What exactly is so hard to understand about this? The entire premise of RS is and has been that you do activities, which are for the most insufferably dull in exchange for some social-status or item/rewards of value. That's the "legitimate" way to play the game. Naturally, however, there are those who want the reward as desperately as anyone else but are incapable of actually doing it legitimately, or refuse to do so; so they take shortcuts. I don't engage in this behavior myself(I don't bot or abuse bugs), but it's not entirely perplexing or irrational behavior. They like one aspect of the game(rewards), but abhor another(the work/path required to obtain said rewards). There's no contradiction or anomaly about these sorts of people, you encounter them in real life all the time and some of these people happen to play the game. Have you never encountered the sort of people in school who cheat on exams or plagiarize assignments, or have them ghostwritten? I'm assuming when people tell me they don't care about the game they mean it and actually don't care about the game which would make botting totally pointless since they receive absolutely nothing for it except wasting their own time. Of course they could just be lying which is what I'm getting at. I think they're holding on to the game they used to love. Even though a lot of people have botted through their entire time on runescape it still means a lot to come and play. Like Yoko said, they like the rewards but can't do what is needed for them by themselves. I like the idea of the rewards, but have never been able to get them fully so I've never been a very high level.