Botany Bay

Botany Bay is the name of an area in RuneScape where players are allowed to choose punishments for accounts of players found to be bots and watch them be judged in a special court system. It was released on 26 September 2012 along with the Al-Kharid graphical rework.

"After a cheating, rule-breaking, botting account has been caught in the act, they are teleported to Botany Bay: a new location, hidden on a dark, foreboding island and run by the Botfinder General. Here, real players are invited to listen to a fully voiced speech from the General, while pelting the offender with rotten tomatoes. You'll then be invited to choose one of three game-ending punishments for the offender, resulting in a brutal set of animations and a permanent ban. You’ll be able to hear about ongoing trials via the announcers that sit near several busy in-game locations. They will also offer a handy teleport to anyone nearby.

For those actually voting and choosing the account-ending punishments, you’ll also be able to access new cosmetic rewards, including a flaming pitchfork emote."

- Behind the Scenes: September

Location
Botany Bay is accessible by being teleported by a Trial Announcer who can be found in major cities.

The physical location of Botany Bay is an island found north of Port Phasmatys.

Voting
Once a bot arrives to Botany Bay, it will be judged by the Botfinder General, who will read his verdict.

The players will then be able to vote for the punishment in the interface by choosing the punishment and clicking Judgement, and then a chat message will confirm that the vote has been count. Note that in busier worlds, you might not have enough time to vote and it would not count towards the rewards.

Punishments
There are 3 punishments for the bots.

Rewards
Players gain rewards for voting on punishments for bots.

You must be wielding your pitchfork for your votes to unlock further rewards.


 * After 3 votes, the player gains the Pitchfork of vigilantism
 * After 4 votes, the player gains the "Angry Shake!" emote for the pitchfork
 * After 5 votes, the player gains the "Furious Shake!" emote for the pitchfork
 * After 6 votes, the player gains the "Burning Shake of Justice!" emote for the pitchfork
 * After 7 votes, the player gains the Pitchfork of justice, a golden coloured pitchfork

''A message will appear in your chat box if your vote successfully was counted. There is presently a bug in particularly laggy worlds that prevents the vote from being counted, thus not showing up in the chat box. This makes popular worlds such as World 2 likely to not count your vote.''

The Botfinder General
During trials, the Botfinder General is in charge of sentencing three-time offending bot accounts to a player-decided doom. After the bot account receives its punishment from the Botfinder General, it will be permanently banned from RuneScape.

Strikes
Botany Bay works on a system of 3 strikes. The strikes in order are
 * 1) Temporary ban and content restrictions.
 * 2) Longer temporary ban and content restrictions.
 * 3) The permanent ban interface shown to the right will pop up and lock the bot account.

Facts

 * If players are banned with a substantial amount of discontinued items (e.g. Party hats) on their account, there is a means of returning them back into the game. The Grand Exchange was one option mentioned by Jagex.
 * Botwatch will target all types of bots in the game, including spam bots.


 * Display names held by bots become available as soon as they are banned.
 * Random events will be removed at a later date.

Trivia

 * The name Botany Bay is a reference to the real-world Botany Bay, located in Sydney, Australia, which was the landing place of the British Empire in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet established the first colony in Australia. This colony was used as a penal colony for Britain's criminals, but was later dissolved as the country took form.
 * The Botfinder General is a reference to the self styled Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, who conducted witch hunts in parts of England around 1645-7. The trial announcer also says the Botfinder General's name is Matthew Hopskotch.
 * Attempting to light a fire in the area will yield the message: "The Botfinder General thanks you for your exuberance but would like you to not set fire to anything other than the bots while on his island."
 * Botany Bay bears striking resemblance to the general idea of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692-93.
 * If you have abused the rules in the past, you would be banned from entering Botany Bay.