I've played 2 freeshards where bots were not a problem, one had a /bb command which summoned a bot wherever you were, convenient but the one thing I hated about it is it also gave you a HoT, fighting Skalds and Minis was a pain in the ass, they just mezz/stun you run away and summon a bot which healed them back to 100%.
Another had bot NPC's with no HoT and most buffs(no haste) with a small damage add and endo regen and once you were buffed you stayed that way no matter where you zoned to until you logged off. It also has scrolls you buy that you could use wherever you want with lesser buffs but they still maxxed out player stats, just not as good for pets as the NPC buffers. All buffs could be sheared.
Mythic could level the bot playing field as far as buffs go this way, might offset the loss of bot accounts with the old players that may come back but even on these shards players still had bots, just not for buffing. The latter did not allow stick bots in RvR zones, in PvE you could multibox as much as you wanted but 2 people can kill the dragons so it's not like you need to. I still used a Bard bot and Druid bot for spec AF(it stacked with the NPC Spec AF!) and haste but it was quite easy to buff a lot of people when you're only using one buff from each.