Automating the game since 2003

History

David Orlo, also known as burners, began developing FFXI Scripting in early 2003 as a learning exercise in Software/Scripting languages applied to something he was familiar with. Over time, it evolved into a more advanced and user-friendly set of software that required his coding skills to quickly evolve, adopt programming standards and dive into the world of GUI creation. However, this was a challenging task as the software language AIT only had a GUI in beta, which made the process time-consuming and buggy. During the development of the software, burners also learned HTML, CSS, PHP, and MYSQL to create the first website, burnersware.com. While working on the website, burners assisted in fixing broken code in the official PHPBB Paypal Integration Mod which completely broke when using with the newly released PHP / PHPBB at the time. The website quickly gained popularity, surpassing burners' expectations, leading to a re-branding with a user-friendly, self-descriptive name. FFXIScripting.com was born.

Matt Hampton, also known as Hammy and the developer of IOCAINE, joined burnersware in 2006 and quickly became a popular content provider. burners noticed this and promoted him to MOD, then Master Admin. Hammy developed IOCAINE, which complemented burners' software with a different programming style. Interestingly, burners and Hammy share many hobbies and interests outside of FFXI and programming despite living on opposite sides of the US and meeting on a forum, developing software which neither do as a career. Although Hammy has an Aston Martin, burners swears he had the cooler bike (don't tell Hammy). Square Enix referred to FFXIScripting/burnersware as a full team of individuals, but it was only the two of them working on their respective software collections. This was in contrast to the other major Botting Software companies that offset their income through RMT. burners and Hammy did not use their software for RMT personally, as neither created their software for that purpose.

Within the first year of its release, almost all major players in the software botting space abandoned FFXI except for some plugins like Windower and various other game hacks. When SE released Fishing System 2.0, links referring back to FFXIS/burnersware were the only botting software in the Google search results for FFXI. It was during this time that burners released the Rogue Hyper Fishing Bot, which completely circumvented Squares new anti-botting fishing system while remaining undetectable. Square Enix addressed FFXI and burners threw down the gauntlet in response. During this time, burners created the "Viva La burnersware" catchphrase and associated T-shirts, which were given to forum users who were recognized for their contributions in helping others and sharing content. Later around 2010, burners had a full circle moment when he ran into someone wearing one of these shirts at the Micro Center in Madison Heights Michigan. It is noteworthy that this occurred before the rise of YouTube, when it was not typical for an average person to have tens or hundreds of thousands of people familiar with their work. Even today, burners is still humbled by the experience and greatly appreciative of every single member who helped out in any way.

*The b is always lowercase in burners
~Viva La burnersware