Botany Bay

Botany Bay is the name of an upcoming update announced in the September Behind the Scenes scheduled for release on 24 September 2012. Players will be allowed to choose punishments for accounts of players found to be bots and watch them be judged in a special court system.

"After a cheating, rule-breaking, botting account has been caught in the act, they will be teleported to Botany Bay: a new location, hidden on a dark, foreboding island and run by the Botfinder General. Here, real players will be 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

Facts

 * There will be a three-strike system.
 * Strike 1 - Temporary ban + content restrictions
 * Strike 2 - Longer temporary ban + content restrictions
 * Strike 3 - The permanent ban interface shown to the right will pop up and lock the bot account
 * If players are banned with a substantial amount of discontinued items (e.g. Party hats) on their account, there will be a means of returning them back into the game.
 * Botwatch will target all types of bots in the game, including spam bots.


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


 * The bots in Botany Bay will have the real usernames of banned bots.

Pre-Launch
On 18 September 2012, Jagex added preliminary bot watching code to RuneScape, and spam bots started to explode and get banned.

They can perform two animations when they get banned.


 * They gasp for breath, choke, and then fall over. (Doing the Dramatic Death Emote.)


 * They would start to glow and start a cry emote, before a fireball burned from inside them and killed them from the inside out, finally making them explode.

Bot Nuke Speculation
Below is a quote taken from the Q&A Section on the Forums.

Are you working to take down the major bot sites right now?

MMG: Yeah, absolutely. Part of the bot watch and Optmus launch, Botany Bay, will also be us trying to take down the last two botmakers, Epic Bot and Power Bot, so Aadil (Ahmed)(British, current owner of RSBot) and Bert (de Vreugd)(Dutch, co-founder of RSBot and current owner of EpicBot), we're coming after you.

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 England's most notorious criminals, but was later dissolved as the country took form.