Botany Bay

Botany Bay

Botany Bay is 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 deliver a scalding speech about the bot's activities in the game. At the end of the speech, he will say "The verdict is guilty. Now, you good people, pass sentence upon them, by voting."

At this point, an interface will pop up showing the three available punishments. 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. Once the voting period ends, the punishment that received the most votes is carried out upon the bot. The punishments are as follows:

• Crushing: The Claw of Justice slams into the bot from above, crushing it.
• Swallowing: The pillar the bot is standing on shakes, then an abyssal wyrm devours the pillar and the bot before subsiding into the Abyss.
• Deity: A ring of symbols appears around the bot, then a ray of light shines on it. The bot floats into the light and is incinerated shortly thereafter, leaving only a few remnants.

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  Death by crushing.

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  Death by being swallowed by an abyssal wyrm.

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  Death by deity.

Rewards

Players gain rewards for voting on punishments for bots.

A bot about to get punished.

• On the 3rd vote you 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(system not yet in place)

Botany Bay works on a system of 3 strikes. On each strike, an interface will pop up on the detected player's screen detailing their punishment. The strikes in order are as follows:

1. The detected account is issued a twelve-hour ban, during which time it is also removed from the high scores. When they're getting temporarily banned, the bot sees an interface with Mr. Mordaut appear on their screen. Other players see a giant dragon claw trying to grab the player, but the player's skin is peeled off revealing that it's actually a bot in disguise. After the ban expires, the account is placed under trade restrictions for a further 48 hours, starting on the first login. During this time period, the account cannot trade with other players, use the Grand Exchange or the Squeal of Fortune, enter the Wilderness, or play any PvP minigames. Accounts under restriction that attempt any of these activities will automatically say, "I can't do that because I've been using a bot.". In addition, items dropped by the account will immediately be destroyed, to prevent drop trades.
2. The detected account is issued a second ban, this time for 48 hours instead of 12. The detected player sees an interface with Black Knights and Elite Black Knights pop up. The player's skin is removed again revealing that it's actually a bot in disguise just like their first ban. After the ban expires, the account is placed under the above trade restrictions, this time for seven days instead of two, starting on the first login.
3. The detected account is permanently banned, with no chance to appeal. The bot sees an interface pop up on their screen. Other players will see a large claw point at the detected player from above, reveal it to be a bot like before, but this time 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 the world it was logged into, in which case it is simply permanently banned.

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  The interface that appears when a player gets banned for the first time.

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  The interface that appears when a player gets banned for the second time.

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  The interface that appears when a player gets banned for the third and final time.

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.
  

“	Which types of bot will be detected by botwatch, MMG? "All". 'Nuff said.	”
	— RuneScape Twitter account

• Display names held by bots become available as soon as they are banned.
• Random events were removed at a later date, in an update on 24th October 2012.

Game Content

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  The Claw of the Ban.

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  The Claw revealing a bot for what it really is, removing its disguise.

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  A bot being pulled from the earth, having its feet removed, and getting banned.

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  A Bot

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  The right-click option of a "player" accused of botting.

The hand of justice picking up a bot and crunching it. (link)

noicon

Concept Art

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  Concept art of one of the possible punishments.

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  The dragon claw that catches bots.

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  Judge and town crier.

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  Botany Bay concept art.

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  Concept art of Botfinder General.

Trivia

• When users that are using bots are caught their usernames are changed to protect the identity of the player.
• 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."
• The symbols that surround accused bots in the Deity punishment resemble those of Armadyl. This makes sense, because Armadyl is the god of Supreme Justice, and the bots that enter Botany Bay are brought to justice.
• 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 will 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 manually 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).
• It is curretly possible to see the same bot caught twice & the script used by the botfinder general in the trial changes to reflect the fact that the bot has been caught before.