Cyan is and will be getting client updates, and ultimately Ages, from the Minkata shard. The Minkata shard, in turn, will be getting Ages (at least initially) from the Gehn shard. So the GoW does not represent Cyan, but it’s a pretty important part of the pipeline.
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Deep Island is a modification of the offline game and therefore formally against Cyan’s EULA; Cyan
have to forbid talking about it on the official forum, for the mere reason that doing that would negate their own EULA. However, the GoW always gives credits to Cyan, and Deep Island is used as a test-bed for the fan Ages, which are ultimately meant to end up in MO:ULa. So Cyan derives nothing but benefits from Deep Island.
This is not an issue with MO:UL shards, for the simple reason that the client is open source, therefore MO:UL shards are legal by default.
The UAM shard allows you to download the offline game files for free. That is
piracy, plain and simple. Playing there with a regularly bought copy of the game is irrelevant to the point.
Karkadann wrote:Unless this topic is resolved it will eventually be brought up again. I can't see it being resolved any time soon
There’s a very easy way to resolve it, and it’s
not playing there. The majority of those who play on UAM are not aware of how potentially harmful it could be and playing in good faith, I agree. But those who are in fact aware?