Perhaps there is another solution...
Warning: strange ideas ahead:
For a moment, consider the player base Planeshift is current looking to attract: mature roleplayers willing and able to cope with a product still in alpha. This demographic has, for whatever reasons, a greater than typical overlap with the subset of the general population that has the means and desire to write a reasonably sophisticated bot. While I don't have hard statistics to support this claim, it seems obvious enough. The intersection of these groups remains a small minority in the game, yet its size outnumbers the development team by at least one order of magnitude. If these postulates are not contended, I'll continue.
Creating a bot is easy. Mix one part repetitive, monotonous task with one part hacker; add sugar, caffeine, and/or tasty beverage of choice. Simmer at room temperature overnight, stirring occasionally. If you want to create robust and effective bots simply add the constraint that bots will be banned as discovered, beginning with the most obvious (read: broken) ones.
You may ask why players with the tools, talent, and time would choose to do such a thing in lieu of jumping onboard the dev team and helping out there. Perhaps their specialties lie outside the realm of what the dev team requires. Perhaps extracurricular demands on their time would make them a poor team member. Perhaps they are legally constrained from doing so, owing to the nature of their employer. Perhaps they simply don't wish to. Why do you play a warrior archetype instead of a mage, or vice-versa? It's what you find fun. For the players, PlaneShift is, after all, a game.
Like every other commercial MMORPG out there, PlaneShift provides all the ingredients necessary for bots, save those available at your local convenience store. In addition, PlaneShift attempts to attract the flotsam of patient, creative gamers that seek to affect their shared world in profound ways. Some of those players will look beyond the bounds of the basic client to accomplish this task. The traditional means of curtailing such behavior are either increased monitoring and bans, which entail high administrative costs, or increased interface complexity, which only makes it easier to hide a bot among the players preoccupied with jockeying the controls.
Nobody wants to see the zombie bot dogpile. Enlisting in the everlasting armies of the undead to maintain character parity is even less palatable, yet existing solutions have not worked in similar games. Perhaps PlaneShift should entertain the alternatives. I'd like to offer up the SPC as a potential avenue for exploration.
SPC...WTF?
The SPC is the "semi-player-character" or "scripted player character". It falls somewhere between a PC and an NPC and is driven by player-written scripts produced with a tailored and authorized scripting language incorporated into the game. SPCs can act with much of the autonomy of a PC, but can also maintain a persistent presence in similar fashion to an NPC. An example may be more illuminative.
Consider a bank teller for a guild-run bank...a noble and needed profession, but currently unplayable. As an NPC, it will be found wanting. Each banking guild will assuredly have unique business rules for which the developers could never accommodate. As a PC, it requires a player willing to do nothing but wait for customers all day, every day, which is equally impossible. With the tools of an SPC at one's disposal, the task becomes trivial. A scripted teller can spend every day processing requests, accepting deposits, handling loans, relaying messages...even making tea. With judicious incorporation of some instant message protocol, a player could actually maintain a real presence to handle the occasional task that is not sufficiently mundane to include in the script. The guild's bank teller, while on the job, would be no more spontaneous or vivacious as their real equivalent, but no less, either.
At the end of the day the player can come home from their job, relieve the SPC from his job, stroll to the tavern and, using the full client, assist the character in blowing a day's wage on wine, women, and song. The grind stays in the coffeepot; the treadmill stays in the gym.
That's automation done right. That's roleplaying. That's breathing life into a virtual world.
...and keep in mind: If you can't see the light, you are likely to be eaten by a grue.
