First, I want to thank everyone for the frank discussion. As long as we can be honest and mature I think the game can survive and get through a lot of the stupid issues we deal with in our strange little sandbox. I could have done without some of the sniping back and forth, but a lot of good information came out of this thread.
The TL;DR here is: We are not going to allow multing/botting within the rules.
There are a lot of reasons for this decision. I am not going to go into details because it will create an atmosphere of second guessing and nitpicking. We want to do what we feel is in the best interest of the most players, whether everyone agrees or not.
That said, we are not going to sit idly by and hope everything works out. We have a number of changes we are still hammering out details on, and I will give a bit of information on some of them here.
1. The Don't Be an Asshat Policy
This will begin being enforced with a new vigor. Hoss' recent deletions/pzap of clans/players for multing, botting and/or being a jerk were completely justified under these rules. These punishments will continue and expand. Do NOT make your goal in the game to make life suck for everyone else. We will let it go on for a short time, everyone needs a stress release, but don't expect a warning, or a discussion, when you cross the line, we will just delete you and move on. No, the line won't be defined, you should know it in your gut.
Consider multing and botting to be under the asshat rule, even though they are called out on its own in help policy. You can't hide forever. I know those who already multi are going to continue doing it, just don't become a baby when we catch you. No one likes a whiner.
Players can help here. We are a very small staff (pretty much 4 active immortals), if you think someone is crossing the line, tell us about it. Just do not get upset if we do not agree.
2. More with less
We want to address the need for bots directly. We have a lot of ideas around this, but the center of the idea is to adjust classes, items, skills, spells, xp tables and hitpoints to make it possible for us to lower the group size max. We haven't settled on a number yet, we can't really until a lot of the other changes are done.
This will require quite a pile of work, but nothing over the top. A lot of this is drawn from ideas we had for Lube. Really these changes will be done sans-Lube, and encompass about 1/3 of what we had in mind for Lube, so we have some idea where we are going with them. Lube is on hold, this is more important.
These changes will require the dropping of at least one well loved class, it just can't fit in the new system as it stands. We have plans to replace it with something more in line, but be forewarned.
3. PK
We want to address the quickness of some deaths in PK. We want you to have a chance to react. This is related to the above changes, but I wanted to call it out directly.
We are also looking for ideas from the community on how to adjust PK to make the "drive them from the game forever" tactic more difficult to pull off. Anything is on the table from NO_RELO equipment and allowing prep-spells to be cast in inns all the way to removing the who list. Start a thread with your ideas, I will read them all, respond to some.
This all needs to be directed at making the game fun for everyone, including the people currently losing. When one group decides to keep another group from playing, it is fun for no one.
4. Miscellaneous
We have a lot of little tweaks and changes in mind. I wanted to make sure you don't think the above are the only things on tap.
I am going to close this thread here. If you want to discuss anything I have said here please start a new thread. I do not want PMs, I would rather have the discussion in the open. I will try to respond when something warrants it.
