They had a recent way of catching people, i came back on a fresh account(fresh box + WoD) i botted my hunter to 100, then started working on my warlock (used it for about a week total) and i was banned.
So they have a way to flag / catch you pretty quickly now, i bet alot of accounts have been flagged as suspicious for a while like you said then they finally found something that was concrete proof, and it has to be something recently because like i said, the account i was using was a fresh 2 month old account, i didnt re activate and had previously botte'd so i was flagged or anything like that, nope this account was about 1-2months old, and i had used the bot for a good solid week.
It sucks to take the hit, but knowing ill be able to jump right back into the game in 6 months with a new bot (and hopefully content) if i want to is ok with me, the fact that they didnt ban people permanently is kinda suspect to me and seems like a set up, but thats the chance we take when we bot, we know it fully the ones complaining about it are just cunts.
And honestly FF14 looks pretty good, spend 5$ get rebornbuddy for 3 days, hit 50 jump into the action.