Public release of tool (HarmlessButler)
Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: The Caravanserai
Forum Description: A place to just chat about whatever takes your fancy, whether it's about Illyriad or not.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=1057
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 05:33
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Topic: Public release of tool (HarmlessButler)
Posted By: HonoredMule
Subject: Public release of tool (HarmlessButler)
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 02:45
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Many of you may have heard whispers of HarmlessButler, the game-UI-enhancing tool I developed several months ago to improve many of the annoyances found in the current UI and aid coordinated operations. We at Harmless kept it "secret" because A) it did help us operate more efficiently and effectively, which we felt we needed as a competitive edge over the initially-expected talents of our enemies, and B) more importantly, it served as bait for a spy-catching honeypot. Well, we no longer feel so threatened as an alliance in the current climate, where people instead seem to think we're untouchable...which I'll presume is the over-cautious voice of inexperience. And while HB could still serve its role in enticing spies to spring our canary traps, my vanity and desire to see greater in-game activity prevails. I can honestly say that using HarmlessButler is a substantial improvement in convenience and reduction in the workload of account maintenance, making it a valuable modification for any player. It is very likely that I'd not have stayed had I had to use the stock interface. HarmlessButler's attack-planning guide would also aid those who would oppose Harmless, and I considered removing them for the public release. However, I prefer to be able to say that I'm releasing the full product and offering to you every benefit that I sought for my own alliance members (with the exception of bits that tattled on spies). And, as I said, I'm really quite vain and want to see many people enjoy my work...particularly before the devs release a whole new interface that breaks HB and possibly renders it mostly obsolete. I would be remiss not to explicitly note that using 3rd-party userscripts is always dangerous, and you should never use them unless you trust the author and also the server that hosts his work. The security risks associated with userscripts are by no means trivial. I have sought to keep my work secure and safe, and operating within the game's rules, but offer no guaranties and disclaim myself of any liability for the results of using this script. If this doesn't scare you away, visit HarmlessButler's http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/wiki/Tool:HarmlessButler - new home on Arcanum Illyria to see a full feature listing and try it out for yourself. Please note that unlike many other userscripts, this one only works with Greasemonkey on Firefox. Chrome and Opera are sadly not supported due to a lack of essential features--particularly E4X (ECMAScript for XML, needed by my templating subsystem). *edited for grammar* |
Replies:
Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 04:08
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damm! it doesn't work on mac! ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 04:37
| If you're using Firefox with Greasemonky installed, it should. It's past my bedtime right now, but if you can provide more information about how it fails, I'll look into it tomorrow and see if I can help you. |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 04:40
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Your operating system should have 0 affect dude, its a greasemonkey plugin. I'll update in a few sec if its working. Confirming it works fine on a mac. Its a rather nicely written addition. Still pouring over the code. EDIT: What's the xml parser for the datafile_towns.xml stuff in there for?
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Posted By: Jerec Cross
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 07:02
This has already proved useful in the first 5 minutes of use! Very nice!  |
Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 10:32
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Hi all, I've received a number of private messages and Petitions regarding HarmlessButler in the last few hours, and thought it best to answer the Frequently Asked Questions here. The Questions mostly seem to revolve around: a) Whether HarmlessButler has been examined and approved by the GMs for use as an extension to the game b) the Security of your personal data within the tool We (the Illyriad team) haven't looked at the tool in any detail. However, many months ago HM did supply us with a copy of the tool for examination (if we wished to examine it) as well as a detailed description of what functionality it offers. As you can see from http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/wiki/Tool:HarmlessButler - HM's wiki page there are a couple of features that - as they were described to us by HM - we asked him to disable on the tool for their own internal use (as well as public use). Our primary concern was (and is) that the tool complies with the rules rules-regarding-third-party-tools_topic756.html - as laid out here , and we are assured that it does. Certainly the public release of HarmlessButler provides a fairly weighty assurance that it's not in breach of these rules. Also - as far as I understand it, and as seems to be the case from Larry's comments in this thread - the underlying code of the tool is available for examination so (after suitable review by any players technical enough to understand it) I would surmise that this should help address people's security concerns. The long and short of it is that HarmlessButler has NOT been 'vetted' or 'approved' by any of the Illyriad team - and whilst we believe it to be offered out transparently by H? to the public "as-is" and in good faith - we make absolutely no guarantees of any kind about HarmlessButler, because it is not our place to do so, and we have chosen not to do a technical review of this (or any other) third party tool. As HM himself says, "I would be remiss not to explicitly note that using 3rd-party userscripts is always dangerous, and you should never use them unless you trust the author and also the server that hosts his work." and we strongly agree with this statement - regarding this particular tool, as well as any and every tool that any and every third party developer might produce now or in the future. Best wishes, SC |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 13:51
A local copy of the datafile_towns.xml is stored in your browser as json tables for data lookup. This is how the script is able to provide more detailed information about various towns, players, etc. with which you are interacting. Otherwise every event would be linked to nothing but coordinates and you wouldn't even be able to tell if there's a town there let alone what player, alliance, race... If people wish to tinker with it, I can at some point provide some architectural overview and general documentation. It is somewhat divided into single-purpose subsystems, but in a way that's not made clear by their respective contents. |
Larry wrote:Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 14:00
Ah good point. And to clarify on code review: Its a greasemonkey script, meaning the file involved is a simple javascript file. Doing a right click -> save as on the wiki page HM linked to will download the code for review.
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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 14:11
Regarding this:
I have published some auxiliary material addressing this concern. It is rather sparse, but I will add more as I come up with it. In particular, you can at least know whether the script is capable of sniffing your login password on this or other sites. http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/wiki/How_to_Spot_Unsafe_Scripts - http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/wiki/How_to_Spot_Unsafe_Scripts |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 16:05
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Confirming that you shouldn't be in the least bit worried about it sniffing login info as it does include the relavent exclusions for login.asp. Furthermore I haven't found anything suspicious with regards to grabbing other data either. And realistically, I find it highly doubtful that HM would have included such code in this release as, when inevitable discovered, the PR catastrophe couldn't possibly be worth it.
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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 20:25
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The same version as published for my own alliance did not exclude login.asp. It would immediately fail to do anything at all because of the absence of in-game time to read, but I just hadn't bothered explicitly excluding it when I was only sharing with alliance members who implicitly trusted me. I didn't even notice this until I went to write the page warning that you should never use a script that can run on the login page...and mine did. *facepalm* And a note to my fellow alliance mates: if you already have it installed, then it does run on login.asp, and that will not change unless you uninstall and then re-install the public version. Upgrades do not update the list of includes and excludes. |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 21:48
| Alternatively, you can open greasemonkey and simply add http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/login.asp to the list of exceptions. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 21 Sep 2010 at 22:23
Good point. I'd make it http://*.illyriad.co.uk/login.asp instead though, just in case you and your install of the script are still kicking around when new servers open up. |
Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 22 Sep 2010 at 00:24
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ok let me clarify: damm! it doesn't work on safari! and when I try to download firefox, it gives me a message saying "safari can't open the page." ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 22 Sep 2010 at 00:41
www.getfirefox.com
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Posted By: Jerec Cross
Date Posted: 22 Sep 2010 at 01:36
| Ahhh Map Bookmarks! So nice! |
Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 22 Sep 2010 at 03:28
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sorry larry, still doesn't work. ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 22 Sep 2010 at 14:59
Do you know how to install add-ons? did you install greasemonkey? did you add butler as a script? "it doesn't work" isn't exactly that helpful for the purposes of troubleshooting...
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Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2010 at 01:31
what I meant was that when I tried to install firefox, it said that safari couldn't open the page. ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2010 at 04:03
| I can't concieve any good reasons (or even any bad reasons for that matter) why http://www.getfirefox.com - http://www.getfirefox.com won't work for you if the rest of the Internet does. |
Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2010 at 05:09
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a few other sites my cpu doesn't go to: www.gmail.com, the apple store, and various games (evony, tribal wars). ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2010 at 06:43
| Try this: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest-3.6/mac/en-US/Firefox%203.6.10.dmg - http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest-3.6/mac/en-US/Firefox%203.6.10.dmg |
Posted By: Laccy
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2010 at 10:06
Sounds like a variant of Conficker to me, have you run a virus check recently? |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2010 at 13:05
Conficker is a Windows-only virus. |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2010 at 13:12
You might want to get that checked out... is your hosts file all messed up or something?
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Posted By: naive
Date Posted: 23 Sep 2010 at 17:34
what crap!! there isn't even icons for the storehouse and warehouse!! 
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Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2010 at 01:25
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honoredmule- firefox auto downloaded all right, but when I clicked on the completed download it refused to install. I have had my computer looked at before, no problems was the diagnosis. ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2010 at 01:25
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the Âs may have something to do with it. ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2010 at 04:33
Yeah what's up with that btw? Your computer sounds pretty messed up tbh...
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Posted By: Laccy
Date Posted: 24 Sep 2010 at 16:13
Ah missed the bit where he was a Mac user. Figures. |
Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2010 at 00:52
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look at my post: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/whats-with-the-s_topic1034.html - http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/whats-with-the-s_topic1034.html ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 06 Oct 2010 at 00:03
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Quick note: A player from Toothless noted that he could not launch troops from cities that do not have Covert Ops researched. Apparently the checkbox that appears when it is researched is only invisible when not, so HarmlessButler would still make it checked by default, and then hitting "Send" would fail since the stratagem wasn't allowed yet. This never came up with older Harmless players who always research it as early as possible, but I do handle bug fixes for all users. A new version has been released to fix this particular bug. Note that you could always escape this issue by temporarily disabling the script, but I just want to clarify that this wasn't any kind of conspiracy to immobilize your troops.  |
Posted By: Jerec Cross
Date Posted: 21 Oct 2010 at 04:35
| I have a question. I have the Harmless Butler script but it still shows my old city coords since I have used the teleportation spell so it will go to those coords when you select a town under My Towns. However I just made bookmarks so it is not causing any problems, just wondering what you would suggest? I should note that I have updated the world database when it prompted me. |
Posted By: KillerPoodle
Date Posted: 21 Oct 2010 at 05:41
| try changing the city name |
Posted By: Jerec Cross
Date Posted: 21 Oct 2010 at 05:43
That did the trick. Thanks! 
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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 22 Oct 2010 at 22:20
I've released a major new version with very noteworthy new features. Users will want to upgrade as soon as possible.  New features: town grouping, notes, and tagging
Note that while renaming a city will delete its account-parsed data, user-generated data is stored separately. Original user data can be recovered by renaming the city to its original name. You'll have to copy the data yourself when permanently renaming cities though. |
Posted By: Larry
Date Posted: 22 Oct 2010 at 22:41
Could that data be tied to the game_id of the town such that the name doesn't matter?
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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 22 Oct 2010 at 23:22
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No it cannot. The interface is not kind enough to provide id for the current town from any page (at least in a manner that can be manageably deduced), so I have to use name as the unique (to the account) identifier for a town. Subsequently linking the town's metadata by id would be a huge hassle with a lot of extra function calls from within templates. This is already the ugliest piece of the script and needs to be kept as clean as possible. At any rate, such a change would require more extensive modification throughout the system than is worthwhile for a script that will be rendered obsolete with interface V2. If anyone has already downloaded, note that I introduced a bug in grouping order while separating user data from parsed data. Re-download to get the fix. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 25 Oct 2010 at 12:18
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I've got another big release today, and likely the last one for a while
(barring bugs to fix). The two big new features are unit/resource production hints and queue completion events which should both save time spent looking for what needs done and how much of it to do. Full changelog:
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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 29 Oct 2010 at 14:49
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Ok, this one will be the last for a while: http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/wiki/Tool:HarmlessButler - HarmlessButler New feature: added building and research queue completion events (as requested by Jerec Cross) Bug fixed: timers once again update live when editing attack plans |
Posted By: Noryasha Grunk
Date Posted: 29 Oct 2010 at 16:19
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You are a god among the men of Illyriad, sir.
* salutes. |
Posted By: Noryasha Grunk
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2010 at 00:55
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Except dat hI still can't get it to vork. It sounds so amazink too. :( |
Posted By: KHall
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2010 at 04:46
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I just started using the butler and I think its awesome. Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us. I have run into a problem though. The pop-up box to the right of the screen is blocking more than half of my view. It says gameeventlistitem over and over. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way to close the pop-up? I'm sorry if my question is a simple one that I should know how to fix. I'm not as computer savvy as the rest of you. I would appreciate any help. Thanks in advance |
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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2010 at 09:19
| You probably just need to download the world database. (When the "World database is out-of-date: Update | Dismiss" prompt appears--on pages like military movements--click "Update" and WAIT until it says it is finished.) |
Posted By: Noryasha Grunk
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2010 at 11:42
| HM, it doesn't seem to be doing anything for me. I've got both it and Greasemonkey enabled, but the fact that I'm not sure what it is supposed to be doing (never used greasemonkey before) sort of limits my ability to figure out what exactly I'm doing wrong. |
Posted By: King EAM
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2010 at 22:29
Im debating with myself weather I should install it or not.
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Posted By: KHall
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2010 at 22:52
Thanks HonoredMule. That did the trick. Just had to WAIT for it to finish.  And King Eam, its worth it to use the butler. Its so much better than the original interface. |
Posted By: Jerec Cross
Date Posted: 08 Nov 2010 at 23:29
| Yes, King Eam it is worth it. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 10 Nov 2010 at 03:44
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Grunk, try this: open the error console (ctrl+shift+j) and clear any contents. Then reload an Illyriad page and post any output that the console spits out. I'm getting a report from another player that the script goes away for only two of his cities, so maybe between his report and yours I'll discover something interesting. You'll know when it does work because there will automatically be visible additions to the interface. |
Posted By: Noryasha Grunk
Date Posted: 10 Nov 2010 at 11:46
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oh gods I don't think da errors vill ever stop! User Undefined! Line 909! That, about a whole lot of times and counting. Here's the exact message: Error: user is undefined Source File: file:///home/griffin/.mozilla/firefox/m1hyomes.default/extensions/%7Be4a8a97b-f2ed-450b-b12d-ee082ba24781%7D/components/greasemonkey.js Line: 909 |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 10 Nov 2010 at 15:06
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Ok, if possible, I need to see the first errors that occur. Greasemonkey has a bad habit of causing firefox to report line numbers within GM itself instead of the actual script running, so that doesn't give me a point from which to search. I see by the filepath that you're using linux (or mac). I don't have a mac, but I can test latest versions of my script on linux and see if I glean anything. Unfortunately, with UIv2 around the corner, I'm not going to be doing any major work. At the moment I'm more concerned with documenting current behavior so I can compare it with UIv2 and see what to bring to the UIv2-compatible rewrite. (After all, once UIv2 comes out, I can no longer run HB 0.9.x to review its original behavior.) |
Posted By: Noryasha Grunk
Date Posted: 10 Nov 2010 at 19:17
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That is the first and only error I get (although I get it constantly while the pages are up).
And yeah, I'm using Linux (Mint Gloria) if thats helpful. If you can think of anything else I can do to get you more info, let me know. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 11 Nov 2010 at 03:48
| I left my linux laptop at work, so I'll revisit this after I pick it up again Friday (tomorrow being Labor Day) |
Posted By: some random guy
Date Posted: 11 Nov 2010 at 04:10
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Veteran's day! Labor day is Sept. 1! Get it right! Sorry if I sound angry, but my friend's a vet and lots of people mix up the two. ------------- Soon, very soon, my name will become synonymous with chicken alfredo.... mmm.... chicken alfredo.... |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 11 Nov 2010 at 15:30
| My apologies. My previous statement was a labeling error only...I just finished spending my two minutes of silence and then reviewed some information on Wikipedia. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 28 Nov 2010 at 21:15
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I found and squashed a bug with parsing (fresh) town data in recent versions of the script. Players who haven't been able to get the script working may be able to do so now. Remember above all else that things ARE going to be wonky until you've gotten a copy of the world database. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 30 Dec 2010 at 03:08
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Special Notice: With the release of a new UI imminent, HarmlessButler is about to become obsolete. There's likely going to be an HB 2.0 to go with the new UI, however, and chances are that you will want access to the old data you had on the original either for your own informational purposes or for setting up the next generation of UI aftermarket modding. After UI 2.0 comes and HB is no longer operable, players who used the sync tool included with HB will be able to request a copy of the information they have stored on my server (which includes stuff like any city groupings, notes, sorting rules, and specialization tags you may have set). For now this data would just be a raw JSON dump, which is ugly but still useful if you just want the information. If there's enough interest, however, I'll also code up a way to view the data online in a more aesthetically pleasing graphical format. If you do not use the sync tool, however, there's nothing I can do for you. You can find your data in your own browser using the about:config page and searching for illyriad, but you'll be on your own with regard to making sense of it. If you want to retain some information but prefer not to use sync+my server, you're better off taking some screenshots of Illyriad pages that show what you want remembered. If I deem it useful/desireable, I will be making an HB 2.0, but it will not be using browser-side storage, so sync will be your only option for a nice automatic upgrade without data loss. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 09 Jan 2011 at 03:02
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Final update: HB Sync now records town coordinates on the server. This is done solely so that an upcoming online timer viewer ( http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/tools/HBTimers.php - http://illyriad.honoredsoft.com/tools/HBTimers.php ) for synced (personal) attack plans can identify the launching city for each action. (The timer page itself is not yet functional, but will be soon. There are no plans at this time to enable editing your attack plans from Arcanum Illyria...only to view it. It will however show a combined timer listing for all accounts you own or sit from which you have submitted plans.) |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 11 Jan 2011 at 05:45
| The actual timers page is now up. |
Posted By: Mr. Ubiquitous Feral
Date Posted: 11 Jan 2011 at 07:23
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Why is everyone so excited about UI? I had that once and it itched like crazy! I don't get it. ------------- I am a Machine. |