AP and the "botting crusade"

One of my favorite things about free to play accounts are that they're free. They have no ties to your real account and the characters are 100% replaceable. This allows for easy selling of F2P accounts, trading, and letting friends play on your extra toons to test out a class or get the arena composition you're looking for. For the 3s Tourney on Aerie Peak, I was easily able to lend a friend my mage to play. He didn't have to go through the trouble of leveling a toon to twenty just to participate and all it took was a quick account unlock to be able to play MLS. Along with the arena tourney as an example, I'm currently creating a BiS druid (Pre LFH and AGM) in exchange for a server transfer on one of my toons. Here's where botting comes in.


For anyone who doesn't already know about it that may be reading this, when grinding out a level 20 of every spec, a pally on Aerie Peak developed a method of botting that in no way disrupted or interfered with others' game play and it worked particularly well since his accounts were simply trials. By making the characters on separate trial accounts he minimized the risk and maximized the gain. If he were to get banned he would simply start over on a brand new account. With his method, one can attain every single BoA you need working at a pace of about six hours per honor cap. The method involves creating four trial accounts. One will contain the toon that you actually intend on playing and the other three will contain characters of the opposite faction and will be the accounts that you farm. I like to make mages because of their low health but the creator of the method recommends hunters just for the vanity of killing hunters over and over again. Then you level them to five, move them to a graveyard, download a simple key spammer, set up rez and target macros and leave your computer only to come back every six hours with your toon honor capped. 


People have historically been frustrated with BG bots, and understandably so. The 800 health, sometimes even worse, randoms typically make games one sided in the f2p bracket and BG Bots just exacerbate the situation. The people who did partake in such behavior were pretty much shunned by the community on Aerie Peak. I do understand why people wouldn't want to engage in botting. Many don't have the computer capacity to run four WoW windows and still operate normally, some may be taken back by the "complexity" of operating a keyspammer, some may actually enjoy the hard work that goes into the DMF grinds and constant pugs and others may possess a moral foundation that prevents them from "cheating" in WoW. What I don't understand though is why this non-BG method of botting is looked at so unfavorably and why people go out of their way to flame and prevent it. The notorious Vailent has probably followed me to about six different grave yards as my Aerie Peak bots flee from his righteous onslaught against the evils of botting. 


So here it goes, my arguments for botting: 

• You can have almost a fully BiS toon in a couple of days. I'd honestly bot just to make leveling to twenty easier.
• Imagine how much more competitive the average game in this bracket would be. Obviously BoA's wouldn't magically transform new players into glads but it might encourage them to put the effort into finishing their character and it would definitely help them to not die in one shot to the army eye-patch, and these days, non eye-patch wielding hunters. 
• Having to grind, possibly for months, to attain BoA's definitely discourages a lot of people from this bracket. Personally, I think leveling professions and farming for mog sets is enough to keep you occupied with and I know many people who have been discouraged from trying f2p because of this. It would promote activity and with activity would most likely come more competition in both arenas and BGs. 
• Although I mentioned it above, having your BoA's out of the way allows you to use the DMF Tickets for your super cool mount and pet and gives you more time to farm for your Robust/Ivycloth Bracers, Doomspike, or whatever else floats your boat. 

Finally, this isn't me trying to convince everyone to go out and bot. Whether or not you do, doesn't affect me and whether or not I do doesn't affect you. I was really just working out for myself why people may be against it or at least expressing my perplexity regarding the situation along with throwing the method out in the open for those that didn't know about it and also trying to make it easier for people from 19s and other brackets who have been wanting to try out F2P to do so.