Bots are created to unfairly create income and spam advertise in channels for illegal gold sellers. This is understood by all players so it really doesn’t need pounded on. We all understand it is a violation of TOC and a bannable offense as well as draining server resources that should be intilized by honest players.
After reading the official post on botting and what ANET is doing about it I wish to bring up one point. While satisfied with your focus on gold-sellers, I see nothing about what you propose to do about gold buyers. Gold buyers are the cause of the issue. If there is no demand for a product, the product ceases to exist.
ANET provides a method to legally purchase gold through the TP. There is no reason to be lenient on illegal gold buyers. If you can identify and ban gold-sellers and botters then you have the capability to follow the electronic paper trail generated by the illegal tranactions and ban the gold buyers accounts as well.
Wrong is wrong , be it buyer or seller and I am asking for and advocating a strong firm response to gold buyers. Just as strong a response as ANET took toward a karma exploit. That is in fact what a gold buyer is doing. It is an exploit of the way the game is intended to be played and a clear violation of TOC. As the saying goes, “Cut off the head and the body will die”. Its time to let some heads roll.
