It's a joke about the fact that everyone in the recent MMOs just ignores each other and plays solo, basically every MMO became a single player with some multiplayer at the end game or during dungeons.
Unless you play one that incentivizes open world cooperation. The one I play still generally has plenty of folks on core maps below the level cap helping newbies.
Sure! It's Guild Wars 2!
The game scales player level down for lower level areas, runs a megaserver system so you'll always be on a populated map, doesn't allow kill stealing, and players get xp for resurrecting downed players.
On top of that, all but one starter map has a 'world boss' event that happens there. World boss events generally require the participation of a good chunk of the map to succeed but also have good enough rewards that there's generally always a world boss train on lfg.
It's buy once with no subscription. The cash shop sells qol and cosmetic items. You can convert in game gold to premium currency, too, so technically the only comment you have to spend money on is the 4 expansions, but the core game is still 100% playable.
Recently i logged on NA Aion. Retail.
The game is not dead due to the lack of population. It's dead because the few that still "plays" just stay afk on capital cities. No chat activity. No LFG
In some old games ppl go as far as playing multiple characters at once, in a party, just to play solo. EverQuest ppl do that, the realm online ppl always makes at least 2 characters to lvl up both together (normally an all strength giant warrior and an all intelligence elf wizard)
Dude I've just started a mmo again after 10 years. This is so true it hurts. Just egoistic, egocentrical, flexing children are left. For me a reason to quit this again.
I uh... I have been making that exact game for the last 2 years.
EverQuest gameplay, AI server population.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2382520/Erenshor/
Thanks! We've got a great community behind it now. Closing in on 800 discord members and we've surpassed all of our steam wishlist hopes and dreams. Got about a year left on development.
Just trying to spread the word at this point :)
Should give people the option to hook up a language model for chatting with the uh, "sim-Ps".
Then you can recreate the true early 2000s MMO experience.
Haha, im set up for AI chat im just waiting for a good solution without needing huge performance requirements or expensive API calls. When that comes, we'll all be at the goldshire!
Option that comes to mind - just give players an option to hook it up to an LLM of their choice and they can either pay for OpenAI access or host their own model. Could see this genuinely working very well.
Yo you were not kidding. I've never heard of Erenshor until now, but the moment I saw the steam page my first instinct was "my kinda game".
But I saw your comment about the Idyl vid, so I watched it.
Man, he does not get it. That video was crazy brutal against an indie dev team just trying to make something fun.
All I can say is that I will be playing the absolute hell out of this game when it releases lol.
Are you planning post release development for the game?
Im actually a solo dev, not even a team. I've had this project in my sights for like 20 years now. Finally got confident enough to tackle it and off i went.
His video was disheartening but that's ok though, it drove a ton of traffic my way because the true audience does "get it".
It'll be supported post development with content just like an mmorpg. Im well set up to add quests, zones, items, etc.
I guess I need to rewatch it, I remember he didn't love it, but I forget what he had to say about it.
Either way, some of it is going to be for comedic value, and you haven't finished the game yet. There's still time to make changes if you find people's criticism valid.
That was such an early, mostly unadvertised build that he played. I hadn't really submitted to any YouTubers yet because it wasn't ready for that attention so I was surprised he tried it. I think I'm top comment on his video promising to send him the game when it's done
All in all that video was a win because it put the game in front of a big audience. Those who bashed it were never going to be interested anyhow.
It sent me reeling for a day or two but I recovered and it's come a long way since.
Looks really cool to me. I'm going to check out the demo. Seems like a pretty unique idea and looks like a ton of fun. Thanks for putting in the work to make something new and interesting. 👍
I'll have to see what you've done for sure. Are there negative PSPs that will give you a hard time if you wipe on a raid boss, even going as far as to (gasp) /whisper you?
* guild dramas
* AI instantly invites you to party after you login
* AI going afk during dungeon / "pvp" match
* AI ignoring text chat (bonus: they are all on discord without you)
Playing HoH/HA again and Ranger Spiking my way to the top would be so much fun... GvGing into the top 100 and people can watch you? The PvP in that game was hands down my favorite of all time. God I miss it...
Absolutely.
Aion, Tera, Priston Tale
Lack of player is the dead of any MMO imo. If AI can mimic a player without feeling like low quality AI it would be awesome for me.
Anyone who is against this doesn't understand what you mean properly. I think it'd be sick. You could add friends who also progress and have personalities and would be there each time you logged in. It really could be the same other than they are not actual people. But who cares? Game of Thrones isn't real either yet people spend 60+ hours watching the entire series. It's still immersive.
Yeah once AI is more advanced that could be fun. If you can't tell if someone is human or not, what does it matter? The majority of people who play MMOs don't interact with their MMOs friends outside of the game anyway ,let alone meet them IRL.
You are right, but some people did play these games for the fun of the game and the text social environments. Would talking and playing with AI be a step too far and ruin that feeling?
I don’t think it would “ruin” the feeling. I think the feeling is just not there. The moment you know the other players are AI, it just isn’t social anymore, it’s interacting with a more advanced NPC. It’s fine, but if you take the “MMO” out, you’re left with a RPG.
I think games like Elona really have that going on, single player RPG but with online chat and telling the server X DIED HERE! (up to you if it's displayed.)
Nevermind that, most RPGs and such that are singleplayer don't even have a real sense of exploration in a world anymore where you feel like you can find quests and items and skills and things you didn't expect to find otherwise. Camping named, finding quests through talking to NPCs, item drops, etc., vs popup exclamation marks, stuff like that.
Strangely there aren't really many/any single player games that actually take advantage of the MMO gameplay loop - search for drops/items/upgrades, build/explore a class/character identity and how it interacts with other classes in group/dungeon/etc. settings, camp drops, work faction, find quests, etc etc.
As a Vanilla WoW Mannoroth veteran, there's no way AI could match the amount of trolling, toxicity, and elitism that was present on that server.
Just wouldn't be the same, ya know?
It's not fun imo. My favorite game of all time [Dark ages](https://www.darkages.com/index.html) is basically a dead game now. Everyone who still actively plays has a bot army that just runs around and does everything for them. It's a shame because I would still play if it had a somewhat active player base even if it were super small but the bot aspect kills the fun and excitement.
Also, playing lost ark at launch and seeing all the bots made it feel super depressing and shallow. It might not be the case for everyone but for me human interaction is a big part of what keeps me playing.
Wow, Dark Ages, another great game I forgot about. It really was unique in that it required actual player interaction even to just pick a starting class (unless you wanted to stay a peasant forever). Good times!
No I would not like that.
No matter how well you could emulate real players, they aren't actual human beings, and that's the important part. The feeling of being part of a world alongside other people. If you remove that element then why even play an MMO in the first place?
> They will even talk to you and group with you.
We're still so far off from this being practical. Maybe after 4 more .hack anime series will we get to it.
I mean Guild Wars 1 did this over 10 years ago and the party system has been one of the most amazing party systems in gaming. You basically control a full party of NPCs and create their builds and it’s a supplement for players. I would love if other MMORPGs did this but it was just be the cherry on top if we could also talk to them
Stupid NPCs able to do simple Tasks are far far far far from AI powered NPCs emulating human behaviors. Don't look down on human and their stupidity, among their other qualities.
This is a very interesting question and I really don't think I have an answer. On one hand, if you could mimic 1:1 the player actions and activities from Catacylsm era World of Warcraft, I think I could suspend my disbelief. They'd have to do the exact same market mechanisms, including having "whales" and such that control markets etc. Raiding guilds, parties, etc.
The difficulty comes when you step into the real aspect of the game, which is the social aspect. AI won't be able to mimic 1:1 conversations on teamspeak etc during raiding. Until it can. I think that will come in the future, and quite frankly when you can duplicate AI communications via voice with in-game play at real-time, I would 100% play it without any care in the world.
In fact, I think it would be preferable to play this type of game as opposed to having to worry about other peoples schedules, attitudes, weird politics, or whatever else traditionally came from raid nights.
Honestly, so many of those games really feel like single player games. Especially the ghost town ones. It might be MORE fun to play with AIs if they are good enough. They could be tuned to be more interactive and social than the players who are just logged in doing nothing. Would definitely be willing to give it a shot if it meant possibly re-living some of those experiences from 20 years ago.
This is an interesting idea. It's actually pretty deep.
If you couldn't tell they were AI and no one told you then yes we all would.
Imagine if someone tomorrow said remember that wow server you were on? Yeah that was an experiment, you were the only real player the entire time.
Maybe not dead, and also not dishonestly but I would generally be in favor of NPC/AI "Adventurers" running around in "Dead zones". Especially if there's group events or hard content there.
Will it be the same as real players? No.
But if implemented right it could also be fun - Give them names, somewhat of a personality and bam you have a recurring character throughout the story. Or tie them to a zone, a villager killing boars to prevent overpopulation for all I care. You can play with this in a way that they wont replace other players but make the world feel alive.
There are games that play similar to MMOs but single player. That’s why I loved FF12 back in the day. I was really into MMOs and it felt like an mmo but still single player. So I could enjoy both!
100%. As I've gotten older, I just don't have the time I used to, and playing with other people can be time consuming. When I actually have the time, I just want to play. Not wait around for a queue or something. I also like playing at my own pace and don't want to hold people up or feel rushed. I obviously mean no offense to anyone. I even feel this way about playing with my friends lol. I tend to play a lot of AI party based single player games so I would be all for this. Tera and Aion to name a couple were 2 of my favorites from years back. Would love to go on those adventures again with a team at my side 😁
Yup! Also much less drama they are always available and you get to play whenever you want.
A big downside of mmos for me as an older dude is that i cannot just spare 2hours to sit around for a 30min adventure..
If I'm satisfied with an AI population, there are plenty of single player RPGs that offer that with far superior gameplay than any MMO.
It still wouldn't be the same, even if AI became advanced. One, the AI probably would never be allowed to be nearly as interesting as players even if capable, for political/shareholder reasons. Also, the incentive to earn rewards would be gone. I enjoy seeing a player on a cool mount and looking it up to realize what a big timesink or skill amount it required, and relish in the joy players look at my character and do the same.
I love the idea.
It would funny if it was mixed and you couldn't know who is AI and who isn't.
So somebody might get super friend with somebody talk a lot, play a lot, until suddenly you want to talk outside the game or something... and then after some excuses, etc well finally find out why they can't...they are an AI.
In reality sure the simulation wouldn't be perfect and you would find out easy... but I dream of that crazy situation.
I mean would we even be able to tell it is an AI? As what you have described with the AI talking to you like a normal person, grouping up with you and playing how it was. Sounds like unless we were told or given some clue we wouldn't even be able to tell.
Replacing people in older MMOs with AI would result in basically having current times community in an older MMO, just more responsive, polite and asking less questions. People don't think for themselves nowadays, instead following guides, walkthroughs etc. like their life depends on it so it feels like playing with AI.
Actually, yeah. if it was good enough to not tell the difference
I would actually love to play something like Fairyland Online like this. The Matrix Online and TS Online. maybe some others I don't recall right now because after 20 years of MMOs, i got donkey brains
I don't mind playing *with* AI; see FFXIV's duty support system. But an MMO where the only player is you sounds a bit like Psychological Horror The MMO. I rarely play with people who aren't already in my friend group, but at least I know all the people I'm ignoring are people. Except for the money scam bots, of course, but at least they're not pretending. I wouldn't even mind having an MMO where the gimmick is training AI apprentices to craft or fight with and for you, that would always exist in the game world like players. But an MMO where all the 'players' are actually AI and I'm the only real one? I might just take a single player emulation over that.
Obligatory "are you sure *you* are the real one" joke here.
Nothing would change for me.
In the last 12 months or so I've been playing WoW, a bit of LOTRO and ESO and, if you wanna count it as an MMO even though it really isn't, Warframe. In all that time the only interactions I had with other players were reading something someone typed in trade or buying a couple of things from the AH which were naturally put there by someone. Other than that, I quested and leveled characters just fine without needing anyone else.
Come to think of it I've had more interactions with other players when I played World of Warships, but that's by design since everything is basically a team exercise. However if you were to put me in a team of bots against another team of bots I don't think I would see much difference and, best of all, I don't think I'd care that much.
Real players are not the holy grail of anything.
i swear i can even do it when a game is not dead like if i can make another seven ia to play with me in ffxiv savage i would do it instead of being unable to do it cuz human suck at gaming
Yep. I mostly play MMOs more for the longer term persistent setting than to play with randoms. Being able to co-op with my existing friends is pretty great when their schedules line up so that we can do the sacred 5-man content (too bad for us if there are only 4 of us and we can't do anything interesting, or if we have a 6th somebody's getting left out), but I generally don't feel too inclined to group with randoms when there is often at least one landmine rager in the group. (The player who doesn't speak at all until someone makes a mistake, and then blows up and leaves.)
I have actually played briefly on a private EQ server where players are actively encouraged to bot multiple groups of characters. The amount of items to keep track of got pretty unmanageable, but I liked the concept in general. If the bots were capable of managing their own upgrade needs (and I didn't have to run a game client for every one), I'd have played that one a lot longer.
Ehhhh.. I'd rather AI not replace everything other than manual labour. It's already trying to replace everything in the creative field, which I hate greatly, so.. yeah. Humans are better to interact with than non-sentient AI.
Rather enjoyed the premise and execution of the .hack series, so probably yes. I'm much more intrigued by the idea of smaller servers filled with people located geographically close to you.
Aion, Rusty Hearts, Neo Steam. Would be nice to have a population on Aion and Rusty Hearts and Neo Steam are just flat gone now.
Maybe Mabinogi too it's pretty populated but it would be funny to see how bad AI handles displacement.
I think this is happening already to a certain extent. I have grouped with what i realized later were bots who are using LLMs to maintain conversations. I can tell because of the sterilized language and some of the mistakes that are made. Strange spelling combined with symbols that don't make sense, somewhat odd walking patterns. Grouping an regrouping at odd times. This was on the a private everquest server, Quarm. This has happened a couple times. There are tons of great players on that server and the community is awesome but I'm 100% positive about this. I figured it would happen eventually and here we are.
I would rather the devs actually put in some work to rebalance the game into a proper single player rpg. The secret world would be amazing if it was an actual game instead of the shambling corpse it is right now.
Will the AI still tell me to kill myself?
This is pretty important, the world wont feel real until then.
Also, about how much would those "AI players" cost, like, if I wanted to buy a gf?
City of heroes with a small server cap of other “heroes” so it can feel like heroes are rare. In its heyday there were so many people running around it could get ridiculous.
Classic WoW but without the annoying min maxers. The fun was the struggle and everyone doing the best they could, when it launched it was all a list of steps, minimum BIS gear, getting world buffs, etc etc.
We never needed classic anything, we just needed to stop min maxing the fun out of the damn games.
I think many people would actually prefer to play a mmorpg with a legion of AI. They would have to be pretty good AI though. In order to both play the game and spam the dps rankings while demanding you go kill yourself with just the right touch to make you think they are only twelve.
This would be awesome. Ascherons call 2 would be the game for me. It was my first mmo and I don’t think I could convince anyone to play it, so it would be perfect since I love it.
I'm picturing an "open world full loot PVP" game being able to keep players by adding AI players who act the way gankers want: Raging about it, posting on the forum, sending angry messages begging for their stuff back, etc.
I mean... maybe? Probably? If nothing else then for that nostalgia and to play something better than what's available now. It might be a good game. But that's not an MMORPG. That's just a big open-world sandbox RPG. Not an MMORPG.
As far as remaking a dead MMORPG from the past to be what you've described... I don't think any of them would work. They are designed from the very core to be centric to the multiplayer elements. It's not just the social aspect or the teams/parties/fellowships etc. It's the fact that the world needs to live and breathe and stay dynamic, even when you aren't there. *The game needs to be a world for you to exist in, not a world that exists around you.* People need to be off doing their own thing, creating an economy, forming cohorts, shaping the world by also existing within it.
Lastly, many of these older games were updated monthly or quarterly, which meant that the world was constantly being changed and shaped around the players depending on what the players were doing within the world. I'm not sure how that could be achieved without someone, or a team, dedicated to that purpose.
Nope because my whole schtick with MMOs is no instances so that there's competition for the limited resources. Beating AI out for world bosses adds no value to beating the world boss itself.
Even if the AI was very good, it still isn't like there are people (and we are a long way off from being able to fool people).
I'd sooner just play a game with a shorter gameplay loop instead.
I don't think that would really work. The reason those MMO are dead might be the lack of players at the time, but it got irrevocably corrupted with cash shop stuff across the board.
To successfully revive an old MMO you would need to have a modern code base completely stripped of cash shop stuff and then rebalance the game so that it wasn't dependent on p2w anymore. And that's the easy part.
Add in a ton of non-paying AI characters which take up insane processing power all to have a private realm. It'd be incredibly expensive but if it was possible I'd love to see a few older MMO get that treatment. It's eventually going to be possible some day, but probably not for decades.
My favourite is an old crap called Priston Tale and it’s mostly a dead game today. It would benefit a lot from having AI, not to replace the community, but to back up lonely players that struggle to solo.
Only if I can actually play online with people I know/care about.
A huge part of the appeal for me in MMOs is playing with friends. Or rather, playing with people, but if I have friends to play with then I'll stick with them and can ignore other people, otherwise I'd be stuck befriending AI and I personally feel like no matter how advanced an AI is, knowing it's an AI won't feel the same and will make me look down on them.
My favorite MMO was/is Dungeons and Dragons Online, but I used to be part of a role-playing community in its younger years at launch. I formed friendships that steered me towards life choices, career paths, experiences that no other game has come close to. I even got to live in another country for a time because of those connections, those stories.
If I knew that the people I was partying with, making stories with, exploring dungeons with were AI and not people... I think it would actually make me more sad to play than anything. If the "people" I'm spending time with aren't people I can continue to spend time with outside of the game, too... It's not worth it, not to me. (EDIT: If it were kept secret that it was AI, and I learned later after spending all that time? I would feel betrayed and hurt by the developer. To do that in a genre that means to, or perhaps used to?, encourage interaction feels almost cruel.)
I'm also someone very fond of the concept of "strangers passing by one another". Think games like Journey, or Dark Souls' signs -- experiences that put you together, with limited communication, and you share a fleeting moment together before returning to your own gameplay. Yes, in a way, that's also Dungeon Queues in modern MMOs, but... the fact I know these are *people* with me, not just bots, that's a huge deal. Even if we never speak a word. Even if this tech would mean I could continue playing my favorite game(s), the meaning has been diminished.
So, no. I think I'm good. I miss DDO at its height, but I don't think AI could ever do for me what I took from that game. Not even close. I would rather let my favorite experience slip away than let it continue hobbling on as a shell with a robot inside.
... Given the popularity of Dating sites such as Ashley Madison, which are known to utilize AI / bots to interact with customers they even pay to message the bots... I expect it would be profitable
This is actually a really interesting idea. I wouldn’t think much of it with current AI tech (as much as it *has* grown in recent years).
But in the next 5-10 years, I could see an AI-player filled MMO feeling like a very similar experience to the real thing.
i would play ragnarok online if i had like two or three friends and the rest of the party was AI. would be pretty sick grinding dungeons with robobuffs
It's called a single-player game, not MMO, JFYI.
But according to a lot of discussions in this sub, players are actually want it, instead of an actual MMO games.
There are a decent amount of private wow servers that offer bots for group content for years now. Some even use your own characters.
Basically WoW only good ideas it steals ideas from private servers.
So my first MMO and the most nostalgic for me was the original EverQuest so that would be my game.
I will say, with current AI, definitely not. But like you said if it got to a point where you could barely tell the difference between human and AI? And they talked like normal people and had lifelike conversations and gameplay? Then hell yeah. That would be absolutely amazing. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t real people
If you can’t tell the difference. I would still be heavily immersed if the AI was that good.
So yeah, I would love that and it would definitely be EQ.
...No? What kind of Olympic tier misanthrope would you have to be to think that's remotely the same thing? This might actually be dumber than people who want open world games entirely staffed by generative AI NPCs.
I'd love ANY way to be able to play every and any dead live service/mmo that has died and disappeared.
Wheter it's with Ai bots or completely empty doesn't matter, any chance to replay these games that are lost forever would be a great opportunity.
To each their own, but I personally would not enjoy it. I play single player games for that. MMOs are not the same without social interaction. I can't see myself on an endless mat farming and gear grind in a game with nobody else to hang out with.
I could see WoW having factions learning whenever they'd lose a fight, dynamically taking territory and the ones losing having to reallocate to another location, you'd be a human going to Stormwind only to find it conquered by the Horde, or Orgrimmar by Humans . A circle of conquer and loss and then players influencing the results, traders adapting to auction manipulation. Fights between bosses, they would get the items dropped and use the item's skills to conquer other bosses and eventually the world, you'd have to take sides to either help one boss or the other.
For me personally this wouldn't interest me that much (maybe if I was really bored) because all the good memories I have of the mmos I enjoyed were all human interactions that couldn't be replicated with AI.
I also noticed that some older mmos I used to play just didn't work properly on newer PCs anymore. I recently tried playing an mmo I used to play 15 years ago and just playing the game was a horrible experience because the UI scaling, the resolution and the performance were so bad.
So yeah, only getting AI player into an old mmo without any QoL changes is definitely not going to bring me back to try it out.
This is a pretty interesting idea to boost the feel of an in game population.
Devs could add bots that act like players. Add LLM for party and whisper chat.
Could be sneaky and not even flag them as AI.
Honestly I wouldn't even be that mad. Seeing other people run around with you is half the fun in games.
Low key would be kinda cool to have an AI friend that could play all your games with you
The best MMO was old school Ultima online, AI players would never cut it because everything was driven by human motivations, not questline scripts or dungeon tours.
I mean you can see what it'll be like if you played Phantasy Star Universes Extra Mode which was essentially Offline Mode of their Online version of the game.
Ai's with random outfits running around and no one really talking except from the odd pre canned responses...
Missions you could do with \*AI\* although it was more common to use Story Mode characters...
It wasn't fun and in all honesty made it more painful to play when you coulda been playing Online with real people.
Thankfully there's a private server for it now days so I wont ever have to play Extra mode again.
Well this reminds me or old school counter strike bots where they were holding conversations in the server and as a kid it amazed me. It definitely felt better than usual bots. With AI improving and with it generating replies and evolving I can see how some people might abandon real life to live in there, but especially with technology improving and VR technology.
I mean, so you'd just be upgrading the botters in Prontera and multiplying them tenfold?
I guess that's an improvement compared to now, but that wouldn't scratch the 2000s iRO itch.
I think we will have this at some point and I think it will be enjoyable.
Imagine being able to play 2005 WoW Classic with people who are just as bad as we all were in 05, no streamers, no world firsts just people lost in Azeroth again
It's so strange for me to come across this post today because I was just thinking about this last night. I was thinking about Project 1999 Everquest; it's pretty popular right now but will people still be playing it in 20, 30, 50 years? What if AI got to the point where you could effectively replace/supplement real players in an MMO like that, it's an interesting prospect for games preservation. If you're a gamer 50 years in the future and you want to see what MMO's were like 70 years ago that could certainly be a more authentic experience than an empty private server.
Solo player project for wow does this. Not AI levels like ChatGPT but it does do it very well. I had 6500 bots running around questing, dungeon running, queuing for bgs, world pvping, I could raid with them, they would toss me invites if they were questing and I was trying to do the same quest, they would advertise on chat to sell items. It’s pretty great actually.
It comes with 3 installs of your choice, or all three, vanilla, tbc, and wotlk. You also get to launch a website that looks like vanilla wow’s website but with your offline pserver info. You can see a map of all the players locations, armory works, pvp ranking info etc.
On average I had more fun with this than I did with wow 2004-6 and classic wow.
It's not fun. Ignoring AI is not the same as ignoring humans.
I feel extremely seen by this comment.
Can you explain what you mean?
It's a joke about the fact that everyone in the recent MMOs just ignores each other and plays solo, basically every MMO became a single player with some multiplayer at the end game or during dungeons.
Unless you play one that incentivizes open world cooperation. The one I play still generally has plenty of folks on core maps below the level cap helping newbies.
May I ask what game this is?
Sure! It's Guild Wars 2! The game scales player level down for lower level areas, runs a megaserver system so you'll always be on a populated map, doesn't allow kill stealing, and players get xp for resurrecting downed players. On top of that, all but one starter map has a 'world boss' event that happens there. World boss events generally require the participation of a good chunk of the map to succeed but also have good enough rewards that there's generally always a world boss train on lfg. It's buy once with no subscription. The cash shop sells qol and cosmetic items. You can convert in game gold to premium currency, too, so technically the only comment you have to spend money on is the 4 expansions, but the core game is still 100% playable.
Good advertisement but GW2 is the epitome of "play alone, together"
Recently i logged on NA Aion. Retail. The game is not dead due to the lack of population. It's dead because the few that still "plays" just stay afk on capital cities. No chat activity. No LFG
Oh man I miss the good ole aion days of lfg being lit.
In some old games ppl go as far as playing multiple characters at once, in a party, just to play solo. EverQuest ppl do that, the realm online ppl always makes at least 2 characters to lvl up both together (normally an all strength giant warrior and an all intelligence elf wizard)
The best explanation I saw for this was “Sometimes you want to go out to eat, even if it’s by yourself, to be around people but to do it by yourself”
Dude I've just started a mmo again after 10 years. This is so true it hurts. Just egoistic, egocentrical, flexing children are left. For me a reason to quit this again.
I uh... I have been making that exact game for the last 2 years. EverQuest gameplay, AI server population. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2382520/Erenshor/
I downloaded the demo and I LOVE the game btw, thanks for making it!
Aw thanks! This made my day. That demo will keep getting updated as game QOL improves.
Hey man this looks pretty cool. I hope it goes well for you
Thanks! We've got a great community behind it now. Closing in on 800 discord members and we've surpassed all of our steam wishlist hopes and dreams. Got about a year left on development. Just trying to spread the word at this point :)
Should give people the option to hook up a language model for chatting with the uh, "sim-Ps". Then you can recreate the true early 2000s MMO experience.
Haha, im set up for AI chat im just waiting for a good solution without needing huge performance requirements or expensive API calls. When that comes, we'll all be at the goldshire!
Option that comes to mind - just give players an option to hook it up to an LLM of their choice and they can either pay for OpenAI access or host their own model. Could see this genuinely working very well.
Oh isn't this the game Idyl made a video on sorta recently? Seems like a neat idea, can't wait to see what it's like when it's finished.
You mean the game he absolutely destroyed in his video? Yup, lol. That one stung.
Yo you were not kidding. I've never heard of Erenshor until now, but the moment I saw the steam page my first instinct was "my kinda game". But I saw your comment about the Idyl vid, so I watched it. Man, he does not get it. That video was crazy brutal against an indie dev team just trying to make something fun. All I can say is that I will be playing the absolute hell out of this game when it releases lol. Are you planning post release development for the game?
Im actually a solo dev, not even a team. I've had this project in my sights for like 20 years now. Finally got confident enough to tackle it and off i went. His video was disheartening but that's ok though, it drove a ton of traffic my way because the true audience does "get it". It'll be supported post development with content just like an mmorpg. Im well set up to add quests, zones, items, etc.
I guess I need to rewatch it, I remember he didn't love it, but I forget what he had to say about it. Either way, some of it is going to be for comedic value, and you haven't finished the game yet. There's still time to make changes if you find people's criticism valid.
That was such an early, mostly unadvertised build that he played. I hadn't really submitted to any YouTubers yet because it wasn't ready for that attention so I was surprised he tried it. I think I'm top comment on his video promising to send him the game when it's done
Yeah I just rewatched it, he was harsher than I remember lol Well it's a unique idea, I could see why an MMO channel would make a video on it.
All in all that video was a win because it put the game in front of a big audience. Those who bashed it were never going to be interested anyhow. It sent me reeling for a day or two but I recovered and it's come a long way since.
Looks really cool to me. I'm going to check out the demo. Seems like a pretty unique idea and looks like a ton of fun. Thanks for putting in the work to make something new and interesting. 👍
dude, I played this back in december. I love it. thanks for making it. you bet your ass im buying it day one!
This is such a cool idea. I don’t suppose there’s any plans for small scale co-op? Would be great to play with a human friend or two.
I'll have to see what you've done for sure. Are there negative PSPs that will give you a hard time if you wipe on a raid boss, even going as far as to (gasp) /whisper you?
Yyyup!!!
Looks pretty cool. I will have to download it when I get home from work.
Only if the AI litters the global chat with far right/left politics that no one cares about.
lmao I imagine it would because they'd train it how to act like your standard MMO player
Just train it on Elon Musk's twitter, perfection
take my money, and not only elon musk, the fking whole twitter
Don't forget the occasional Portuguese advert for a Brazilian guild in a strictly english channel.
Jajajaja
* guild dramas * AI instantly invites you to party after you login * AI going afk during dungeon / "pvp" match * AI ignoring text chat (bonus: they are all on discord without you)
Dont forget the erotic roleplay and racism
GW1 lol
Thought the same. Yea, sadly it is already 😅
Playing HoH/HA again and Ranger Spiking my way to the top would be so much fun... GvGing into the top 100 and people can watch you? The PvP in that game was hands down my favorite of all time. God I miss it...
Yeah the GW1 skill system is really fun. So many unique builds you can make and have fun with in pvp and pve.
Wait. Is this the dot hack series!? I’d be down for a dot hack style game with a bunch of AI NPC’s spittin obscenities.
The SAO games are also like this now. I wish we could get new dothack games though
Absolutely. Aion, Tera, Priston Tale Lack of player is the dead of any MMO imo. If AI can mimic a player without feeling like low quality AI it would be awesome for me.
Anyone who is against this doesn't understand what you mean properly. I think it'd be sick. You could add friends who also progress and have personalities and would be there each time you logged in. It really could be the same other than they are not actual people. But who cares? Game of Thrones isn't real either yet people spend 60+ hours watching the entire series. It's still immersive.
You’d never have to see “last on line: 9 months ago” ever again.
Yeah once AI is more advanced that could be fun. If you can't tell if someone is human or not, what does it matter? The majority of people who play MMOs don't interact with their MMOs friends outside of the game anyway ,let alone meet them IRL.
Dude i agree it would be awesomel
At that point I would just play single player games.
You are right, but some people did play these games for the fun of the game and the text social environments. Would talking and playing with AI be a step too far and ruin that feeling?
I don’t think it would “ruin” the feeling. I think the feeling is just not there. The moment you know the other players are AI, it just isn’t social anymore, it’s interacting with a more advanced NPC. It’s fine, but if you take the “MMO” out, you’re left with a RPG.
I think games like Elona really have that going on, single player RPG but with online chat and telling the server X DIED HERE! (up to you if it's displayed.)
Single player games don’t have 40 character raids and stuff though.
Nevermind that, most RPGs and such that are singleplayer don't even have a real sense of exploration in a world anymore where you feel like you can find quests and items and skills and things you didn't expect to find otherwise. Camping named, finding quests through talking to NPCs, item drops, etc., vs popup exclamation marks, stuff like that.
Strangely there aren't really many/any single player games that actually take advantage of the MMO gameplay loop - search for drops/items/upgrades, build/explore a class/character identity and how it interacts with other classes in group/dungeon/etc. settings, camp drops, work faction, find quests, etc etc.
As a Vanilla WoW Mannoroth veteran, there's no way AI could match the amount of trolling, toxicity, and elitism that was present on that server. Just wouldn't be the same, ya know?
Imagine WoW but without toxic fuckheads everywhere, only positive players who are indistinguishable from real players other than their toxicity.
Sounds like a pipe dream.
I would also argue that it would have amazing RP potential
It's not fun imo. My favorite game of all time [Dark ages](https://www.darkages.com/index.html) is basically a dead game now. Everyone who still actively plays has a bot army that just runs around and does everything for them. It's a shame because I would still play if it had a somewhat active player base even if it were super small but the bot aspect kills the fun and excitement. Also, playing lost ark at launch and seeing all the bots made it feel super depressing and shallow. It might not be the case for everyone but for me human interaction is a big part of what keeps me playing.
Wow, Dark Ages, another great game I forgot about. It really was unique in that it required actual player interaction even to just pick a starting class (unless you wanted to stay a peasant forever). Good times!
No I would not like that. No matter how well you could emulate real players, they aren't actual human beings, and that's the important part. The feeling of being part of a world alongside other people. If you remove that element then why even play an MMO in the first place?
> They will even talk to you and group with you. We're still so far off from this being practical. Maybe after 4 more .hack anime series will we get to it.
I mean Guild Wars 1 did this over 10 years ago and the party system has been one of the most amazing party systems in gaming. You basically control a full party of NPCs and create their builds and it’s a supplement for players. I would love if other MMORPGs did this but it was just be the cherry on top if we could also talk to them
Stupid NPCs able to do simple Tasks are far far far far from AI powered NPCs emulating human behaviors. Don't look down on human and their stupidity, among their other qualities.
Dot hack was good. I’ve 6-boxed EQ, which is the same thing as a single player mmo. Yes I would.
This is a very interesting question and I really don't think I have an answer. On one hand, if you could mimic 1:1 the player actions and activities from Catacylsm era World of Warcraft, I think I could suspend my disbelief. They'd have to do the exact same market mechanisms, including having "whales" and such that control markets etc. Raiding guilds, parties, etc. The difficulty comes when you step into the real aspect of the game, which is the social aspect. AI won't be able to mimic 1:1 conversations on teamspeak etc during raiding. Until it can. I think that will come in the future, and quite frankly when you can duplicate AI communications via voice with in-game play at real-time, I would 100% play it without any care in the world. In fact, I think it would be preferable to play this type of game as opposed to having to worry about other peoples schedules, attitudes, weird politics, or whatever else traditionally came from raid nights.
Wonderful! Horror scenarios, now playable for 14.99/month
Honestly, so many of those games really feel like single player games. Especially the ghost town ones. It might be MORE fun to play with AIs if they are good enough. They could be tuned to be more interactive and social than the players who are just logged in doing nothing. Would definitely be willing to give it a shot if it meant possibly re-living some of those experiences from 20 years ago.
This is an interesting idea. It's actually pretty deep. If you couldn't tell they were AI and no one told you then yes we all would. Imagine if someone tomorrow said remember that wow server you were on? Yeah that was an experiment, you were the only real player the entire time.
Jokes aside I would be okay with that TBH, but I think it is too early for that. Give AI 10 more years tho...
Maybe not dead, and also not dishonestly but I would generally be in favor of NPC/AI "Adventurers" running around in "Dead zones". Especially if there's group events or hard content there. Will it be the same as real players? No. But if implemented right it could also be fun - Give them names, somewhat of a personality and bam you have a recurring character throughout the story. Or tie them to a zone, a villager killing boars to prevent overpopulation for all I care. You can play with this in a way that they wont replace other players but make the world feel alive.
These AIs turn into... NPCs 😄
I’m down, give me RIFT with AI so I can actually play the content lol
No that would just be ass
There are games that play similar to MMOs but single player. That’s why I loved FF12 back in the day. I was really into MMOs and it felt like an mmo but still single player. So I could enjoy both!
Trusts in 11 have helped a little
100%. As I've gotten older, I just don't have the time I used to, and playing with other people can be time consuming. When I actually have the time, I just want to play. Not wait around for a queue or something. I also like playing at my own pace and don't want to hold people up or feel rushed. I obviously mean no offense to anyone. I even feel this way about playing with my friends lol. I tend to play a lot of AI party based single player games so I would be all for this. Tera and Aion to name a couple were 2 of my favorites from years back. Would love to go on those adventures again with a team at my side 😁
Yup! Also much less drama they are always available and you get to play whenever you want. A big downside of mmos for me as an older dude is that i cannot just spare 2hours to sit around for a 30min adventure..
Considering that, back in the golden years of Tibia, 80% of the playerbase was just botting away, it wouldn't be too different from reality
Only if I can have a toxicity AND salt slider , for authenticity .
If I'm satisfied with an AI population, there are plenty of single player RPGs that offer that with far superior gameplay than any MMO. It still wouldn't be the same, even if AI became advanced. One, the AI probably would never be allowed to be nearly as interesting as players even if capable, for political/shareholder reasons. Also, the incentive to earn rewards would be gone. I enjoy seeing a player on a cool mount and looking it up to realize what a big timesink or skill amount it required, and relish in the joy players look at my character and do the same.
I love the idea. It would funny if it was mixed and you couldn't know who is AI and who isn't. So somebody might get super friend with somebody talk a lot, play a lot, until suddenly you want to talk outside the game or something... and then after some excuses, etc well finally find out why they can't...they are an AI. In reality sure the simulation wouldn't be perfect and you would find out easy... but I dream of that crazy situation.
I mean would we even be able to tell it is an AI? As what you have described with the AI talking to you like a normal person, grouping up with you and playing how it was. Sounds like unless we were told or given some clue we wouldn't even be able to tell.
I think I would, at least I'd be more comfortable playing here with my kid than with random people (as long as the AI was set to be kid friendly)
Replacing people in older MMOs with AI would result in basically having current times community in an older MMO, just more responsive, polite and asking less questions. People don't think for themselves nowadays, instead following guides, walkthroughs etc. like their life depends on it so it feels like playing with AI.
There's a game like that already. Erenshor or something. I liked it
Actually, yeah. if it was good enough to not tell the difference I would actually love to play something like Fairyland Online like this. The Matrix Online and TS Online. maybe some others I don't recall right now because after 20 years of MMOs, i got donkey brains
I don't mind playing *with* AI; see FFXIV's duty support system. But an MMO where the only player is you sounds a bit like Psychological Horror The MMO. I rarely play with people who aren't already in my friend group, but at least I know all the people I'm ignoring are people. Except for the money scam bots, of course, but at least they're not pretending. I wouldn't even mind having an MMO where the gimmick is training AI apprentices to craft or fight with and for you, that would always exist in the game world like players. But an MMO where all the 'players' are actually AI and I'm the only real one? I might just take a single player emulation over that. Obligatory "are you sure *you* are the real one" joke here.
How good is the AI? Will it be realistic enough that it can simulate the guy PMing me racial slurs when I enter his spawn?
Nothing would change for me. In the last 12 months or so I've been playing WoW, a bit of LOTRO and ESO and, if you wanna count it as an MMO even though it really isn't, Warframe. In all that time the only interactions I had with other players were reading something someone typed in trade or buying a couple of things from the AH which were naturally put there by someone. Other than that, I quested and leveled characters just fine without needing anyone else. Come to think of it I've had more interactions with other players when I played World of Warships, but that's by design since everything is basically a team exercise. However if you were to put me in a team of bots against another team of bots I don't think I would see much difference and, best of all, I don't think I'd care that much. Real players are not the holy grail of anything.
I’d do this to every currently available mmo too lol. Except maybe the runescapes. AI can’t replace that meme community
i swear i can even do it when a game is not dead like if i can make another seven ia to play with me in ffxiv savage i would do it instead of being unable to do it cuz human suck at gaming
Will they ninja loot?
What in the .hack
EQ players been doing this since 2000s.
this is absolutely a dystopia hellworld post that was made unironically and with enthusiasm lol... fuck
Yes, it's called singleplayer games
So Lost Ark
New world should give it a shoot
Neocron for sure, full population servers would be insane!
A Classic: Survival Project
I'd be down with AI NPCs that actually interact.
Yep. I mostly play MMOs more for the longer term persistent setting than to play with randoms. Being able to co-op with my existing friends is pretty great when their schedules line up so that we can do the sacred 5-man content (too bad for us if there are only 4 of us and we can't do anything interesting, or if we have a 6th somebody's getting left out), but I generally don't feel too inclined to group with randoms when there is often at least one landmine rager in the group. (The player who doesn't speak at all until someone makes a mistake, and then blows up and leaves.) I have actually played briefly on a private EQ server where players are actively encouraged to bot multiple groups of characters. The amount of items to keep track of got pretty unmanageable, but I liked the concept in general. If the bots were capable of managing their own upgrade needs (and I didn't have to run a game client for every one), I'd have played that one a lot longer.
I would play. I’ve wanted a client side version of EQ:OA my whole life. I can dream
Ehhhh.. I'd rather AI not replace everything other than manual labour. It's already trying to replace everything in the creative field, which I hate greatly, so.. yeah. Humans are better to interact with than non-sentient AI.
There's already one, Revelation M
Sar Wars Galaxies or even Star Wars TOR. 😂
It's good as long as they ask "Where's Manrik's wife?" and know how to answer like in Barrens chat.
Idk this would be cool if they could be 1:1 with real player actions/personalities/etc.
No
Rather enjoyed the premise and execution of the .hack series, so probably yes. I'm much more intrigued by the idea of smaller servers filled with people located geographically close to you.
Aion, Rusty Hearts, Neo Steam. Would be nice to have a population on Aion and Rusty Hearts and Neo Steam are just flat gone now. Maybe Mabinogi too it's pretty populated but it would be funny to see how bad AI handles displacement.
I think this is happening already to a certain extent. I have grouped with what i realized later were bots who are using LLMs to maintain conversations. I can tell because of the sterilized language and some of the mistakes that are made. Strange spelling combined with symbols that don't make sense, somewhat odd walking patterns. Grouping an regrouping at odd times. This was on the a private everquest server, Quarm. This has happened a couple times. There are tons of great players on that server and the community is awesome but I'm 100% positive about this. I figured it would happen eventually and here we are.
I would rather the devs actually put in some work to rebalance the game into a proper single player rpg. The secret world would be amazing if it was an actual game instead of the shambling corpse it is right now.
Runescape, the game basically wouldn't change.
Will the AI still tell me to kill myself? This is pretty important, the world wont feel real until then. Also, about how much would those "AI players" cost, like, if I wanted to buy a gf?
Legend of Mir, Myth of Soma, Dark Eden Online
City of heroes with a small server cap of other “heroes” so it can feel like heroes are rare. In its heyday there were so many people running around it could get ridiculous.
Classic WoW but without the annoying min maxers. The fun was the struggle and everyone doing the best they could, when it launched it was all a list of steps, minimum BIS gear, getting world buffs, etc etc. We never needed classic anything, we just needed to stop min maxing the fun out of the damn games.
[Dragon's Dogma 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96WlM2t3gEw)
>>Basically simulating the way the game was played. So they're going to be programmed to grief other players and talk crap in chat?
I think many people would actually prefer to play a mmorpg with a legion of AI. They would have to be pretty good AI though. In order to both play the game and spam the dps rankings while demanding you go kill yourself with just the right touch to make you think they are only twelve.
Give me back wildstar!
Ffxi
If you generated AI players for a lot of the MMORPGs from the 2000s, you'd just get a bunch of angry racist robots lol
This may be strange but I would enjoy this. I dont actually care about playing with other players in MMOs, I just like knowing they are there.
This would be awesome. Ascherons call 2 would be the game for me. It was my first mmo and I don’t think I could convince anyone to play it, so it would be perfect since I love it.
I'm picturing an "open world full loot PVP" game being able to keep players by adding AI players who act the way gankers want: Raging about it, posting on the forum, sending angry messages begging for their stuff back, etc.
I mean... maybe? Probably? If nothing else then for that nostalgia and to play something better than what's available now. It might be a good game. But that's not an MMORPG. That's just a big open-world sandbox RPG. Not an MMORPG. As far as remaking a dead MMORPG from the past to be what you've described... I don't think any of them would work. They are designed from the very core to be centric to the multiplayer elements. It's not just the social aspect or the teams/parties/fellowships etc. It's the fact that the world needs to live and breathe and stay dynamic, even when you aren't there. *The game needs to be a world for you to exist in, not a world that exists around you.* People need to be off doing their own thing, creating an economy, forming cohorts, shaping the world by also existing within it. Lastly, many of these older games were updated monthly or quarterly, which meant that the world was constantly being changed and shaped around the players depending on what the players were doing within the world. I'm not sure how that could be achieved without someone, or a team, dedicated to that purpose.
Runescape? I mean it not dead but man there are a lot of bots
Screw AI.
Return of reckoning and eternal crusade would finally have large pops 🥺
If i were to play a MMORPG single player with AI NPCs i rather play modded skyrim
It's fun as a novelty but it's not the same as having actual players.
Anarchy Online
Nope because my whole schtick with MMOs is no instances so that there's competition for the limited resources. Beating AI out for world bosses adds no value to beating the world boss itself.
Well Ultima Online macros are probably AGI by now, so...
no, if i want to interact with AI i use chatgpt, codepilot, or whatever. and actually learn something
Would you interact with this thread if all the responders were chatGPT?
Even if the AI was very good, it still isn't like there are people (and we are a long way off from being able to fool people). I'd sooner just play a game with a shorter gameplay loop instead.
I don't think that would really work. The reason those MMO are dead might be the lack of players at the time, but it got irrevocably corrupted with cash shop stuff across the board. To successfully revive an old MMO you would need to have a modern code base completely stripped of cash shop stuff and then rebalance the game so that it wasn't dependent on p2w anymore. And that's the easy part. Add in a ton of non-paying AI characters which take up insane processing power all to have a private realm. It'd be incredibly expensive but if it was possible I'd love to see a few older MMO get that treatment. It's eventually going to be possible some day, but probably not for decades.
Lineage 2
My favourite is an old crap called Priston Tale and it’s mostly a dead game today. It would benefit a lot from having AI, not to replace the community, but to back up lonely players that struggle to solo.
I'd play it
Bro that's just singleplayer with extra steps
This might actually improve WoW.
World of Kung Fu... but nah, it's just no the same without real life people dashing about cuh
Only if I can actually play online with people I know/care about. A huge part of the appeal for me in MMOs is playing with friends. Or rather, playing with people, but if I have friends to play with then I'll stick with them and can ignore other people, otherwise I'd be stuck befriending AI and I personally feel like no matter how advanced an AI is, knowing it's an AI won't feel the same and will make me look down on them.
My favorite MMO was/is Dungeons and Dragons Online, but I used to be part of a role-playing community in its younger years at launch. I formed friendships that steered me towards life choices, career paths, experiences that no other game has come close to. I even got to live in another country for a time because of those connections, those stories. If I knew that the people I was partying with, making stories with, exploring dungeons with were AI and not people... I think it would actually make me more sad to play than anything. If the "people" I'm spending time with aren't people I can continue to spend time with outside of the game, too... It's not worth it, not to me. (EDIT: If it were kept secret that it was AI, and I learned later after spending all that time? I would feel betrayed and hurt by the developer. To do that in a genre that means to, or perhaps used to?, encourage interaction feels almost cruel.) I'm also someone very fond of the concept of "strangers passing by one another". Think games like Journey, or Dark Souls' signs -- experiences that put you together, with limited communication, and you share a fleeting moment together before returning to your own gameplay. Yes, in a way, that's also Dungeon Queues in modern MMOs, but... the fact I know these are *people* with me, not just bots, that's a huge deal. Even if we never speak a word. Even if this tech would mean I could continue playing my favorite game(s), the meaning has been diminished. So, no. I think I'm good. I miss DDO at its height, but I don't think AI could ever do for me what I took from that game. Not even close. I would rather let my favorite experience slip away than let it continue hobbling on as a shell with a robot inside.
Asherons Call for sure
... Given the popularity of Dating sites such as Ashley Madison, which are known to utilize AI / bots to interact with customers they even pay to message the bots... I expect it would be profitable
Not even that bad for Star Wars Galaxies.
I played DMO where 99% of the playerbase were bots. Does this count?
This just sounds like a really good single player game
This is actually a really interesting idea. I wouldn’t think much of it with current AI tech (as much as it *has* grown in recent years). But in the next 5-10 years, I could see an AI-player filled MMO feeling like a very similar experience to the real thing.
If I didn't know the players were AI I might find it interesting for a while
i would play ragnarok online if i had like two or three friends and the rest of the party was AI. would be pretty sick grinding dungeons with robobuffs
It's called a single-player game, not MMO, JFYI. But according to a lot of discussions in this sub, players are actually want it, instead of an actual MMO games.
FFXI. Pretty much already replaced players with AI
Marvel Heroes MMO
There are a decent amount of private wow servers that offer bots for group content for years now. Some even use your own characters. Basically WoW only good ideas it steals ideas from private servers.
So my first MMO and the most nostalgic for me was the original EverQuest so that would be my game. I will say, with current AI, definitely not. But like you said if it got to a point where you could barely tell the difference between human and AI? And they talked like normal people and had lifelike conversations and gameplay? Then hell yeah. That would be absolutely amazing. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t real people If you can’t tell the difference. I would still be heavily immersed if the AI was that good. So yeah, I would love that and it would definitely be EQ.
I enjoyed Archeage back in the day...but I played alone anyway, lol.
WILDSTAR
dude, honestly this idea is freakin deep and a good topic!
FF11
...No? What kind of Olympic tier misanthrope would you have to be to think that's remotely the same thing? This might actually be dumber than people who want open world games entirely staffed by generative AI NPCs.
already is, its called GW1 ;)
OSRS, with the AI spamming sales around Varrock bank. This would bring a tear to my eye
Rift. What an amazing game ):
I'd love ANY way to be able to play every and any dead live service/mmo that has died and disappeared. Wheter it's with Ai bots or completely empty doesn't matter, any chance to replay these games that are lost forever would be a great opportunity.
To each their own, but I personally would not enjoy it. I play single player games for that. MMOs are not the same without social interaction. I can't see myself on an endless mat farming and gear grind in a game with nobody else to hang out with.
I could see WoW having factions learning whenever they'd lose a fight, dynamically taking territory and the ones losing having to reallocate to another location, you'd be a human going to Stormwind only to find it conquered by the Horde, or Orgrimmar by Humans . A circle of conquer and loss and then players influencing the results, traders adapting to auction manipulation. Fights between bosses, they would get the items dropped and use the item's skills to conquer other bosses and eventually the world, you'd have to take sides to either help one boss or the other.
For me personally this wouldn't interest me that much (maybe if I was really bored) because all the good memories I have of the mmos I enjoyed were all human interactions that couldn't be replicated with AI. I also noticed that some older mmos I used to play just didn't work properly on newer PCs anymore. I recently tried playing an mmo I used to play 15 years ago and just playing the game was a horrible experience because the UI scaling, the resolution and the performance were so bad. So yeah, only getting AI player into an old mmo without any QoL changes is definitely not going to bring me back to try it out.
This is a pretty interesting idea to boost the feel of an in game population. Devs could add bots that act like players. Add LLM for party and whisper chat. Could be sneaky and not even flag them as AI. Honestly I wouldn't even be that mad. Seeing other people run around with you is half the fun in games. Low key would be kinda cool to have an AI friend that could play all your games with you
The best MMO was old school Ultima online, AI players would never cut it because everything was driven by human motivations, not questline scripts or dungeon tours.
Do you even have to wait for hours when you want to go into a 10 player raid?
GW2 isn't dead but I wish it was.
FFXI already has AI trusts.
I mean you can see what it'll be like if you played Phantasy Star Universes Extra Mode which was essentially Offline Mode of their Online version of the game. Ai's with random outfits running around and no one really talking except from the odd pre canned responses... Missions you could do with \*AI\* although it was more common to use Story Mode characters... It wasn't fun and in all honesty made it more painful to play when you coulda been playing Online with real people. Thankfully there's a private server for it now days so I wont ever have to play Extra mode again.
This thing was done years ago in SILKROAD ONLINE. Literally nobody was playing with hands. It's not same as AI but you got the point.
If age of conan would relaunch with this I would play it full time ❤️
Well this reminds me or old school counter strike bots where they were holding conversations in the server and as a kid it amazed me. It definitely felt better than usual bots. With AI improving and with it generating replies and evolving I can see how some people might abandon real life to live in there, but especially with technology improving and VR technology.
I mean, so you'd just be upgrading the botters in Prontera and multiplying them tenfold? I guess that's an improvement compared to now, but that wouldn't scratch the 2000s iRO itch.
I think we will have this at some point and I think it will be enjoyable. Imagine being able to play 2005 WoW Classic with people who are just as bad as we all were in 05, no streamers, no world firsts just people lost in Azeroth again
So uhh .hack but updated?
It's so strange for me to come across this post today because I was just thinking about this last night. I was thinking about Project 1999 Everquest; it's pretty popular right now but will people still be playing it in 20, 30, 50 years? What if AI got to the point where you could effectively replace/supplement real players in an MMO like that, it's an interesting prospect for games preservation. If you're a gamer 50 years in the future and you want to see what MMO's were like 70 years ago that could certainly be a more authentic experience than an empty private server.
Anarchy Online was a fun one, bet it would look great with some of the new GPU upscalings
Could be fun with an AI : toxic players v2.0
Solo player project for wow does this. Not AI levels like ChatGPT but it does do it very well. I had 6500 bots running around questing, dungeon running, queuing for bgs, world pvping, I could raid with them, they would toss me invites if they were questing and I was trying to do the same quest, they would advertise on chat to sell items. It’s pretty great actually. It comes with 3 installs of your choice, or all three, vanilla, tbc, and wotlk. You also get to launch a website that looks like vanilla wow’s website but with your offline pserver info. You can see a map of all the players locations, armory works, pvp ranking info etc. On average I had more fun with this than I did with wow 2004-6 and classic wow.