Bot-busting and rewarding good players

It has finally happened.  Jagex, the makers of Runscape are now getting around to nuking the bots who are making game play almost impossible for F2P in many areas (and some P2P) and distorting the market by making materials cheaper than they should be.  They are also rewarding players who didn't bot with bonus experience points (XP) for a variety of tasks for the week starting October 25.

It was overdue, but, I can understand why it took so long.  They had to determine a way to detect the bots reliably and then figure out what they needed to change in the game code to flag them.  I am very happy that they got around and kill the bots as I was looking at something else to play as I couldn't get much done with the bots.  A lot of players probably will be upset at getting banned, but, from my point of view 'do the crime do the time' and that means you get banned for breaking the rules of the game.  They also don't realize that the 'bot' they buy may also have other code that will steal information (like banking, password, etc) or make their machine into a spambot.

I know that for some people that working on skills is a long, hard and boring process.  There are ways to relieve the tedium of game play.  I normally work on a skill 30-60 minutes and then switch to another skill.  I also try to work on skills that feed other skills.  For example I woodcut yew.  I then fletch the logs into longbows and string them.  Once I am done I sell the bows and buy more bowstrings.  This is actually paying for itself and I have over 16,000 bow strings already for future work.  Another example is that I mine gold ore.  Once I get a good supply I then smelt the ore and then make amulets and then I sell them to buy teak planks for house construction.  Another hint is I play penguin-hide-and-seek each week and apply the rewards to what ever skill I want.  I normally get 35k of experience a week from playing one hour.  My next to last hint is the 'Jack of all Trades' aura, you can use that once a day and the reward amount depends on your skill level.  My last hint is that you should also check out the shattered hearts distraction as you can redeem your stones once a week for a nice bit of bonus XP.  I normally get 1 million to 1.5 million XP per week doing all of the above and working on all my skills and I spend maybe two hours an evening playing.