Zenimax appear to be clueless to combat this - and almost are encouraging it as the constant reproduction of bots means they can boast a greater player number... Seeing the active player list is nowhere near the millions of registered players - it's not hard to deduce that a vast majority of of the registered player base is likely to be bots... which is incredibly deceptive.
Is this the reason nothing is done to discourage future bots??? It's hurting your PAYING customers, Zenimax. You'd be very wise to understand and acknowledge that fact. The amount of performance issues the servers have, I'm sure getting rid of these bots would really help. I noticed that some of the performance issues tend to be gone directly after an update and/or maintenance. Just a minor patch that needs downloading etc.. and I can't help noticing that as the bots complete their downloads and get online - the lag issues return. It can't be a coincidence every single time.
[edited for bashing]