Aventurine's Stance on Macroing

Let's talk about macroing in Darkfall. I haven't been in beta so I don't know whether that was an issue back then or not, but it surely is now. A macro will do your fishing, mining, logging, or any other gathering skill just as fine as you would sitting behind your PC and clicking the left mouse button every ~10 seconds. Similarly it will level up your Mana Missile and Lesser Magic by shooting the spell in the air while you'e AFK eating pie. I don't like it much, although some people seem to think that macroing is OK (I don't). I wasn't very happy to read the thoughts of Brannoc (official Darkfall forums moderator) in his little IRC interview that he gave a few days ago, either:

Kompressor: Is macroing a bannable offence?
<@Brannoc> not my place to state the official stance on macro'ing
<@Brannoc> but that's common sense, not an official stance
<@Brannoc> I'd say a common sense answer would be that...if you're not macro'ing to exploit the system or for commercial gain...you'll be left alone

As you can see, Brannoc's answer is quite ambiguous and leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Does the part about macroing for commercial gain mean that as long as you don't sell your stuff for real money, it's alright to use macros? Thankfully, there has been a more clear official stance posted by Tasos yesterday:

To address an issue reported by players: We generally frown on unattended macroing and if you use macros you do so at your own risk, but it should be mentioned that spamming spells and any macroing WITHIN the protective radius of the guard towers in the starting areas will result in a kick, and repeated offenses could result in a ban.

So, even though macroing is "frowned upon" oficially, it seems Aventurine won't bother to try and catch you, as long as you leave your character in some secluded location and not the starting towns. I guess I have to be thankful for that too, since the sounds of Mana Missiles in newbie towns are killing my speakers right now. However, I expect that in the future the majority of players will use macros for gathering at the very least, unless Aventurine makes drastic changes to the game system or their stance towards macroers.

You can read the whole news post on the Darkfall forums.