I will agree with the lazy remarks, humans are lazy and if something can be done faster or quicker that is undesirable (like getting a 99) then people will jump at it, especially if it comes fit with an easy-to-use GUI. But I don't think this will lead to the decimation of runescape, but maybe an era within it.
What I mean is think about movies for example. 20 years ago, the movie theater was the hot-spot for hanging out, catch all of your favorite films and they would stay on the big screen for months at a time, when they finally hit VHS you had probably already seen them multiple times, but thats ok it was fun. Then the movie store market hit big, theaters started replacing films quicker because as movie rental places gained popularity filmmakers realized alot of profit was being made at places like this so they didnt really need there film to be in theaters for 5 months to make a living.
This spurred more and more people to make movies as the profit margins were wider, even straight to VHS movies that didnt even hit theaters could pull in some dough if it could catch the eyes of regular movie renters. Then the most recent era, the instant gratification era. Movies can be picked up and dropped off at various red-box style depots all over town, can be delivered to you in the mailbox if you don't want to leave your property, and even streamed to your laptop if you do not even wish to get out of bed. There much cheaper and more accessible a double positive that is currently putting movie rental places out of business and requiring theaters to cycle movies every couple of weeks to keep a steady flow of traffic to stay afloat.
The point of the story is this, any niche in life is dynamic, it changes as people change. Human nature is to make something easier to do, less work involved, less thinking needed, making it available to more people at a lower cost with higher profit margins, to overall..........make money. The bots are damn good because bot-makers are money-hungry just like everyone else. The players are hungry for stats or if they have dealings at places such as sythe, maybe they are IRL money hungry as well and are using bots to attain that money.
Overall, this is a new era of runescape, bots are alot of places, but they aren't everywhere. Now that freetrade is out, I believe that bots will become LESS of a problem tbh. Yes they flood the market with supplies, lowering the value of these items so that legit players get less for there hard work. But also realize that whatever items those legit players are saving money will also be equally deflated by botters in that aspect of the game. This balance will keep the relative work:item ration roughly the same.
Meaning, if you mine this rock for this long and sell it, you will be able to afford this gear. If you pay less attention to the gp number you are using and more attention to the work in--> [] -->gear out, you will see that nothing really changes with this process and a free trade economy.
On a lighter note, I am an avid botter, but I still enjoy playing legit sometimes. I find that when I focus on using bots to better my account for pking, Pking is my overall goal in runescape, to be good at it and to succeed while doing it. Pking cant be botted, so it doesn't bother me that im not playing the game to achieve my stats, as long as I get to then use my time and talent to utilize those stats to defeat another player. Others quest and some do other non-bottable things to find a hint of fun and prestige within runescape.
I don't think bots make the world go around, runescape wouldnt change much if they dissappeared (besides a considerable lower number of memberships of course), but people would still find other things to rant about, and gold would be super expensive per mil but items wouldnt be worth near as much gold so as I said before, ratios would remain nearly the same.
I like bots, I understand why some do not like them, I don't think runescape will crash with them staying or leaving, I do feel bad for people who get called botters that did it legit but tbh there are still plenty of ways to express your devotion, skill, and talent in runescape that isnt bottable and therefore would show your true glory should you choose to partake in it.
the makers have made it possible to cheat so they should prevent it.
)
