Hello people, you haven't heard from me in a while but somebody messaged me on skype and I figured I'd come in here to tell some truth. First let me say that I likely won't come back to arctic either way, but I am sure 90% of the posts on here have been lies and people wanted to contact me to bring some truths.
1) Already, just about every major clan bots and bots all the time. Some have been suspected and even caught and deleted, but they will continue to do so, and just change the ips and emails of the proxies they use.
2) No clan has been dominate in this game without botting for a very long time, wild was the last, probably in 2007. Botting in arctic basically equates to performance enhancing drugs in sports. Sure they are illegal, but if people will want to get ahead and be the best they will use them. The desire to be at the top > the desire to play by the rules.
3) I learned of botting due to some Scandinavian's (exact country I will not name) who have been using large groups of bots to pk for the better part of a decade and never saw any real negative consequences. After being killed by them enough, you will eventually go with the "you have to fight fire with fire" strategy, and have to take up botting yourself to protect against their 10mans.
4) At the moment, I see many posts by people on these forums who do actively bot, but are highly against botting. Why? The same reason people who deal drugs in the United States do not want drugs to be legalized... because they'd lose their advantage. At the moment now, they bot like crazy, and have a huge advantage when they fight clans who don't bot (not sure that it even exists anymore).
5) Botting 3-4 characters is about 5x more enjoyable than playing 1 character. Its a truth most botters don't share because they don't want others to realize it, but I personally know several people who don't even enjoy playing with other real people anymore, they just log on with 10 bots and do what zones they want, go afk when they want, and don't have to worry about anybody hassling them or making stupid mistakes and bapting up the zone. Once you start botting, it is almost impossible to go back to playing 1 lame char, so people who get caught just change IPs and start over again.
6) Is it possible to stop botting? yes.. but you need a VERY active staff, which arctic only seems to have during the first 1-2 months of a pwipe.
FYI, if you hate botting, but love full loot pvp, try out Darkfall unholy wars, right now im on a galleon with 30 clanmates about to interrupt a city siege where about 100 people will be fighting to take or defend a city. But you have to have a real job and be able to afford a gaming computer and a $15 dollar\month sub. However its worth it, no drama, just full loot pvp skill based. Adios!