I do believe botting does violate the ToS but GM's don't do investigations. Having the report system in game would really be nice though. I used to mine for ore in a pretty hot RMT spot in FFXI to get gil to level WW. I remember having to use the STF a lot and remember wishing it was easier to report people. Not that the STF wasn't effective once called. I remember there would be a short time of peace before new RMT's showed up. Although they were probably the ones I had gotten banned... One time I forget what I said but I voiced some frustration in say next to one and ended spending some time chatting. It turned out to be a female who was doing it to supplement her husbands income. Though getting one to talk is rare it happened from time to time. Like someone from my LS had a talk with one and found out he did it at night cause he didn't make enough in his day job. Well yes I do pity them some I still think banning them is a good idea.



To give you a idea of what a menu system could look like.

___________FAQ
Help desk > GM support
___________Report suspicious activity

No matter what happens though SE will not support or allow RMT. They are thinking about how make sure no RMT's abused the free trial that will come when the PS3 version is out but honestly odds are they won't care free trial or no free trial. To keep the RMT pop down they should not allow any form of sneak under the level 10 and don't go about giving newbies free starting items like movement+. Keeping the starting city markets separate from the main market would help but will cause some frustrations for players. Adding a new city in the middle of all three would move the main market to that city. Changing mob layout to keep lower level players closer to the starting city's would be a fairly welcome change. Adding aggressive mobs to map choke points to kill anyone who's too low that try's to pass. Kinda like the goblin bounty hunter who was added to kill fishing bots in FFXI. Often times they were lower level then the rest of the mobs in the area and had low HP but high ATK. These are fairly rough ideas but I think if done right you can make a system that makes life hell for a RMT and doesn't hinder real players.