The first bots were based on the &quot;autominer&quot; shareware, if you could get your hands on it. That was in 2002 or so. It was a simple macro based bot system. It was before they made anything to stop people from doing that (beside occasional baning). At first they added a &quot;sleeping&quot; mode to the game where played had to sleep after too much work and there was a CAPTCHA to wake up. It worked, but played hated that as it made some things hopelessly long to do and gave massive advantage to players who had done them before the sleeping concept was introduced. It actually had the interesting effect of shifting the in-game economy from the normal &quot;gold coins&quot; to a bond like system that handled inflation much better. At the end of RS1, most transactions were done in coal and lobster (really!) certificates, worth about 1500 and 1200 cold coins each.<p>I lost too much time to this game (mostly RSC &#x2F; RuneScape1) and liked it very much. I have fond memories of it, but as time passed it changed and I quited. The clans and forums were quite lively. I never (and will never, ever) played another MMORPG, but still, nice memories. I dropped my party hat long ago (only RS player can get that one) ;)