Regarding the Revision of the Prohibited Activities and Account Penalty Policy

[Thatusernameistaken]

Isn't that no different than saying "Ignorance of the law is not a defense"? In essence, "I didn't know what I was doing" won't fly.

You're right. But societal laws require this stipulation because societal laws, for the most part, are designed to protect human life and property, and breaking a societal law typically means you've actually damaged (or endangered the well-being of) another person or their property. So when the stakes are that high, it makes perfect sense for that stipulation to exist for societal laws. Also, societal laws are very clear and almost everything is very clearly defined and pretty much everyone knows exactly how to avoid breaking a societal law. So ignorance is no excuse.

These new rules, on the other hand, are not well defined at all and players honestly have no way of knowing whether or not they are breaking the rules because they designed to be completely subjective on a person-to-person basis. Even if you conduct yourself the exact same way every single time you are in a group, one group might view your conduct as fine, and another might view it as offensive. There is absolutely no way to know how each person you play with is going to interpret your actions. So it's actually completely reasonable and even expected that people are going to have no idea how to properly follow these rules, making the "ignorance is not an excuse" clause completely irrelevant. It's impossible to know how to follow the rule, so all you have is ignorance of the rule.

EDIT: To put this another way, the difference between societal laws and these new rules is that if I always use my turn signal when turning, I will never break that law. Ever. But if I always DPS as a healer, sometimes nobody will be offended, and sometimes they will, and I have absolutely no way of knowing who will and won't be upset by that. I have no control over whether I'm in violation of the rules or not because they aren't based on my actions. They are based on other people's INTERPRETATION of my actions.