Image by Dante Inferno via Flickr

After three years of literally doing nothing, I will stop. This goes as far as it covers IdleRPG, a roleplaying game where your only way to achieve something is to do nothing for a long time.

I was attracted to IdleRPG when I found out that it is one of the much frequented IRC channels on Freenode. Typically, there are more than 50 players online, for years.

So what is the game about? You register a character, give it a name, class, and alignment, and then start playing. Which is - idling. My character is "Bush and his pony", of class "president and pony". Once you are online in the chat, the game plays itself. To reach the next level, you have to wait a certain amount of time (something like 10 minutes for the first level). The higher you are, the longer it takes to reach next level. The only thing you have to care for is to stay online for a long time, every time you disconnect you get punished by added time to your "clock" to reach next level.

At my last level, 49, it took about 10 days to reach the next level. Now I have reached level 50 and maxed out: as I am really online to play, I can't reach 51 realistically, every time I log off I lose about 3.8 hours. Given that I log on/off two times a day, I lose more time than I am online. Thats it! I reached my goal and maxed out. Of course, Gunnar's quest for semi-goddom in nethack was much more noble.

To go on from this point, I would have to set up a IRC command-line client on my linux box to idle for me, which would be cheating. So I rather say: it was an excellent time of idling, I had a lot of fun, BushAndHisPony maxed out, and Barack Obama is now president. The right moment to send Bush and his Pony into retirement. Greetings to all idlers out there, I am gone!

At the end, I own the following items:

• helm: 72 [Mattt's Omniscience Grand Crown]


• ring: 69 [Juliet's Glorious Ring of Sparkliness]


• tunic: 104 [Res0's Protectorate Plate Mail]

And this is what happened in the last days of playing, the full story here:

[01/28/09 04:23:17] bushAndHisPony stopped using dial-up! This wondrous godsend has accelerated them 0 days, 03:37:34 towards level 50.
[01/28/09 07:38:21] nohar [845/1207] has challenged bushAndHisPony [423/488] in combat and won! 8 days, 01:11:32 is removed from nohar's clock.
[01/29/09 08:05:22] infe [226/553] has challenged bushAndHisPony [261/488] in combat and lost! 0 days, 14:29:07 is added to infe's clock.
[01/29/09 21:42:02] simmy [248/660] has challenged bushAndHisPony [434/488] in combat and lost! 0 days, 07:29:34 is added to simmy's clock.
[01/29/09 23:42:14] bushAndHisPony [34/488] has challenged MegaBunny [103/492] in combat and lost! 0 days, 02:28:31 is added to bushAndHisPony's clock.
[02/02/09 03:41:54] bushAndHisPony [326/488] has come upon praetorian [116/819] and taken them in combat! 0 days, 03:47:10 is removed from bushAndHisPony's clock.
[02/02/09 05:46:15] geekboi, FreeBeak, and integral [959/2077] have team battled bushAndHisPony, VxD, and betterworld [1418/2191] and lost! 0 days, 05:39:17 is added to their clocks.
[02/02/09 11:48:39] integral [500/550] has come upon bushAndHisPony [146/488] and taken them in combat! 0 days, 03:20:48 is removed from integral's clock.
[02/04/09 10:56:55] bushAndHisPony [344/488] has challenged pravus [389/657] in combat and lost! 0 days, 00:31:29 is added to bushAndHisPony's clock.
[02/09/09 03:10:57] nohar [839/1207] has come upon bushAndHisPony [442/488] and taken them in combat! 1 day, 20:31:33 is removed from nohar's clock.
[02/11/09 00:16:49] bushAndHisPony [446/488] has challenged barbarian [133/485] in combat and won! 0 days, 03:30:18 is removed from bushAndHisPony's clock.
[02/16/09 02:01:41] Verily I say unto thee, the Heavens have burst forth, and the blessed hand of God carried bushAndHisPony 0 days, 22:35:43 toward level 50.
[02/16/09 07:31:15] simmy [43/666] has challenged bushAndHisPony [411/488] in combat and lost! 3 days, 11:34:26 is added to simmy's clock.
[02/19/09 02:24:46] bushAndHisPony is forsaken by his evil god. 0 days, 00:08:32 is added to his clock.
[02/19/09 19:31:44] bushAndHisPony [1/488] has challenged Ol'M00sato [501/728] in combat and lost! 0 days, 22:16:33 is added to bushAndHisPony's clock.
[02/19/09 20:46:31] bushAndHisPony [3/488] has come upon Shuriq [184/306] and been defeated in combat! 0 days, 20:57:49 is added to bushAndHisPony's clock.