The issue nobody wants to address

[Ryel]

fair enough. however players with bad attitudes do use parsers to grief other players. that is the argument that SE is using. not that the parser itself is a bad thing.

That's a common misconception actually, SE's stance has absolutely nothing to do with parsers potentially being used for harassment and everything to do with SE being a software company that doesn't want to condone the use of third party tools due to liability issues.

GE: Recently, there has been noise from players about parsers, mods and third-party applications being used with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and about people getting warned, suspended or even banned by GMs for using such applications. There was also mention of a plug-in API for the game. We were wondering what the policy was, your stance on it, and how you were approaching these issues. Some players are a bit worried and don’t want to get banned.

Yoshida: This is a very difficult question to answer. We are first and foremost a software company, and as a software company we cannot really approve of anyone modifying our product in any way. We would prefer it if everyone played within the original design of the software, otherwise we can’t really guarantee the quality of the product itself. Officially, the policy is that any additions or modification to the game are against the rules and privacy policy and when playing our game, everyone has to have gone through the steps to agree to the Terms and Conditions when you sign up.

However, I too am a hardcore PC gamer so I understand that there are a lot of plug-ins and add-ons available to many games. So as a PC gamer, all I can really say is “Please, don’t get caught.” If you are going to use add-ons and plug-ins please be discrete about it. Don’t go around telling your friends you mod the game on chat, or ask a GM if using such an add-on is ok. We can’t really go around and check if add-ons and plug-ins will work with our game and debug it, and check that it doesn’t break anything – its too much. Really what it comes down to is I can’t really say “Yes” to these things, and players have to realize that by using an application that accesses game files that they are the ones that are assuming the risk of viruses and possibly compromising their account.

And as you probably know, Final Fantasy XI had a particularly strict policy on this kind of thing, so there are quite a few players out there who moved from XI to XIV who definitely view any kind of add-on to the game as bad. So please, just be discrete if you will be using tools or add-ons.

Source:http://gamerescape.com/2014/02/12/ps...naoki-yoshida/

This whole "Think of the community!!!!!" argument is nothing but scare tactics, fear mongering and misinformation about a subject that we don't need to talk about in hypotheticals because tools like parsers have been around for as long as MMO's have (well over a decade) and we already know there are little to no issues with allowing players to use them.

EDIT: Poster on the previous page beat me to the same thing.