Life Outside PLT1

Breaking bots for fun and profit.

Actually, there’s no real profit involved, but boy is it fun.

Recently our beloved World of Warcraft has been seeing a horrible number of bots plaguing the landscape, killing indiscriminately to farm experience, leather, and curved raptor talons. Much to the dismay of the more cognitive patrons of the realms, many of the creatures being endlessly slaughtered are also required as kills or for drops to finish quests. In an attempt to help lessen their numbers, I tried reporting several of the bots to the Game Masters (as botting is grounds for banning an account), but alas the official channels and processes are slow, and I am impatient.

So, I started harassing the occasional bot I passed simply out of spite, and in doing so discovered an amusing quirk in their programming. It appears that by interfering with their combat in a particular way, it’s possible to confuse the bot and cause it to target you once it finishes its current fight. Once it’s got you targetted it will follow you around for a while, and you can lead it into a large pack of mobs, or off a cliff…

Unfortunately I don’t have a parachute cloak, and couldn’t find a high enough cliff to kill him. He hearthed after a few minutes when he couldn’t get out, and eventually wound up back on his set path. Ok, so, leading a bot off a cliff and getting it stuck is pretty cool, but I think we could use a little more cowbell…

So I had another think and speculated on the possible programmatic causes of their erroneous behavior. After testing a few theories, I discovered something even more fun. If you flag yourself at the right time during your bot-baiting, you can actually get them to attack you and flag themselves (assuming they’re of the opposing faction, of course). Result: Dead Bot.

A lot faster results, and a lot more personally satisfying, than reporting them to a GM.

BOOYAH.

ARTSE!

Found on the 9th floor of the HSB… I’ll leave the interpretation up to your imaginations.

Rack ‘em up!

PLT1 is now a Pool Room. BYO cues and chalk.

http://www.ltmu.auckland.ac.nz/find_a_pool_room/303_g20.htm

More Pie!

Mmm Pie

Wang Van

Sorry the writing is so blurry, stupid jpeg..

For Daniel.

14:18 < @JonnyDoom> Ranzer: dont worry about the shopping….
14:18 < @JonnyDoom> PLAY CHRONO INSTEAD!
14:18 < @Ranzer> heh ;P
14:19 < @JonnyDoom> i expect a photo on PLT1 as proof.

HE’S ALL PRETTY! ^_^

His hair is all pretty but he needs to smile more! ;(
HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY what the fuck was in my tea..

OH GOD THEY’RE INVADING MEATSPACE!

How did they escape from the internet?! How are they able to interact with physical matter? How can we stop them? Do they have a giant army of robot drones delivering their spam? Or are they accessing public post-boxes and using our own mail system against us? Given the lack of adequate header information I will assume it must be the former. In this case our most obvious course of defense would be to set up closed mail boxes that only allow access to official postmen, but then comes the problem of authentication… perhaps a retinal scan or other bio-identification? But then all the mail boxes would need to be linked by some wide area network in order to keep them updated whenever the post office staff changed… hopefully someone else can come up with better solutions anyway.

[Topic censored by the Internet Police]

[09:17] *** Initial topic: the brains of christ are JIGGLY

[12:33] *** Rob-MGT has joined #plt1.
[12:33] Rob-MGT: are the @’s here?
[12:34] *** Balinor has signed off IRC (Quit: Chatzilla 0.9.72 [Firefox 1.5.0.2/2006030804]).
[12:36] *** arbscht has signed off IRC (Local kill by Rob-MGT (Topic in your channel not appropriate. You may come back, but the topic may not .You were killed by Rob-MGT)).
[12:36] *** Ranzer has signed off IRC (Local kill by Rob-MGT (Topic in your channel not appropriate. You may come back, but the topic may not .You were killed by Rob-MGT)).
[12:37] *** Atomix has signed off IRC (Local kill by Rob-MGT (Topic in your channel not appropriate. You may come back, but the topic may not .You were killed by Rob-MGT)).
[12:37] *** Nameeater has signed off IRC (Local kill by Rob-MGT (Topic in your channel not appropriate. You may come back, but the topic may not .You were killed by Rob-MGT)).
[12:37] *** You have been disconnected. Tue Apr 18 12:37:28 2006.

[12:50] *** Ranzer has changed the topic on channel #plt1 to we need to find a new network, suggestions welcome..