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 which will give a chat message will confirm that the vote has been counted. 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.




 * The first three votes will unlock the Pitchfork of vigilantism. This pitchfork has additional rewards if the player votes an additional four times while wielding it, for an overall total of seven votes to unlock everything. You must be wielding your pitchfork for your votes to unlock further rewards.
 * After the 4th overall vote, the player gains the "Angry Shake!" emote for the pitchfork
 * After the 5th overall vote, the player gains the "Furious Shake!" emote for the pitchfork
 * After the 6th overall vote, the player gains the "Burning Shake of Justice!" emote for the pitchfork
 * After the 7th overall vote, 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.''

Strikes(not confirmed)
Botany Bay works on a system of 3 strikes. The strikes in order are
 * 1) Temporary ban and content restrictions such as trading or use of the Grand Exchange. A player under restrictions will say "I can't do that because I've been using a bot." if they attempt to do trade, use the Grand Exchange or use the Squeal of Fortune. In addition, any items dropped by restricted players will immediately vanish and be destroyed, to prevent drop trades.
 * 2) A longer temporary ban and content restrictions are placed on the detected account.
 * 3) The bot account is locked. The permanent ban interface shown to the right will pop up on the detected player's screen. Other players will see a large claw point at the detected player from above, then grab it. A deep voice will say "Bot user!" when this happens. The bot is then sent to stand trial at Botany Bay, unless a trial is already taking place on that world, in which case it is simply permanently banned.

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 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.
 * The name Botany Bay is a reference to the real-world Botany Bay, located in Sydney, Australia, which was once used as a British penal colony.
 * 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.
 * On the 27th of September 2012, a glitch caused by human error surfaced during an update to the Botwatch system. A heuristic used during the testing phase of the system had been accidentally turned on, resulting in over 40,000 innocent players being unfairly and permanently banned with no chance to appeal. The problem was quickly detected and fixed within an hour of its discovery, and barriers were also put into place to prevent further occurrences. In addition, Jagex issued an apology to those that had been affected by it. Every single account who had been unfairly banned had their bans and associated offences removed shortly thereafter, and were also given 20 free spins on the Squeal of Fortune as a goodwill gesture. No accounts had their stats rolled back as a result of the glitch, although some had stats partially drained (this could be fixed by waiting for them to restore, intentionally dying, or drinking a Super restore).