Hello friends, I have a question.

[Halivel]

they most likely don't go to any great legal lengths to stop them making new accounts

They don't have a reason for it, though. As much as bots are annoying and even kind of harmful for playerbase, so much they are actually profitable for the company, since it's a P2P game. Every bot is a sold copy of the game, a decent amount of money after every ban wave when accounts-holder buys new copies to continue his botting. So it is... kind of very thin balance, I suppose? Doesn't sound good when you think about it, yes, but it is what it is.

[AlphaFox]

They don't have a reason for it, though. As much as bots are annoying and even kind of harmful for playerbase, so much they are actually profitable for the company, since it's a P2P game. Every bot is a sold copy of the game, a decent amount of money after every ban wave when accounts-holder buys new copies to continue his botting. So it is... kind of very thin balance, I suppose? Doesn't sound good when you think about it, yes, but it is what it is.

Sadly it is how I imagine it too. Stopping them 100% would be a cut into the sales they make, which I suppose could also go to inflating numbers of "X amount of accounts created" or "X copies sold". Yet on the other hand not doing anything will irritate players, though I recall seeing someone botting for months and wave after wave he still kept going. So makes me wonder if they are really banning that many or just removing the most obvious ones.

[Driavna]

They don't have a reason for it, though. As much as bots are annoying and even kind of harmful for playerbase, so much they are actually profitable for the company, since it's a P2P game. Every bot is a sold copy of the game, a decent amount of money after every ban wave when accounts-holder buys new copies to continue his botting. So it is... kind of very thin balance, I suppose? Doesn't sound good when you think about it, yes, but it is what it is.

Thing is botters don't legally buy a game copy. Most cases come from a stolen account or stolen credit card information. IMO your typical botter is not that problematic compared to with high-end players that do it, I guessing once the expansion arrives quite a few players are going to bot front lines to level up their classes.

To the OP: As people already told you SE ban on waves your typical gil farmer, "regular" players botting... well, at times they are never banned.