Hello

\o/

Really? Why have they introduced lackeys do you think? Because they could not beat the scripts or because they (finally) recognized that it was necessary to keep the game alive? For years they have tried to enforce rules they could not verify themselves properly. Really there are only so many times that a normal human being can rank up to brug again manually without going insane. In 2.3 already, 300 different people that I could verify myself were scripting, most because they did not have the stamina to go once again full retard mode and level up. Werther you like it or not, those people would have not played without scripts, and a game without players won't be any fun to no one.

Both, still pretty active in wow without any time commitments though, and playing other games like hearthstone, Dota and LoL.

Without scripts being available to the masses (since 2.3), this game would have been dead years ago. A lot of the gameplay is centred around getting revenge. How many times do you think that a sane person can rank himself to bruglione of the course of a multiple years? It's not like you are out in the world adventuring while ranking up, you have to hit 1 button every 90s and 1 every 5min. If anything, scripting has contributed to the success of this game, not to the failure like you claim.

It's fairly easy math:
- compute what 1 brug can make each day by keeping the lackeys run 24/7 at max speed with irl cash, including crimes
- multiply that by how long the version has been running and subtract a week for levelling
- subtract the cost of all training
- compute what a top fam their objects make per day, multiply by version duration, divide by the amount of accounts you expect to be funded

You should have a pretty good idea of what is possible and what not.

You forget to mention that a lot of that history is based on cheating/exploiting (and that is not limited to the fams mentioned, a big part of the history of the game is based on cheating/exploiting, most versions were won by who cheated the best/most).