Quote Originally Posted by gumas View Post
to be honest i think any mmo publisher feel 50 50 about botting, i think some of them really want to let it that way because it "fill up" the population so they can boast "our mmo has 5 million active players" even though half of them probably bots they couldnt care less.
It's a balancing act that has to do with 'best bang for buck'.

Botting is generally a net negative to any game because it typically gets out of control if left unchecked. But spending a million dollars to go after 2 bots (as just an example) isnt worthwhile. So they probably dont go after every bot all the time cause it's just expensive to do so, relatively speaking. Furthermore, botting might be necessary for market balancing. This is only a thought I have on it, but considering how laissez faire the MB can be, if there were NO bots, you could really end up with detrimental monopolies on items. The items that bots tend to drive down in price are 'common items' - or items that are obtainable by very rudimentary tasks. More 'rare' items tend to be sold by players actually doing the content where botting is incredibly hard to pull off. By having a 'third party' interact wtih the market and actively push down pricing on certain common and universal items, it may help against janky shenanigans on the MB. Particularly since there is no 'government regulation' of the MB. It literally about as close to a capitalist free for all as you can get.

To be fair, it doesnt always play out the way I suggest, but it's a thought. But I do wonder how much of an influence Bots provide in the market one way or another.