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Which leaves two alternatives: (1) Use scripts, or (2) find or develop a mud where typing speed isn't so critical. Personally I favour the latter.
That's the same straw man argument that Hardestadt tried. My example of ascii art was a direct response to the claim that "There's no way to prevent scripting in a MUD". Obviously I'm not proposing spamming the players with ascii pictures during a fight - but the point is that there are certain things which cannot be feasibly scripted.
And no matter how fun or interesting the mud is, if it's competitive then people will do everything they can to get the edge. And as nobody can play 24 hours a day, every day, that means setting up a bot while you're offline sleeping or working. Once one player does that, everyone else is forced to do the same or fall behind.
There are only really three ways around it that I can see. The first is to make the mud non-competitive, the second is to ban botting with rules, and the third is to make botting worthless (or of seriously reduced value) through the code.
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