QuakeNet has been experiencing frequent net splits all morning. A net split occurs when two or more IRC servers that make up the network become unlinked from one another. This causes a split in the network and creates two QuakeNets for a while. So you probably just connected to one of the servers that wasn't linked to the server that the bots were on. Sometimes reconnecting works, but often times it's only a couple of servers that split, so you probably won't manage to connect to them randomly. Just wait it out. The servers reconnect eventually.
It's split right now as a matter of fact. I happened to be on the unlucky end of the split, as there's only one server on my end. I'm sitting alone with lithium/xurol in the #sna.gather channel, which is the only good thing to come out of this.
