They don't gripe about the maps or the weapons. They don't whine when they get shot. And they don't talk back at ya in Ventrilo.

They're "bots"...and they make perfect clanmates.

What's a "bot", you say?

Bots are AI players with very rudimentary skills. They walk around with a spastic twitch, have no sense of direction and fire-off indiscriminant rounds at real or imaginary objects.

That would normally define a postal worker - but, no!

They're bots!

...and they have been added to every modded version of CoD, way back to the very beginning of the franchise. Bots are used to test out script changes, new weapons and generally help modders and Server Admins check out the effects of server-side modifications.

It is no surprise then that several modding groups have a working version of them. CoD Hall of Famer Tally has a mod out with them in the game and to no one's surprise so do the folks at eXtreme+.

Here for example, is the scoreboard screen for eXtreme+ CoD4:

By the way, that damned bot15 dude is hacking...I'm sure of it

Now, the bots in CoD4 MP are not the smartest chaps in the world.  Modders have been trying to get their IQ's past 40 for years without success: their multiplayer programming just will not let them progress very far.

Here for example, is my Domination team: enlistedmen bot11 and bot17. Both of my colleagues are aimlessly heading the opposite direction from the control zones and right off the map. They also seem very occupied at trying to open invisible doors in the chainlink fencing.

Meet Bob, or as I know him, enemy combatant "bot18". I cannot tell if Bob is trying to strangle me in this picture, or whether he's trying to mix a cocktail. All I know is that I seriously beat on his ugly a** seconds after the photo was taken.

 What I love best about bots is fragging them. They go down in a heap!

Do you want to try your hand at slapping down some bots?

Come to the eXtreme+ bot server and see if you can frag more bots than the other human players out there.

This Wednesday, the 7th of December, point your in-game browser to

IP 76.166.240.165:28960

and enter into the eXtreme+ bot server. Twenty four full hours of bot slappin entertainment.