I guarantee it.
Server merges are prompted by inactivity. Any MMO that runs perpetually, will inevitably slowly swindle in the number of active players. No game is immune. New games come out, people get bored, people lose their PW and just stop logging on, there are countless reasons for player loss. Advertising and other influences may spike the population upward, but the downward trend of the number of active players is a simple inevitability. Eventually every server will cross those mysterious threshold values to prompt a merge. The only reason Evony Age 1 merging will stop is when the Evony company abandons the game.
I was PM'd a copy/paste of an in-game mail someone received. Their alliance is instructing everyone to get bots. At least for defense while offline, and they linked many other sites for resource bots and hero bots and farming bots and attacking bots and whatever other bots are out there. Since you have made it clear that suspensions are the only slap on the wrist they will receive, they are now openly advocating botting. They are, in fact, REQUIRING bot usage in some top alliances.
Cheaters will cheat because they can get away with it.
You said you wanted to remove the reasons for botting, rather than removing the player. That won't work. There will always be something else for them to cheat at. You could remove upkeep, the ability to capture heros, the ability to capture cities, and the many other game mechanics that bots help players avoid. There will always be something outside of the rules, that could gain players an advantage. They will simply create new bots to gain the new advantages in a new system.
You can let them bot because they pay the bills, I honestly understand that. From a business perspective, that is a reasonable stance to take. If that's the stance you are going to take then own it and shout it from the mountaintops.
[sarcasm] Let's add a "game-subversion" section to the forums. Let's tell people where to get bots, and how to use them. Why is resource bot A, better than resource bot B? Why are market bots incredibly foolish to use? What is the best farming bot? Let's end the farce of these 3-day vacations for punishment. Let's get the community together to endorse 3rd party software that aids gameplay. [/endsarcasm]
... or you can declare this game a fair-play zone, and go after the botter/multi/account sharers.




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