Some interesting discussion going on here, and I do understand your concerns about bots. One thing to remember about bots though is that many of them are lower level, since they haven't dedicated their time to levelling and mining the low level items such as shards is the slowest possible way to hit cap. I'd like to think many of them would be reported and banned long before they reached their zenith on shard gathering traits.

But it's precisely because of these bots that giving players the option to get their own shards would be beneficial. Right now, few people gather them because it's a huge timesink and incredibly tedious. The rate of gather is very slow, so players almost have no choice but to buy from the botters who sell them on the markets. Remove the market by giving players more choice on where to obtain their shards, and you'll inevitably reduce botting to a trickle at the same time.