Hugs Rhaegar. Not long ago I was instructed here on this very forum that I should never assume someone’s gender. This was just my way of honoring that, you see. Nods enthusiastically and suppresses giggles. xD
Speaking of captcha’s, I always like to point out Wakfu’s system. It’s the only one I ever seen player’s welcome. It indeed gave buffs as you mentioned, but to farming gains (craft farming, not monsters) instead. If it could be worked to mesh with ToS in some way, giving buffs but easy to do and not intrusive, it might just be the best solution. Unfortunately an identical copy of Wakfu’s isn’t feasible, not only for obvious copyright laws, but Wakfu is turn based. You were taken into a quick mini game at random while farming where you selected with your mouse/touchpad the same numbers on dice as your opponent, Capt’nacha.
I have to say on Wakfu’s international server, that game had the least amount of bots I’d seen on any MMO I’ve played. They were still there, but any spammer bots were banned pretty swiftly and any other type of bot was scarce. Usually they hid in dungeons so I’ve heard. 