Their method for stopping botters seems to be to remove half the npc's (and all from the tombs), space all the npc's out and have a long respawn time.
This may stop botters but it makes the game virtually unplayable, you can't get a big enough train to gain xp quickly and have to keep moving around to find targets.
If you play as an ele you'll find Holy Ground useless as you have to move so far away to get to the npc's.