Quote Originally Posted by Atoli View Post
They can't get into Ishgard on an ARR license
So additionally to the (very low) cost of an ARR license they'd need a serious time investment AND the extra cost of a (not quite as cheap yet) HW expansion.

The bots I've seen in HW areas were all regular players who had a bot running to do the gathering for them, not "corporate" farmbots which tend to stay in ARR even after hitting 50.
I've seen a FC which appears to be the basis of a bot group. BLM battle classes, gatherers leveled, bare minimum quest progression to get to certain areas, bare minimum mounts, minions, GC rank. It certainly looks like the FC's purpose is to house bots. Small FC as well. One of the characters in the FC appears to be hitting ephemeral and legendary nodes 24/7 (the rest appear to have capped at 50.) I question whether an actual player is behind that FC given the absolute lack of progress outside of anything related to making Gil.