Looking at our concurrent player count it is, I believe, clear that the ban wave was… less than effective.
It makes sense. It’s an F2P game. Right after the botters figure out how exactly you banned this time, they will just spam create new accounts. The ban wave is nullified within a matter of hours.
The only effective way to combat this is to, much like KR has already done, lock the servers and prevent character creation.
It does affect players. But it is the least damaging of all the options currently available. (other options would be further nuking the gold income of the players)
Lock the servers, and then open them for shorts periods of time where you will be heavily monitoring the servers, allowing you to detect the new bots easier.