Board Thread:Online Discussion/@comment-5917342-20130422020132/@comment-16047389-20140414175205

There seems to be some confusion with terminology in this thread, so I'm going to give my views based on my experiences with other MMO's, Game Mods, and Texture Packs.

First off, if you're talking about changing the visuals of ESO, that's probably legal since those are done client-side and support staff of a game only care that what you do doesn't interfere with online gameplay. There are some restrictions to this rule, however. For other people who have played Battlegrounds/Warzones in MMO's, you may remember that one guy that seemed to teleport vast distants across the map in mere seconds. These "speed hacks" are made when the connection between client-side controls and server-side positioning are tampered with. So naturally, they want to crack down on this. But then again, merely changing client-side visuals/audio is not modding, it's using texture packs.

Modding a game is more closely interpreted as actually modifying the game's functionality, which is why it would never be allowed on a multiplayer game (EXCEPT if you own the server on which you are playing. Private servers are still a very real thing for MMO's).

An addon is not actually a mod. Addons do not modify the game itself, but "add on" additional interfaces, which either rerender data from the game itself into a more understandable format (such as how Recount compiled all damage/healing done into various froms such as a player's Total Damage done during a boss fight) or use exclusive data that exists outside the actual game and thus does not actually interface with the game (such as various role-playing add ons which store information in a database kept by the addon itself, and can only be seen by people who share the same addon).

Zenimax has already said they will support the creation of Addons, so I assume they would have no problems with texture packs either.