Type A: AFK gathering resources, gaining wealth, or leveling weapons
Type L: Language violations
Type D: Dual clienting
Type E: Exploiting
Type Z: Higher violations

IMPORTANT: All of the rules are more as a general guideline, rather than explicit statements you could find in a law book.
If anyone's wants to be be on the edge of these rules, we may just classify that edge as Z: Higher violation and do something fun for the rest of the day, rather than debating rules and excuses.

Type A: AFK - Away From Keyboard - gathering resources, killing creatures, etc.

The use of macros or scripts is allowed, as long as you actively monitor the game. Unless otherwise specified, this applies to all parts and aspects of activities on this shard.
There are anti-AFK systems (automated & manual) in place. If your presence is checked, you must reply within 1 minute (60 seconds), or be considered to be away from keyboard.

It is allowed to train skills, if the skill doesn't produce any resources or add value to a resource, and your skill is actually increasing. Examples:
Allowed: Hiding, stealth, animal lore, lock picking...
Allowed: Crafting: tailoring, blacksmithy, cooking...
Forbidden: Mining, lumberjacking & fishing: not allowed to train while AFK, as it produces resources.
Forbidden: Lockpicking in dungeons, because the chests contain loot.
Forbidden: Crafting anything that produce things of value are not allowed train AFK.
Forbidden: Buying items from vendors, selling items to vendors.
Forbidden: Taming animals or shearing sheep
Forbidden: Using slot machines in the casino.

Note: this system is currently still in place, but will be adjusted soon:
Certain things are automatically checked: mining; lumberjacking; fishing; picking flax & cotton; using a spinning wheel or a loom

The Anti-AFK check for these things is automatic. When you are doing any kind of this gathering for a while, an alert window will pop up where you need to type a few character that you see on screen (captcha). If you don't correctly enter the text within 10 minutes, you will be automatically be given a pentlty. To determine the penalty, the system counts how many times you were detected to be AFK in the past 60 days. You are then blocked from doing any kind of these activities that are in the system for a specified amount of time:
- 1st time: 1 hour restriction from gathering resources.
- 2nd time: 24 hours restriction from gathering resources.
- 3rd time: 72 hours restriction from gathering resources.
- 4th and further: 120 hours restriction from gathering resources.

Activity with substantial gain (explicitly specified: weapon leveling, killing spawn):
1st step - if it is absolutely the first time: a warning of 2 jail tasks.
1st step - if you were found AFK before, but your penalties have already decayed: a warning of 20 jail tasks.
2nd step: 50 jail tasks and weapon impound for 1 week.
3rd step: 500 jail tasks and weapon impound for 1 month.
4th time and further: 3x as many jail tasks as the previous penalty and permanent weapon impound.

Other activity (if not listed above):
1st, 2nd, 3rd step: same as above.
3rd step: 100 jail tasks
4th time and further: same as above.
(Instead of weapon impound, resources related to the activity are impounded.)

Once you are already in jail, you can show your presence by sending a help request (paging staff) within 5 minutes of coming to jail, that is no more than 300 seconds.
In such case:
- 1st and 2nd step penalties are reduced by half.
- 3rd and further steps: the penalty may be reduced depending on the circumstances, but even if it is, it will be reduced by less than half.
- The excuse doesn't make any difference, whether you fell asleep or had to put out a fire.

Exploiters, heads up:
- If you log off, an AFK check is automatically treated as passed/valid, because there is no way to enter the confirmation code (captcha) if your internet goes down. But all staff are alerted when this happens - if it becomes frequent, we may perform a manual check.
- We strongly advise against making a script that would answer the Anti-AFK system by automated means. If you are caught to be AFK, while the captcha was entered correctly, you will receive a heavy penalty (5 months ban).

Advice on how to avoid this:
If you are able to script a macro, then you probably also know how to create a shortkey (such as CTRL+X) to deactivate the macro and recall you out to a safe spot. If you need to step away from the computer, press that key combination while you are getting up from your chair.

These violations have a 3 month cool-down. Scroll to the bottom for details on this.

Type L: Language violations

Refer to Codex section 2 for exact rules.
There are three distinctions: P: Public chat violations, L: Local chat violations, N: Naming violations

1st step: You will be warned and if the violation is heavy enough you may be immediately
     [P: banned from chat for up to a few hours] or
     [L: jailed for up to a few hours].
2nd step: You will be
     [P: banned from chat for up to 48 hours] or
     [L: jailed for up to 48 hours] or
     [N: the entity will be temporarily impounded]
3rd step: You will be
     [P: banned from chat for up to 1 week] or
     [L: jailed for up to 1 week] or
     [N: the entitiy will be permanently impounded]
4th and further steps will be treated as a heavy violation, resulting in temporary or permanent account ban.

These violations have a 3 month decay rate. Scroll to the bottom for details on this.

Penalties:
First time: a warning
Second time: 2 hour chat ban
Third time: 1 day chat ban
If this rule is broken repeatedly, a chat ban penalty weeks or months long may be given or it can be categorized as heavy violation.

Inappropriate language directed at staff members:
Explicit or implicit harassment or "name calling", directed at a staff member, either in private or public, will result in 12 hours of jailtime. If you do that while being jailed for something else, it is added to the jailtime you got for that. You will also have to apologize to the staff member you insulted. Once the time is up and the apology has been made (or sent by a message), you will be let out. If this is not the first time, the jailtime can be longer.

Spreading rumors about who is who
We strongly feel that any staff member who chooses to still play here along with their volunteer staff position is allowed to, and deserves to without harassment. We do not take kindly to speculation of who's who among staff. If you are caught spreading any rumors about the identity of anyone, especially a staff member, you could receive a medium to large penalty, including ban from the shard. Also consider that rumors aren't accurate, and you might be causing drama for someone who doesn't have the slightest idea about it.

Spam rules - detailed
Announcements are considered messages that raise attention of all players, for the benefit of the announcer or their guild: buying, selling, guild recruiting.

- A player is permitted to make at maximum 12 such announcements in a shard day (from 0:00 to 23:59 shard time),
- there must be at least 60 minutes between two announcements (from 0:00 to 23:59 shard time),
- there must be at least 12 lines of other player's text in between (you can use the Portal chat logs to see recent chat activity),
- the player must be at the keyboard when posting an announcement.
- If two or more coordinated players (such as members of the same guild) are announcing the same thing, it's considered to be announcement by the same player (e.g. that a guild is recruiting new members).

Announcing information of relevance to all players, such as champion spawn activity, boss spawning:
In this case, it's allowed to make:
- up to 5 announcements,
- spaced at least 5 minutes apart.
- Announcements made by different players count into the same quota (e.g. if there are 5 players at a spawn, there can still be at most 3 announcements made about it).

Disruptions at events (including cheating)
Events require a lot of concentration from the host(s) and disrupting players are an unnecessary bourdain, both on the host as well as all players who are attending. Therefore a player who is spamming, using foul language, cheating, is disrespectful towards players and/or hosts, or is otherwise intentionally disrupting an event, may be excluded from that particular event, even without warning. After the player received a warning with explanation why they were kicked out, if a similar thing happens again, they may be banned from all events on the shard for up to 6 months. This applies for live events and seasonal quests. Auctions are excluded from this rule - penalty for being disruptive at an auction is regular jail. [November, 2015]

Type D: Using more than one account, using another person's account, or sharing your account with other people

Account sharing and/or using multiple accounts is immediately treated as a heavy violation. Each account may be used only by the owner. There is no "I just hopped for a second on his/her account to check something" excuse. We have sophisticated methods of finding and proving this, so as long as each person only plays with his/her own account, there's nothing to worry about. When found:
1st time: All secondary accounts are immediately permanently banned without question. Doesn't help if it was you're relative's or friend's account, the fact that you used it makes it your secondary account. Your main account is temporarily banned for a few weeks or months, although it may also be a permanent ban. We may permanently impound any possessions that we believe were obtained using the benefit of two accounts.
2nd time: Permanent ban.

Type E: Exploiting

Exploiting is immediatelly treated as a heavy violation. All in-game entities such as pets and items that were used for the exploit, or that were the result of the exploit, may (will probably) be permanently impounded. Your account or any accounts related to this may be temporarily or permanently banned.

There is a much better alternative:
Report the exploit to the staff so that we may fix it, you will receive a reward and a mark on your account that you've done a good deed for the shard.

How can you know if you're exploiting? Here are some of the signs:
- If something is bringing a very above average gain.
- If it's considered that it should be kept away from staff's knowledge.
- If something requres a very specific set of actions you need to take, in order to perform something that you normally couldn't.
- If you are able to perform an action that seems illogical or against the written rules (for example, being able to enter the newbie dungeon after you have already reached the maximum account age).

Type Z: Heavy violations

If you repeat smaller violations or do something very wrong, it falls into this category. If such an incident occurs, we properly investigate it, reconsider, and apply penalties that seem appropriate. This usually includes account ban, which can be tamporary ranging from a few days to a few months or a permanent ban, impounding of any in-game entities, etc.

Violation cool-down

If a violation has a defined decay rate, or cool-down, it means that some time must pass before you would simply be warned again, if you made the same offense. The next penalty is calculated based on what the previous penalty was and how much time has passed.

For 3 month cool-downs, if you have been recently given a penalty:
- If you are caught again within 3 months: the penalty is increased (for example, from step 1 to step 2).
- If you are caught again after 3 but before 6 months later: the penalty is repeated (for example, if you had a step 2 penalty, you get the step 2 again).
- If you are caught again after 6 but before 9 months later: the one-step-less penalty is given (for example, if you had step 3 penalty, you get step 2).
- If you are caught again after 9 but before 12 months later: the two-steps-less penalty is given (for example, if you had step 4 penalty, you get step 2).
- And so on...

A "month" is defined as the same day of the next month, not 30 days.

Example 1: You receive a warning on August 25th. If you do the same violation again until and including November 25th, you would receive the 2nd step penalty. If it happens on November 26th or later, you would receive the warning again.
Example 2: You receive a warning on May 5th. You do another violation later in may, this time the 2nd step. And another on June 16th. If you are caught on September 16th, you would get the 3rd step. If you are caught anywhere between September 17th and December 16th inclusive, you would be given the 2nd step penalty. From December 17th on, you would again get just the warning.

Other: Entering price of an item in the description on a player vendor

When adding an item to your own vendor, you may not put it's price on the vendor. You also may not put any price information as the vendor's name or the shop's name. The penalties for doing so are as follows:
1st step: your vendors will be removed from vendors.uoex.net listing for 3 days, but only if this is the first ever time it happened. If it has already happened in the past, 2nd step penalty is given.
2nd step: your vendors will be removed from vendors.uoex.net listing for 1 month.
3rd step: your vendors will be removed from vendors.uoex.net listing for 1 year.

These violations have a 6-month cooldown time. The cooldown starts after the listing restrictions ends.