Some players are happy with that kind of gameplay. That's who the game is designed for. I for one enjoy taking my time leveling up.

Botters aren't there due to a gameplay issue. Players will bot, cheat and use exploits no matter what you design.

Most of them are gold farmers where the intention is to make money. This means making as much gold in a short a time as possible.

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with how the game is designed.

I've only ever found two bots in World of Warcraft, and I've played since launch. They were everywhere in Aion.

Design absolutely has an effect on how much people will bot. They seem to fester in games that are resource heavy, grind heavy. They were everywhere in Lineage 2 as well.

The only way to make a game design implemented so far that can ward off gold farmers is a game in which there's no meaningful economy, which is something a lot of players enjoy having. In WAR for example, you do still have bots and gold farmers but the market for it is much lower seeing as money is just not an issue in the game. It's almost hard to get rid of your money if you try once you hit a certain point in the game.

As for only ever seeing two bots in WoW, no offense but you just must not have noticed them. I spent four years playing WoW and reported a lot of bots. Not nearly as many as in Aion, that's for sure. But at least 50. And sadly there were times when I'd report a bot and find it back in action a month later when my next alt reached that same zone. It was never to the point of being out of control, but it's also not an issue that Blizzard is above. So let's not put WoW on yet another pedestal. ;)

As for the 1.5.1 patch, I'm glad they are tweaking the leveling curve and quest xp gains as well as giving at least some incentive to defend a fort. But I do agree I'd like to see more...but then again it's an mmo and there will be many more patches to come. The Captcha thing is odd, and I hope it's just a short term solution to help curb the bot farming until they can get the bots under control. Overall I'm loving Aion but I, along with just about everyone, won't put up with forever. Thankfully it's gotten better enough lately that it rarely interferes with my questing, but if the bot population isn't reduced to 10% or less of what it is now within the next two months, I'm out.