announcements

Dragon Summoner pointed out this surprising fact[*] to me...

[*] It depends a little on how you look at things though.

First step is to find out when bots2 started. The first entry on archive.org for bots2.net is 2002-02-14, which if you then click into the version history, will show the earliest update as:

2002-01-20 -- Everything seems to work, so this will be version 2.0.

So let's conclude that bots2 started on 2002-01-20.

Next step is to find out when bots2 ended. This is doable with my old Bots Unauthorized website which tracked a lot of bots2 stats, including hourly scrapes of hall of fame data. I remembered that it was around the end of January 2010 that the game got hacked for the last time. Looking into BU, I see the 2010-01-25 stats are available, but the 2010-01-26 stats are not, so let's conclude that bots2 ended on 2010-01-25.

From the above, let's then say that bots2 ran for 2,927 days (8 years, 5 days).

Now for bots4. There are 3 possible start dates, depending on how you look at things:

• Start of closed beta: 2010-09-29
• Start of open beta: 2011-03-07
• Official "release": 2011-07-01

And here's how long after each of those dates 2,928 days is (i.e. 1 day longer than bots2 ran):

• Start of closed beta + bots2 lifetime + 1 day: 2018-10-05 (153 days ago)
• Start of open beta + bots2 lifetime + 1 day: 2019-03-13 (6 days from now)
• Official "release" + bots2 lifetime + 1 day: 2019-07-07 (122 days from now)

And so in conclusion:

• If you see closed beta as the start of bots4, then bots4 surpassed bots2 several months ago.
• If you see open beta as the start of bots4, then bots4 will surpass bots2 within a week.
• If you see the official "release" as the start of bots4, then bots4 will suprass bots2 in a few months.

Some closing remarks: It's really pretty surprising that the game is still going relatively strong after all this time. Like many of you, I was originally hooked on bots2 in the early days, drawn in by the niche game mechanics and kept around by the community aspect. It's pretty weird to still be here nearly 2 decades later. I'm thankful for everyone that's stuck around, those that have returned after breaks, and yet more that have rediscovered the game after years away. You all are the lifeblood of the game, without which this would just be a weird little ghost town. Thanks also to floR for so much of the original game design and inspiration for the majority of bots4.

It's been a blast! Here's to the next decade.

This is actually surprising, i would say bots4 had to run for like 5 more years to match bots2.

Anyway, lets do at least 10 more.

Pretty crazy. Personally I'd consider open beta the actual start, so I'll reserve my celebrations for a few more days ;)

2010-12-21 12:25:36 [8 years, 77 days ago] - grats on surpassing bots2 Ender. I'm still having fun, so please keep it up!

i never like the small print so ill ignore the (*) en say yay \o// grats for this achievement ender and your welcome for me adding my little piece of stone to the bots4 basket

Time for B.O.T.S6 and this time around allow autoclickers since, after all, the name is Battle Of The Scripts.

Built: 2010-10-05 09:50:09 [8 years, 175 days ago]

Built: 2010-12-09 10:11:36 [8 years, 111 days ago]

Built : 2010-09-30 05:56:41 [8 years, 181 days ago]

Hey mom, I'm on the news!

Built: 2010-09-30 17:17:14 [8 years, 182 days ago]

Damn

A little late to the party: Built: 2011-03-07 19:37:24 [8 years, 24 days ago]

Different bot (Zal bot, level 133): 2011-01-01 21:27:14 [8 years, 89 days ago]

I was mostly just skeptical about joining. Mind you I was under the assumption it was going to be a bit more like bots2. Boy howdy, was I wrong.

2010-09-29 13:28:47 [8 years, 186 days ago]

But then again you didnt play that bot 8 years ago ;)

Your correct I certainly didn’t, although I did play it 6 years ago :P

Nice job Wiggin :)