Why did Linden Labs take so long to implement this? I have a theory. You know those quarterly reports they hand out saying log-in counts are up, and people are staying in longer? Well, prepare to see those numbers drop considerably. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

Bots are not banned though. There are still some great uses for bots that allow you to do a lot more than a script ever could. I use them myself in the sandbox to return items 20 minutes after you leave the sim. Since bots are not banned, there will be people who still try. If you do, you will be issued a warning from Linden Labs. They didn't go into details about what happens if you continue after warning.

Will this work? Right after I joined Second Life, they banned camping back in April 2006. People found ways around that, and are still camping today (I don't know how it worked before it was banned or if its the same as it is today camping). Unfortunately it is most likely people will find ways around this. Maybe bots that log off quickly when a Linden pops on the sim, or bots that teleport around to different sims and parcels to raise traffic, but just slightly. Who knows, but I sure do hope this works.

I will admit, years ago I experimented with this myself. My bots would walk around Snow Crash, and even chat to you if you IMed them. I didn't really like it myself; they caused lag, insulted my customers’ intelligence, and don't think they were that effective. After about one month of using them I turned them off for good.