Missing Skins?

[letTHEgamesBEGIN]

What happened to the Skin section on this website? I loved it! I am looking for the Loot GFX mod's or at least the author or an alternative site to download them... This would include the set recolors and the other Loot GFX changers... thank you in advance. My AIM sn is "TJL0", my email is "TJL0@yahoo.com You can respond to either of those or reply here. Thank you!!!

[SkunkWerks]

Blizz has a provision in the Terms of Service that says you aren't allowed to use their product (WoW) if you alter any of their files.

This is one of the reasons Addons are external, user-created files that reside in a seperate directory and are read by the game from that directory. Such files only affect the client machine.

And although any skinning mod you're apt to download functions in exactly the same way (and due entirely to provisions Blizzard themselves coded into the game), some posts on the Blizz official forums have led a lot of more impressionable or perhaps easily confused folks folks to somehow believe that skinning breaks the ToS, and thus isn't allowed.

Since then a whole mess of modders sites (this one included) have stopped offering hosting for such mods on the grounds that they do not wish to see members banned for using skinning mods. A well-meaning, if ill-informed measure.

In any case, I've still yet to see a single case of a single person being banned for using skinning mods and I am therefore inclined to believe this is a lot of nonsense, a misunderstanding that got turned into a myth by way of the telephone game.

Whatever the truth of the matter is (and it's hard to say given how "well-informed" people seem to be rather confused themselves), as Walter Cronkite was apt to say: that's the way it is.

[letTHEgamesBEGIN]

That's why I am still going to use it if I can find the name of the mod and some place where it is hosted...

[Logdan]

And although any skinning mod you're apt to download functions in exactly the same way (and due entirely to provisions Blizzard themselves coded into the game), some posts on the Blizz official forums have led a lot of more impressionable or perhaps easily confused folks...

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization&t=359999&tmp=1#post359999

Changing the interface art is fine. Everything else is off limits.

Seems pretty clear to me. Interface art, OK. Everything else, NOT OK.

As for it being the same as an addon, no addon requires you to replace files in an .mpq to achieve your goal. As far as I have seen, every skining mod is about overriding .mpqs. This entire process is also outside the scripting engine entirely, which is the framework for what is and what isn't allowed to be modified.

As for the TOS, you can scretch words and say that replacing a file in an .mpq is not modifying, but you are still changing the "World of Warcraft Experience". UI addons don't fall under this since they are in a seperate, allowed category.

As for my predictions, either...

1. Someone will create a popular "skin" that will exploit something very easily that would be considered unfair (like how about the WSG flag being Magmadar...)
2. The TOS will be updated to explicitly specify .mpq modifications
3. The game engine will perform random crc checks to see if tampering has been done.

I'm putting my $ on all 3 actually, but 2 is probalby what will happen, with 3 following if no one listens. 1 will happen regardless, since there will always be someone who will cheat.