They did not say it will not scan your hard drive, they said it will not scan your harddrive unless it is told to.
As for EA coding it themselves, I honestly wouldn't be suprised at all if PunkBuster consisted of thousands upon thousands lines of code. Why should they spend years coding something thats already there? Thats like asking why should you buy anti-virus software when you could code it yourself, why get a third party involved?
Also there is no learning curve, EA has used PunkBuster on many other games. Given those games were FPS, but the program works the same. If you have read every statement by PunkBuster and EA, you could see that they have already tested it. They wouldn't even announce they were going to beta test the program this month if they didn't even know if it was compatible. EA has been in on this for several months, that much is obvious.
PunkBuster works server side, so I really doubt there is some kind of hack out there that can tell PunkBuster to search your harddrive and send the info to their machine (I haven't looked for such a program, but I don't think it exists.) And how do you know how simple it is? "A few simple lines of code"? As someone who has minor experience in scripting with c++ and c# (minor, I'm not an expert), that sounds extremely difficult. You would have to figure out a way to make the program think the server requested info about the users harddrive, then you would have to figure out some way to make it send that info back to your computer.
People playing UO at work or on their office machines? Yeah I guess they will have to change something if they cannot work with lowered security. Theres not much that can be done about that since PunkBuster would be classified as Spyware by some anti-virus programs (specific ones stated on their website).
Being kicked during a champ because you have altered gamefiles? You would be angry that someone cheating while raiding/doing a champ got kicked and you got their arties (why wouldn't they insure them?!? Seige Perilous?). PunkBuster has made many statements about False Positives, if that is what you are talking about. False positives are extremely rare, because PunkBuster can do anything. It can scan memory, harddrives, and hardware. So if the program or whatever looks like a cheat after all that, it probably is a cheat.
So basically the only problems with PunkBuster are that the user must have admin rights and that it doesn't work with some anti-virus software. These don't really seem like "big" issues to me. All admin rights do is make it so you can't have access to any system specs. If your son or daughter is old enough to play a Teen game, maybe he/she is old enough to not wipe your PC the second you give him/her admin rights? Someone without admin rights can still delete and change things, so admin rights aren't really that "scary" as you put it. But if your child really can't handle having admin rights without destroying your computer, I guess you'll have to find another game or use the non-PunkBuster server. Same goes for the people that think everyone in the world is trying to hack them. In the end, those people will probably make up .00001% of the people that leave because of PunkBuster. The rest will leave because they saw a bunch of people on many forums saying stuff like "O/\/\G! T|-|3y C4n 5tEaL 0uR P3rSoN4l I/\/fO!!1!1!!one!1one1!1!11" and they didn't use common sense or read any real information on the subject. Not saying thats anyone here, but thats the majority of people that will leave because of PunkBuster and those probably won't be that many.
As for EA coding it themselves, I honestly wouldn't be suprised at all if PunkBuster consisted of thousands upon thousands lines of code. Why should they spend years coding something thats already there? Thats like asking why should you buy anti-virus software when you could code it yourself, why get a third party involved?
Also there is no learning curve, EA has used PunkBuster on many other games. Given those games were FPS, but the program works the same. If you have read every statement by PunkBuster and EA, you could see that they have already tested it. They wouldn't even announce they were going to beta test the program this month if they didn't even know if it was compatible. EA has been in on this for several months, that much is obvious.
PunkBuster works server side, so I really doubt there is some kind of hack out there that can tell PunkBuster to search your harddrive and send the info to their machine (I haven't looked for such a program, but I don't think it exists.) And how do you know how simple it is? "A few simple lines of code"? As someone who has minor experience in scripting with c++ and c# (minor, I'm not an expert), that sounds extremely difficult. You would have to figure out a way to make the program think the server requested info about the users harddrive, then you would have to figure out some way to make it send that info back to your computer.
People playing UO at work or on their office machines? Yeah I guess they will have to change something if they cannot work with lowered security. Theres not much that can be done about that since PunkBuster would be classified as Spyware by some anti-virus programs (specific ones stated on their website).
Being kicked during a champ because you have altered gamefiles? You would be angry that someone cheating while raiding/doing a champ got kicked and you got their arties (why wouldn't they insure them?!? Seige Perilous?). PunkBuster has made many statements about False Positives, if that is what you are talking about. False positives are extremely rare, because PunkBuster can do anything. It can scan memory, harddrives, and hardware. So if the program or whatever looks like a cheat after all that, it probably is a cheat.
So basically the only problems with PunkBuster are that the user must have admin rights and that it doesn't work with some anti-virus software. These don't really seem like "big" issues to me. All admin rights do is make it so you can't have access to any system specs. If your son or daughter is old enough to play a Teen game, maybe he/she is old enough to not wipe your PC the second you give him/her admin rights? Someone without admin rights can still delete and change things, so admin rights aren't really that "scary" as you put it. But if your child really can't handle having admin rights without destroying your computer, I guess you'll have to find another game or use the non-PunkBuster server. Same goes for the people that think everyone in the world is trying to hack them. In the end, those people will probably make up .00001% of the people that leave because of PunkBuster. The rest will leave because they saw a bunch of people on many forums saying stuff like "O/\/\G! T|-|3y C4n 5tEaL 0uR P3rSoN4l I/\/fO!!1!1!!one!1one1!1!11" and they didn't use common sense or read any real information on the subject. Not saying thats anyone here, but thats the majority of people that will leave because of PunkBuster and those probably won't be that many.