First, full disclosure. I was once upon a time a botter, I botted in Vanilla and BC. Botting actually led me back to boxing (I had literally dual boxed in EverQuest once upon a time). Perma bans didn't stop me from botting, and I'm sure they won't stop anyone from botting actually. Though temp banning likely would have.

It's a question of psychology, which Blizzard does pretty well for a gaming company. When you're perma banned you don't think, "Golly, I better straighten up and get right". More likely, you get angry, at Blizzard. And pick up a clean copy to start botting again, to spite them. Because human beings are the epitome of logical, smart creatures. Eventually however, I found I had a load of botted characters at max level and no way to play them all. So, I started looking into boxing. When RAF was released, I found I could have way more fun actually challenging myself and playing a whole group of characters rather than checking the bot every few hours to see if I'd looted anything worth selling.

He's not lying about the psychological hocus pocus, you feel that temp ban more intensely than you do a perma ban, you feel like you dodged a bullet and are more likely to stop because you don't want to risk what you almost lost. When you lose it outright, there's the indignation element, but there's also nothing to lose anymore (because it's already gone). Especially during those 75% of sale events. If it was all about the Benjamins, believe me they'd perma ban and watch a flood of new "cheap accounts" being activated.

It's an ultimately manipulative tactic, that will probably work better in the long run. Considering other changes they've made like the wow tokens for example, I can see them doing exactly what they want to do... stemming the tide, rather than stopping botting outright. Usually I'm pretty opposed to their psychological hijinks, but in this case I think they did the right thing.