I have played wow when it first started, and for years i knew the secret of actually stopping most bots within wow. I've witnessed several accounts where blizzard band 1/4th its entire player database due to them being botter accounts, and now they have been going under and downsizing. With 'virtual realms' and reducing the actual server amounts to host the game. Was it really worth it?
They have sued several hosts of these programs, with a negitive effect in game so that no one wants to buy, and complain about the new inflated prices.
The truth is most people don't want to sit there 12-20hours a day farming this stuff, they rather play with others.
I've witnessed countless stable economies across the grid because of 'bots'. Every time they removed those bots or had 'botting upgrades' they have had severe inpact on econ's across the grid, not just with wow, but other games as well.
I am kind of curious as to the general public's standpoint on such software, or if i'm the only one that actually truely see's bots/or self ingame ai to autoploy 'farmed' goods as more of a blessing then a curse.
Naturally I get annoyed when i'm trying to farm something and some bot sweeps down and steals the node, I like the 'respectful' bots that just fly past if a player is in range of a node.
Well this post really didn't have much of a point but considering this is a programming site, i would consider the point being if you are a 'creator' you should stick with respectful ones or at least offer options to avoid players near nodes/farmed goods, those are nice and don't annoy people
So thats my two cents..