Cheating and RMT exploitation has hit a new level of ridiculous.

[Johners]

The thing is that SE never respond to such things to the reporter apart from the boilerplate stuff. They are passed to a central team who (for some reason) decides to ban in waves rather than as and when reported.

Botting is of course a serious issue but it is also good that a GM does not take a player word for it - they investigate and so malicious reporting (and it sure does happen) fails.

It's no way ideal but some worlds have it worse than others - sadly a reflection of the willingness of the players on that world / data centre to engage in activities (RMT) that they ought not to.

Banning in waves is often the strategy other MMOs use. It has worked relatively well for Blizzard that used ban waves psychology. Enough players felt like they got away with it, got attached to having their cheated stuff and then banned them while removing it. Worked really well during Warlords of Draenor when there were several major ban waves during that expansion in the run up to the release of Legion.

The bigger issue in this game is the fact a lot of cheating isn't visible to players directly and Square Enix have no anti-cheat to actually detect it with. Unless the player admits it or you suspect and report them, it's more than likely that you'll get away with it. Square Enix should really start taking ownership of this including the implementation of an anti-cheat.