Warning : There is a big ol’ ass in this article that may not be appropriate for work. Oh, there is also a picture of one as well. You have been warned.
Grunts R Us excitedly reported yesterday that someone finally reached the Halo 3 rank of 5 Star General. The medal is shiny and new. The methods used to get the medal however are old and tiresome.
ProJecT TimeZ used the tried and true technique of “boosting” to reach this elusive rank. If you are not familiar with that word in this sense, in the simplest of terms it means the games this person played to achieve this rank were all rigged. This gamer has approximately 4,600 games of Social Doubles where he consistently plays the same team over and over. Each time the other team quits, thus “boosting” the remaining team’s experience. It only takes two people to do this as each person can sign in a dummy guest account. Apparently if you do it over 4,600 times you can be a 5 Star General. I believe it also makes you a 5 Star Ass. I made him a special medal, all five stars included.
I was interested in knowing just how much time this gamer spent on achieving this picture he now gets next to his gamertag. I went to his 11th page of games where he plays through all 25 of those games in one sitting. It took him 29 minutes 47 seconds to boost through those 25 games. If you divide 1,787 (the number of seconds) by 25 (the number of games), you get an average of 71.48 meaning it takes him approximately 71.48 seconds to complete each boosted game. Multiply that number by 4,600 (the approximate number of games he has boosted in Social Doubles) and you get the figure of 5,480 minutes (or 328,808 seconds) he has wasted on this endeavor. Over ninety hours (91.33) spent on achieving a picture with five stars on it. Almost four complete days (3.81) spent on something that bears no significance on real life. All of that time spent starting games and quitting games without actually playing them or enjoying them.
With all that wasted time he could have :
- watched 61 (90 minute) movies
- flown the Concord round trip from New York to London and back again 14 times
- gone to the moon (he would have only had enough time for one leg though so I guess he isn’t coming back)
- watched 27 college football games
- watched 33 baseball games
- thrown 704,085 fastballs
- had sex 196 times (the US average is 28 minutes per episode)
- had sex 548 times if he lived in Thailand (they average 10 minutes per episode)
- written this article 69 times
- danced to Feels Just Like It Should on DDR Universe 1455 times
- played Free Bird on Guitar Hero II 609 times
And most importantly, he could have played 457 real games of Halo 3.
*What are your ideas of other things he could have done with his time?
Posted by Blake on November 7, 2007 at 3:55 am
Not be gay.
Posted by Silvercube on November 7, 2007 at 5:21 am
lol, you like that DDR song? There are better options…
Umm so he got a rank? Big Deal.. He gets his 15 minutes of fame..
Ranks are meaningless to me.
What would I have done in that time?
1)Eat food!
2)Do homework
3)Play other games besides Halo
4)Sleep.
5)Would go and visit family.. if I had money : )
Posted by Henri on November 7, 2007 at 6:17 am
6) Leave house. Meet and/or talk with other human beings.
Posted by ResilientMonkey on November 7, 2007 at 6:34 am
Let see, at roughly 10 hours each to play through campaign (I like to watch the cut-scenes and listen to the in-game dialog) he could have finished the fight 9 times. This would have kept him from wasting server time for those guys that actually want to play matchmaking.
Love the medal Angel, it’s perfect for him.
Posted by LittleMikey on November 7, 2007 at 7:08 am
One awesome post, I hate stat boosters and I think people should do this game the old fashioned way ^_^;
Posted by Helveck on November 7, 2007 at 7:19 am
I hope he reads this article, and realizes how much of his pathetic life he is wasted…and just fast tracks the rest of it with a rope now. Honestly, people who boost…no lives, no respect, no real gain. Cut it the f–k out. ;)
Thats my two cents =D
Posted by Excardon on November 7, 2007 at 7:23 am
Just something really dumb to do. Now if he wants to play a real game, he’s going to get matched up against people who have earned high ranks legitally. This means he’s just going to get his ass handed to him whenever he tries to play.
Posted by solidmercury on November 7, 2007 at 8:08 am
Actually, Excardon, the sad thing is, his EXP rank has no bearing on who he’s matched with… However, unless he cheated, he actually HAS earned his rank of 50 that’s required to be a general. You would think knowing he has a really high Skill level would be enough, but he had to go and prove he was still an insecure douche by EXP whoring.
Posted by Smurfa on November 7, 2007 at 8:19 am
Hahaha, nice medal angel. I would have been impressed if he actually had managed to become a 5 star general, but as I see it know he is no more than a recruit. Cheaters are the scum of the Earth.
Posted by Tony on November 7, 2007 at 8:26 am
Look on the bright side — he’s one less Halo 3 kiddie we’ll have to deal with in our matches. I say good riddance.
On a serious note, how can Bungie not catch something like this? Seems like a simple query to catch these kinds of shenanigans.
Posted by Smokeblue on November 7, 2007 at 8:50 am
Ok, while I have no shortage of hatred and disgust reserved for cheaters, especially those who made Halo 2 a miserable experience at times, for the sake of devil’s advocate, I’d like to point something out here. While, through the use of boosting, this guy has signifcantly decreased the time it would have taken him to earn his 5-star image, it’s not as though he wouldn’t have eventually gotten it anyway. While you can cheat your way to higher experience, you can’t do the same with rank; a point Bungie made clear when that Basketball lamer admited to boosting a few weeks back. So his rank of 50 is a genuine marker of skill. Experience, meanwhile, is really just a representation of how long you’ve been playing. Unless a player is just losing ridiculous amounts of games (in which case he’d never have gotten a rank of 50, anyway), his experience is going to consistantly climb. So, yeah, this guy cheated the system to to save time, but that’s all he really saved. He still had to earn his rank the same as all of us.
That all being said, it’s incredibley lame that this guy wasted 91 hours garnering all the experience, especially since we can all see how he did it. It’s not like he’s the only person with a rank of 50, so being first to get the 5-stars without just playing the number of games needed to do so doesn’t really make him all that special. But it’s lame in a sort of sad, pathetic way. Not in a way that’s upsetting, at least to me.
I think we’d be better off forgetting this loser than making such a big deal out of it. I mean, really, the guy spent NINETY-ONE HOURS doing this. Don’t give him the satisfaction of being talked about. That’s my two cents, anyway.
Posted by Eric on November 7, 2007 at 8:55 am
Hahah, way to pwn this guy.
Posted by Brian on November 7, 2007 at 10:17 am
The only problem with saying that he earned a 50 still level is that skill level means nothing in halo 3 right now, that just means he played the game early and often before good players and everyone else got to the ranks they deserve. I’ve played against multiple 50’s, 49’s, et.c. and beat their asses. Skill level means nothing everyone has a high highest skill right now that played the game a lot right away. If they reset the skill levels but not the exp now that everyone has the game that’s gonna get it, then I’d be impressed, but honestly the skill and exp means nothing in Halo 3, in Halo 2 it was hard to get past 35 or so for the vast majority of players and people over 40 were legitimately good. I don’t give anyone credit for their highest skills, including myself, cuz I know who I played against getting there, and it wasn’t the cream of the crop. Hopefully when Bungie finally gives us an update and some maps they reset the skills
Posted by bs angel on November 7, 2007 at 10:51 am
Excellent points.
One thing I would like to stress is that boosting is cheating. It doesn’t matter if it is in an unranked playlist, cheating is cheating regardless of the category you choose to do it in.
I am thankful that this person’s boosting did not affect anybody else’s playing experience. Looking at his games, he had partners in crime helping him with his goal. So your playing experience and my playing experience remains unmarred. What is ruined is the first person who would have reached that experience level legitimately. But in the whole scope of things, our skill levels and our experience points are as important or not important as we make them regardless of how other people are achieving their goals.
Posted by Smokeblue on November 7, 2007 at 10:58 am
@ Brian
Well, that’s alegitimate point. But to me, that just makes the ranking in general less impressive, and makes this even less worth getting upset about. Much like the Hayabusa helmet and the katana, these symbols are becoming so pervasive that no one is likely to be that amazed by them anymore now that anyone can get them, without really working that hard for it. Which means he spent 91 hours for something no one will care about. Again, that’s not infuriating, it’s both hilarious and pathetic.
Posted by bs angel on November 7, 2007 at 11:02 am
Smokeblue, that is the exact thing that has me so intrigued. When I first heard this story, I wasn’t angry or upset about the cheating. Instead I was curious how much time he spent to reach this goal. That is why I did all the number crunching. Almost four entire days is an extremely long amount of time to just be sitting there starting and quitting games. I find it absolutely fascinating what some people will do for a little picture next to their name.
Posted by Smokeblue on November 7, 2007 at 11:04 am
@ bs angel
That’s very true, it is cheating. But in this case, it’s something so petty and unimportant, that I just don’t see expending the effort to be upset about it.
As for its effect on the first legitimate player to earn the experience: as Brian pointed out, the ranking system as already flawed thanks to the initially small pool of players at launch that allowed many to climb the ladders before really strong competition could even things out. So even if this douche hadn’t faked his way to the top of experience, the next person to take the General rating would still have obtained his rank without having to put up a real fight.
Put another way, if this guy’s level 50 isn’t worth much, then neither is the next guy’s. The general rank would have been more or less meaningless no matter who captured it first.
He is still a douche, though, and I wholly support his being awarded the Medal of Assery.
Posted by Smokeblue on November 7, 2007 at 11:08 am
@bs angel
Oh, no kidding. I think the whole achievements craze is really a little silly. For my part, I like games that offer achievements for unique or challenging things that I might of otherwise not thought or bothered to do. There’s a ton of these in the Orange Box, for instance, where the achievements encourage you to kill enemies with sinks and other bizzare tasks. It adds a lot of flavor to some games, and helps you to get the most out of them. But playing through Barbie’s Cosmotology School for 1000 points just seems asinine and inane. Your gamer score really earns you nothing, not even notiroity, and reflects nothing more than the number of things you’ve played, and for how long. Faking that, or padding it with games you don’t care about is just a monumental waste of time, it’s absurd.
And the best thing about it is that by and large, the only people hurt by this are the people wasting their time.
Posted by bs angel on November 7, 2007 at 11:11 am
Barbie’s Cosmetology School? Why have I not heard of this game?!
We are very much on the same page. The achievements I enjoy the most are the ones they make you reach for and the ones that add to the replay value of the game. Quake was the same way with the weapon achievements and I had a blast pushing myself to get those. Sometimes they add an extra element to the game. Other times they don’t.
I personally don’t worry much about achievements, ranks, and things of that matter. To make a point, I just achieved my first silver rank last weekend. I am not even sure what it is called, but I no longer have my gold bars! LOL … All I want is a good game. The rest doesn’t matter to me.
Posted by Smokeblue on November 7, 2007 at 11:13 am
@bs angel
I should mention that alot of the tone in my response came from how others were reacting to this guy, not neccessarily you.
Specifcally, Louis Wu over at HBO seemed particularly incessed about it, and I was mainly addressing how getting offended and upset over something like this isn’t really worthwhile. Unlke the standbyers and modderins in Halo 2, faking one’s rank doesn’t really affect anyone else. Even if the next person to take the General rating had earned it in every sense of the word, he’d still be celebrated thanks to our ability to determine how exactly they achieved it. Meanwhile, Senor Douche over here will be forgotten before very long at all.
As an added bonus, if he really does suck, he either has to stop playing the playlist he’s a 50 in, and thus save us all having to play with him, or continue playing until he ranks down from suckage and loses his Medal. Win/win far as I can tell :-).
Posted by Smokeblue on November 7, 2007 at 11:18 am
@bs angel
Yeah, I think we’re just reaffirming how much we agree at this point :-P.
I might as well take the opportunity to commend you on an excellent blog, though, since I’ve been following it for a long time now. It’s great to see the Halo community and the gaming community at large expanding in scope so much. There’s a lot of old school geeks who see the culture becoming mainstream as losing our individuality to the same people who ostrizized us in the past. It’s nice to see that more than likely all it really means is finding that the world is filled with people who were geeks all along and simply needed a calling to bring them out ^_^.
Posted by bs angel on November 7, 2007 at 11:19 am
I didn’t pick up any tone from you at all. I love it when discussions break out and people let their thoughts known. There is such a wide variety of opinions on subjects like this, it is quite interesting.
Yes, Louis Wu seems irritated by it. I wonder if perhaps there are greater repercussions from things like that than what immediately come to mind. He mentioned the H2 leaderboards that got demolished because of all the cheaters. That affected numerous players that worked hard and legitimately for their ranks to see where they stand against the greater community. I wonder how else things like this could affect the general Halo 3 gaming population. I am going to ponder that one.
(And thank you for your kind words. I am thankful I have reached an age where I am who I am and I have no qualms about it. I am geek, hear me roar!)
Posted by Smokeblue on November 7, 2007 at 11:26 am
@bs angel
Yeah, the H2 boards got corrupted pretty bad. But as Bungie pointed out, the way the system works this time around keeps experience boosting from having the same effect. It’s still cheating, but it’s telling that Bungie as acknowledged it’s not something they intend to punish.
The fact is, the TrueSkill level ranks are the real sign of skill, and so far, it doesn’t seem people have found a way to cheat them. Even so, as Brian mentioned, most of the current high rankers got up there before the real competition showed up to play, so already there validity is a bit in question. I wouldn’t be all the suprised to find Bungie resetting them around the release of the new maps to help even the score. And if that happens, it won’t because of Douchey McDoucherson (ya like all the new variants I’m coming up with here :-P), but because of the unavoidable consequence of having a smaller players pool at launch.
Oh and I think Barbie’s Cosmatology School got delayed so they could add normal mapping to the botox-smiles on the game characters ;-).
Posted by momohine on November 7, 2007 at 12:09 pm
First of all, great blog!
And what does Bungie think of this? I hope that they call him out on it in their weekly update. I know they don’t like cheaters. :)
This guy is clearly lame.
Please continue to publish fabulous posts!!!
Posted by Dustin on November 7, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Well, maybe this guy didn’t do it for the “picture”, quite honestly he just got more out of this than just a picture, he got front page of HBO and a few people writing a whole story about him. HE got fame and im sure he is satisfied no matter what.
Although, yes he could have been spending more time earning his fame honrably.
Posted by Boosting to 5 Star Douchebaggery at grog.blog on November 7, 2007 at 3:15 pm
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Posted by Morpheus on November 7, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Hopefully, they’ve banned the bastard.
Posted by typingisnotactivism on November 7, 2007 at 7:31 pm
i guess he could have researched and written this post about 60 times….
Posted by fruffy on November 7, 2007 at 7:42 pm
I like the fact that you brought up sex. There is no way a guy who plays (cheats at) Halo this much gets laid often. I’m guessing he could have had sex 2700 times. . . with himself. I’d bet he’d be looking at that picture with 5 stars on it the whole time too.
Posted by Stickman on November 7, 2007 at 8:26 pm
i love playing Halo, theres no need in boosting your rank, i dont even care about mine.
Posted by Cunbelin on November 7, 2007 at 10:19 pm
I think the frustration comes from years of seeing fun things spoiled by people. I mean it’s not terribly fun when someone reaches a mile mark in your game but only by abusing the system. Of course there is always the play to win school of thought, I tend to enjoy my scrubhood though.
Posted by TPA Nightmare on November 7, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Hopefully having reached his goal of:
A. Becoming a general grade Ass-Hole
B. Cheating
C. Wasting a lot of time
D. Getting a small picture next to his name
He will now leave Halo forever, never to be seen again…
Posted by tuttysan on November 7, 2007 at 11:31 pm
She could have practiced Yoga Nidra 182 times and elevate himself to a higher spiritual state.
Posted by Angry Chinese Driver on November 8, 2007 at 12:51 am
Hey, this is Halo 3…it’s expected that someone would do this!
And “ProJecT TimeZ” just so happened to be That Guy.
Posted by Cody on November 8, 2007 at 1:55 am
Achievements like that are only worth it if you don’t cheat. And even then, it still makes you look pretty sad to have wasted so much time on a video game. Not that it doesn’t with this guy…
I don’t understand the point behind cheating like this. Like in CS or other multiplayer games. Sure, it racks up the kills, but it doesn’t make you a better player. If someone catches you when your aimbot isn’t on, you’re still going to suck. It just ruins the experience for the rest of us. I think I’d rather reach that rank over a few hundred hours of casual, on-and-off playing than 91 hours of cheating.
Posted by Josh on November 8, 2007 at 4:10 am
It took me a while to realise, a while ago, that there was a reason why I, a Sergeant (I said a while ago :P) could run rings around most of the Majors I played.
I really, really, don’t get the point of doing this.
Posted by Cindy on November 8, 2007 at 8:01 am
It seems no matter what game is played, there are always A$$HATS like this guy who have to be #1 at any cost.
Hopefully, at some point he will realize it is a ‘hollow’ accomplishment at best.
Posted by XMixMasterX on November 8, 2007 at 10:14 am
You’re awesome – thanks for making boosters look like the asses they are.
Much love
PS – love the title
Posted by Ben on November 8, 2007 at 10:36 am
Met a real, live girl (his mom doesn’t count – nor his sister).
Posted by psyducksworld on November 8, 2007 at 11:10 am
What could he have done with this time? Maybe get a life.
Ultimately, people like that don’t bother me as long as their cheating ways don’t affect my game. I like achievements, but I would never cheat to get any of them. I mean, really, what a colossal waste of time to sit there for so many hours and not even play a game. The fact that he spent so much time for something that matters so little is funny to me. And you know this dorko is bragging to everyone who’ll listen that he’s the greatest gamer evahrz1!1!11!!!, and that he pwnzorz everyone in Halo, etc.
So, fine, you are teh 1337 Halo player. Sure you cheated, but you have a sexay medal, so, like, you’re cool.
Posted by Pfhoenix on November 9, 2007 at 9:05 am
In the end, people that boost up their skill/rank only make it that much easier for those that earn their skill/rank to go up higher faster by beating up on the inflated people.
Posted by roebigbro on November 14, 2007 at 8:44 am
Boosters and other Cheaters are so GAY. Most of the world knows this but somehow they still think they are so kewl. Idiots they are. Yoda speak…
Posted by Fawad on November 22, 2007 at 4:45 am
Now the worst thing that can happen to him is that he gets stripped off the medal by Bungie for illegimate games..
LoLzzz
Posted by Halo 3: Lazy Bum Boosts For General Grade 4 Rank. « Game Ramble on November 22, 2007 at 4:08 pm
[...] a thread in the GamerchiX forum on xbox.com when someone posted a link to bs angel’s blog [here]. Apparently a lazy ass moron used boosting to get a Grade 4 medal/rank by his name. His gamertag is [...]
Posted by max. on November 24, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Go outside.
Posted by Jason on December 13, 2007 at 2:06 pm
@ Smokeblue
Just so you know once you get 50 as your highest skill it doesn’t matter if you go down, it goes off of highest ever achieved. Also I didn’t read all the comments so I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned, but I think he also boosted to get his 50. If you look back far enough and pay attention to his lone wolf games, he’s matched up with this HiTTman guy in every single one meaning they were entering the same games some how… I’m not sure if everyone he played was in on it but if you have 2 people working together in a ffa it’s pretty easy to get up.
Posted by sam ginge on January 17, 2008 at 3:34 pm
i think he could get a LIFE
Posted by Andrew King on January 24, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I played H3 with him last night lol, seemed like he was decent at the game but I was actually better.
Posted by Fercho Daemon on February 11, 2008 at 11:18 am
Well he got erased on Bungie.net i think, cause if you look for him he has no games at all. But he created a new tag:
http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Halo3/Default.aspx?player=ProJecT%20TimeZz
Posted by Slightly Good on March 12, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I loved this article.
Posted by thx 1337 on July 16, 2008 at 4:15 pm
you know if you boost in double exp it takes half the time