Macro manipulation using 3rd party scripts, is it botting?

[KisaiTenshi]

I've recently had an argument with a friend who saw a video on somebody using simple programmable mouse operations to manipulate his mouse into clicking on things in game while that person is away from their computer. The individual in this video was using this process to craft large quantities of things while away from the game.

My first quandary is, is this botting? Typically when one thinks of a bot, it is something that performs much more complex operations, such as running around the game and gathering. Since this mouse macro only actually performs 3 clicks on a cycle in the game is it complex enough to even be considered a bot?

Yes. Any kind of "unattended" behavior is botting.

The second (and perhaps most important) question is, is this cheating?

If they can respond to a GM inquiry of "are you there?" and can't respond, then yes. If someone reports them for cheating, point this out.

The point of me posting this question is because I cannot convince this friend that what he is thinking of doing is, in fact, cheating. I'm hoping the responses to this post will help me dissuade him (assuming my belief that this is cheating is even correct).

Tell him, that it's the inability to respond to an inquiry (hence unattended play) that is against the ToS. If he is sitting there with this mouse macro and watching Netflix, then it's not technically unattended play, but it would still be frowned upon, and I would certainly report it if I saw it. I've gone out of my way to report players that are doing unattended actions.

In this game, anytime someone talks to you or emotes at you, casts a random spell at you, you should be able to respond. If you just keep repeating whatever you were doing, then it's clear you're botting. A real player will at the very least stop what they're doing for a moment to see what/why they are being targeted.