Marshall

Marshall (#32917) joined KoL in April of 2004. He found the game while killing time playing Kings of Chaos with coworkers, but while they continued to play a crappy link-farm game, he focused on KoL. Not a very social player, he didn't enter chat until level 5, when he went looking for a clan to join. Hashashin accepted Marshall into Knights of Round Square. He became known as the second-most prolific Turtle Tamer buffer in /trade, second to Xandria, and was one of the few players offering 'Megabuff' services of 1 million turns of Empathy of the Newt. Free-buffing in /trade was where he met Hotpasta, and in the summer of 2004 he left Knights of Round Square, who were floundering leaderless, to join Warehouse 23.

On August 24, 2004, Marshall and HotStuff found a PvP exploit that resulted in some heated controversy. Marshall explains:

Hotstuff determined that you could choose 'no stance' by remote form submission, and in so doing fight a PvP battle with no stat selected. This set up a fight in which the attacker would theoretically be able to win against anyone, regardless of stat differences. Hotstuff tried it out, and found out that he could win fights that were 'impossible'. He also learned, to his detriment, that while this bug could let the attacker win an impossible fight, it also made a strong attacker almost certainly lose. This gave HotStuff his 4th PvP loss. He told me about the bug, and I started beating on it. Literally the next day, Sharpie2Pen was offering a huge bounty for any PvP wins against him. Hotpasta contacted me, and asked me if I could beat him with Bach (her multi that was the proper level and in PvP). I saw here a perfect testbed. She was barely level 15, with 'normal' stats, and Sharpie was level 15 with a huge substat imbalance. I took over Bach, wrote the form submission script that would PvP without choosing a stance, and at the last minute decided to test a race condition, and had my script submit the form approximately 50 times. On the 13th submission, the exploit worked, and Sharpie2Pen lost. The bug had two main parts, and they were both corrected quickly by Jick. The first was allowing you to bypass the stance selection (Jick required a stance be chosen), and the second was to check to make sure your PvP attack count was actually checked against the database as they came in (Basically, the same code that prevents you from drinking 4 drinks when you only have 1 was added to the PvP attack code.)

However, Sharpie2pen (#138650), a multi of Sealh8r (#129383), was logged in at the time of the attack, and a war of words began. Seal (as Sharpie) immediately started a thread in the forums, entitled "Fuck This", in which he detailed the exploit that had cost him his first PvP loss (he now had a record of 264-1), and posted all the messages he received from Bach (#108302) that said "Bach tried to you, but you managed to win the fight", without a stat specified. Jick quickly patched the holes, but never restored Sharpie2pen's undefeated record; Sealh8r, citing the exploit, refused to pay out the 5 billion meat prize to Bach or Marshall.

In the fall of 2004, Marshall was given Dev server access, a precursor to the current Dev team.

In October of 2004, Marshall became leader of Warehouse 23, after Kung Fu Joe officially retired from the position.

On December 9, 2004, Marshall and Fnord7 were awarded Bigger Bugfinder Blades for uncovering an infinite dupe bug. Marshall recalls:

18,000 Mr. As were on a character, and Jick was afraid they were duped. While he was working on fixing the problem of 18,000 Mr. As, I realized a dupe bug might be on the loose. I had had an idea of a dupe bug for quite some time, but had never bothered to test it... well, this seemed like the time. The exploit required you to use the message system, multiple servers, and race conditions to send yourself more items than you actually had. The exploit worked, and was confirmed. Fnord and I decided not to exploit the bug, as with 18K A's loose, Jick didn't need anymore stress. However, I did keep a duped Chicken Brimstone Sandwich. Interestingly enough, the Mr. As were a clerical error, not a dupe bug.

In February of 2005, Marshall was tapped as moderator of the newly created PvP chat channel, where he, along with several notable power players, molded the channel into a haven for PvPers, powerplayers, and people who were more interested in serious game mechanics.

Also, in February of 2005, Marshall was auctioned off to the Trade Foundation, a charity group. He was won jointly by Hotpasta and c00c00c00, with a winning bid of a Talisman of Baio, a Crazy Bastard Sword, and a Hypnodisk. Each of the winners received:

• 23 turns of farming every day
• 'Owned by Hotpasta and c00c00c00' in his profile for one month
• 100 turns of The Smile of Mr. A. every day
• 2300 turns of Ghostly Shell
• 2300 turns of Astral Shell
• 2300 turns of Reptilian Fortitude
• 2300 turns of Tenacity of the Snapper
• 2300 turns of Empathy of the Newt
• 23 spectral pickles and a Hanukkimbo dreidl
• A PvP attack on the target of their choice every day

In March of 2005, Marshall was chosen to be one of the ascension testers. Spending one final day PvPing, he then took the plunge into ascension testing, becoming a level 1 character and having his profile obfuscated for the next several months. He spent several hundred thousand turns testing ascension, finding a couple of bugs, including one that allowed infinite stats.

In the summer of 2005, Marshall stepped down as leader of Warehouse 23, giving the leadership to Hotpasta.

As of February of 2006, Marshall hangs out in the /pvp channel, testing new content with the rest of the dev team. He is currently the head of a committee of high-profile PvPers, creating a proposal for a PvP revamp to take into account the post-ascension KoL playerbase.