Is WTFast against ToS?

[Ninix]

There are a whole lot of misinformed or just flat out incorrect statements being thrown about in this thread.

The only things we can say for certain are the following.

1. Tunneling services such as Battleping, WTFast, et al. are not seen as ToS violations. You can argue all you like over whether or not these "modify" game data (they don't, of course, only the route the data takes), but Community Rep Hvinire has flat out said they are not breaking the rules. You do of course use them at your own risk since SE cannot endorse them, but you will not be banned for using them.
   
   
2. Parsers are against the ToS. This is not up for debate. They are third-party applications that read data from FFXIV's memory space and that give players who use them an advantage (primarily in the form of boss alerts, timers, overlay widgets and so on). Square Enix has even specifically called out "parsers" as a type of third-party application that is not allowed.
   
   
3. Square Enix is not currently checking for or banning users of parsers. There is nothing in the game client looking for parsers, or bots for that matter. Bans are done completely through player reports and server-side heuristics. Since it's impossible for said heuristics to detect the presence of a parser (because it does not directly alter the behavior of your character), the only way you can be banned for using a parser is by basically admitting in-game that you are using one, and then being reported. In other words, you will only be banned for using a parser if you are being an asshole about someone's DPS and they decide to report you.

Square Enix, of course, may change this at any time by implementing client-side automated cheat detection. If they choose to do this (which is unlikely, most games seem to be forgoing client-side cheat detection in favor of server-side detection because it's a never-ending battle that developers cannot win), it is up to them to decide whether or not to ban users of parsers. Good business sense would probably dictate that they don't do this because a very large portion of the endgame raiding playerbase uses parsers at least occasionally and are not harming the game in any way by doing so, and losing their business would be silly.