How about we get a feature thats way overdue.

[RAIST]

Third party programs are ok when it doesnt ENHANCE or give you an advantage while playing.

banning people for using stuff that HELPS the game, and not makes the game give the player an unfair advantage over gameplay

Unfortunately, you just kinda proved the point for SE. While using a 3rd party app to give you a minimap doesn't direclty alter the game, it does enhance YOUR particular gameplay and not anyone elses. By that simple definition, it alters the gameplay as a whole, no matter how insignificant the difference may be, it allows your client a feature that directly enhances YOUR gameplay, and it is something that is platform specific (only available on PC now).

But, more importantly... one of the more popular apps out there is contraband because of this:

all of the programs that I am aware of offer more than just that. For example showing all mobs (alive & dead), npcs, ???'s ect.. on the map, combined with ability to filter out the items you do not want to see does give an unfair advantage.

As for implementaion of the mini-map by SE...think it had to do with the different texture layers or something. The overlay is using "normal" D3D implementation (why 3rd party apps are able to render to it), while the game itself is rendered to off-screen texture and displayed differently and would require almost a complete rework of the engine to add it. To do it the way the 3rd party apps are doing it (rendering to the foreground layer) might expose them to more exploits or something (maybe another pos or claim hack), who knows why they won't do it... but they have their reasons.

Raist