Entry tags:

A Wanker Is You!
Background: Kingdom of Loathing is a browser-based online RPG. Despite the general silly tone and black-and-white stick figure drawings, it's a fairly complicated game, perpetually in development. Player characters don't actually meet each other in the world like in MUDs, but there is limited interaction with other players, such as throwing bricks at them, TP'ing their house (or tent), and also using certain buffing skills. Unusually for an online game, botting is not frowned upon, and there are many buffbots. The most famous of them is - was - Kingdom of Buffing (henceforth KoB), notable for being widely used, completely free (and not just low-costing), and possessing a convenient Web interface.

The juicy stuff: it starts with a post in the forums, pointing out that KoB is not responding to requests for buffs, and hoping its maintainer, Kinks, will fix it soon. But as the silence stretches, someone wonders if the bot was taken down due to "the Wiki drama".

Links are posted to the "Buffbot" talk page on KoLWiki, as well to an archived version of Kinks' Talk page. The picture emerges of a spat between Wiki admins and Kinks, which may or may not have resulted in the latter taking his ball and going home.

Back on the forum, some accusations are thrown at the Wiki admins for "taking away the best buffbot ever", some people think taking down the bot may have been overreacting a bit, but in the end most posts are either thanks to Kinks for all his hard work, or attempts to organise a new buffbot to fill in the void. There are still some wanky nuggets to be found in the thread if you take the time to look.

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	tofuknight 2010-09-28 10:15 pm UTC (link)
	That's... a lot of hissy. I kinda admire the one person who's all "I admit that I have no point and no way to fix it; that I am just bitching for the sake of bitching". (Reply to this)(Thread)

	keri 2010-09-28 10:59 pm UTC (link)
	The GD section of the KoL forums are always like that, to be perfectly honest. I'm not surprised if the wiki talk pages are, too. It's fun every December when Mr Skullhead (one of the creators of the game) gets so sick of the bitching he lets out a curse-filled rant. Last year's was particularly amusing, iirc. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	stinksap 2010-09-29 01:23 am UTC (link)
	Skullys rants are a Crimbo tradition now, Forum rugulars look forward to them, and Mr Skullhead admits he has come to look forward to writing them. Yay Crimbo! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	keri 2010-09-29 02:54 am UTC (link)
	I hadn't heard about him looking forward to writing them. Nice :D (Reply to this)(Parent)

keri
2010-09-28 10:56 pm UTC (link)

This came up again? I thought everyone had agreed months ago that Kinks was being flouncy and moved on.

I...I don't go to the forums very much. I get too sick of the bickering about what's optimal for speed runs and nitpicking over numbers. (Though the Hippo Tutu thread was pretty inspired. I'm jealous that I couldn't afford/get the special KoLCon Hippo Ballerina familiar.)

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meagenimage
2010-09-28 11:37 pm UTC (link)

Aw man, did I just do some equivalent of "triumphantly discovering a moment of bigotry in Fandom Secrets comments"? Sorry, I don't visit the forums often. :( I should only report wank in places I know well so I know it's fresh and juicy.

That said, I kind of like the style - no "leaving forever 'cause Wiki admins r meeeeean" post, just quietly take down your contributions to the community and vanish into the night. Only *kind of* admire though, because really, "if I don't get my own Wiki page then NOBODY GETS BUFFS"?

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keri
2010-09-28 11:42 pm UTC (link)

Nah, this was pretty wanky when it was live, iirc, and it's not like the KoL forums aren't ever wanky as hell (oh god they are, they really are).

I just wasn't sure if it got revived, because sometimes things do, and I haven't been paying attention to the forums for a while, so I may've missed it.

ALSO. I think there might be more to this that I'm only vaguely recalling. Like a year or so ago, Kingdom of Buffing went down because of some server change? I can't remember if it was Kinks who did it or Jick and Skully banned the bot temporarily, but it used to get soooo backed up, especially at Crimbo or on Feast of Boris, and it could take a full day to get your buffs sent to you. There was a bit of a to-do in the chat channels, I think, and I know there was a lot of whinging. (It may be more like two years ago, because there was this one guy who got permabanned for a) being an ass and 2) using a bot to play the mall, but which seriously overloaded KoL's servers. That was pretty hilarious. We haven't had any really good public bans for asshole behaviour recently...)

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stinksap
2010-09-29 01:31 am UTC (link)

Thing s Kinks has flounced before, and came back after being wooed via email and donations.
This time the camels back seems to be irrevocably broken.
The thread was recently revived because one of the replacement buffbots has been having some down time while it ascends to perm a few more skills.

Now if you want a fun wank, read the thread starting here;
http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=184075
Continuing here;
http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=184102
And mocked and locked here;
http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=184103

In short- people have had bad experiences getting help in the Newbie chat channel. /newbie regulars get offended and say it aint so, more regulars pop up and say yes, there are sometimes problems, and /normal is even worse.
In the interest of full disclosure I am 'Entwhistle' in that thread and both Entwhistle and Stinksap are pups of mine in KOL.

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keri
2010-09-29 03:03 am UTC (link)

Oh, jeez, that first thread. I avoid every thread that playhavok starts. It's just not worth wading through his posts to see the bickering. :/

Though, to be fair, it's usually the mocking threads that get to the meat of the problem and are the only ones I find worth reading.

Also: chat problems, so true. That's why I never budge from KoLA chat. (I am bloody jacky in game)

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stinksap
2010-10-01 04:38 am UTC (link)
Me?
No, no WoW. KOL and a little Neopets waste quite enough of my time.
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lady7jane
2010-09-28 11:23 pm UTC (link)
So long and thanks for all the buffs

Heh. That's pretty cute.
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entrenous88
2010-09-29 01:01 am UTC (link)
I keep reading "Buffybots", and thinking, "Vampires of the world, be-ware!"
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spawn_of_kong
2010-09-29 01:19 am UTC (link)
Oh good, I'm not the only one.
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duraniedrama
2010-09-29 06:48 am UTC (link)
Funnily enough, there IS something called a "Buffybot" in Second Life--it was used to eject and ban players of an inworld vampire RPG called Bloodlines, since some players had a bad habit of trying to bite random avatars to get their blood points up.
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ekaterinv
2010-09-29 01:53 am UTC (link)
There's something beautiful about people treating Kingdom of Loathing as serious business.
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bienegold
2010-09-29 04:06 am UTC (link)
It's more likely than you think!

A long-time mod was in /games and making jokes about banning people, and this noob started pming me about what stupid bullshit it was.

All I have so say is that if you don't like stupid bullshit, KoL may not be the game for you.
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solle
2010-09-29 10:03 am UTC (link)
I played KoL for a while, but I didn't like how ridiculously obscure some of the puzzle solutions were. Especially the final dungeon/battle.

I loved my Clockwork Grapefruit, though.
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fern_on_fen
2010-09-29 07:15 pm UTC (link)
You know, there is such a thing as walkthroughs. Just saying.
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tarash
2010-09-30 01:14 pm UTC (link)
Definitely, I love the KOLWiki.
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grapefruitzzz
2010-09-29 02:26 pm UTC (link)
KOL <3

although I sort of play it in spurts every six months. I think it needs a free-internet and undersupervised office job to be appreciated at its best :D
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insanityprelude
2010-09-30 12:13 am UTC (link)
Oh hey, KoL. I was just thinking yesterday I ought to get back into playing that.
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attilathebun
2010-09-30 01:39 am UTC (link)
See, stuff like this is why, when I played, I stayed in the Art Forum and only the Art Forum.

Man, just the other day I was really missing it too.
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