Hello! I'm new to L2 and can't help but notice the army of dwarves that seem to attack the guards at every noob town.
I was wondering, is there a reason why they are doing it? Or did they die and are doing it by mistake, instead of attacking mobs?
Mistryl's got a thread somewhere around here about bots and how to report them...you probably want to read that before all else. (She might even link to it before locking the thread! *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*)
I would suggest playing for awhile before going into insta-bot-petition mode however. As Splatter noted, not everyone who delevels on the guards is a bot. (My manor chars tend to do it a fair amount as well.) Deleveling can be a monotonus task and you can zone out a bit doing it sometime. That said, most deleveling bots can be easily spotted once you know what to look for. And most live players will gladly chat with you while doing it to break up the tediousness of the task. (Not always though.)
Spotting bots 'in the wild' is slightly different. Depending on how brain dead their 'operator' is, they can be glaringly obvious or moderately inconspicuous. Usually the 9 man bot trains are the easiest...their repetitive nature is easy to spot when *all* the chars in the party are automated.
The solo bots are a bit more...uncertain. Usually those are stuck in less traveled areas and some of them have some life-like random auto-responses. For those I don't recommend jumping to the 'it's a bot!' conclusion right away. (Sometime you can get into the 'zone' and just grind without wanting to be very social with people.)
NC has been more active than ever lately banning bots, although they do not publicise their ban actions much. (Confidentiality and all that.) At the moment, the more NC bans, the more low level 'replacements' you will see....at least until the cost in account bans becomes more than those who support them spend. (Cheer along with the rest of us normal players when that happens. =P )
Not to mention my friends and I have an alt clan that stays at level 23 so we have to delevel our toons a lot. I tried shouting for free PvP points the other day but no one took me up on it so I had to keep attacking guards.