Cheating the World of Warcraft?

I had wondered as to the number of people using automated scripts (bots), and other forms of cheats in the World of Warcraft. When I first started playing WOW when it was first launched in the US some two years or so ago, I had not witnessed anything besides the occasional farmer at work.

Then, I begun hearing about banned accounts and cheats. In many other games that I play, which were mostly browser-based ones, anti-cheating measures were usually deployed swiftly after the initial conception. ie Duels, DuneMUD, etc.

It would appearing that cheating or beating the system had become more important than playing the game? Would this be a form of 'gaming' in its own right then?