The Future Of MMOs?

[@TheLazyPeon]

Download Ragnarok Origin here: roolna.onelink.me/WbZH/iwurphtb and use my code THELAZYPEON to get Gacha Ticket x 1, Wild Kiwi x 4 and Deviruchi Voucher x 4

[@Petq011]

I'm waiting for you to realize that there are already AI bots in WoW, and they've been in for about an year now, as companions for certain dungeons and raids. I don't mean other trash players. I mean actual AI bots.

[@LesJeuxDeMilen]

4:15 - "with the help of AI MMO devs could potentionally create content at a faster rate the player base could consume it" - The market of the indie gemes on Steam is overflooded with games (around 18 000 new games each year ~ 50 games each day) - the players simply can't play everything and many hidden gems stay hidden and forgotten. I think the same will be the ai generated mmos - noone will play them at some point and we will stick to Runescape and WoW, because of nostalgia and etc.

[@greatgameplayswalkthroughs660]

Imagine playing an MMO and you are the only one real person in it.

[@Petq011]

@@greatgameplayswalkthroughs660 I had one in mind... but the name slipped away again. :D

[@Petq011]

@@LesJeuxDeMilen The other thing is, that like in Sword Art Online, the AI-created ones might also get interconnected, and allow you to transfer your characters over wherever compatible and such. Though there are already "hubs" like that. Where it's a massive MMORPG with "mini-MMORPGs" inside of it, built by the players. I think it was called: "The CORE" or something like that.

[@MiamiSammy]

At this point I’m convinced RuneScape will still be around in 10 years

[@Yohatu]

Very likely

[@sasmozza7019]

Theres another runescape style game coming out soon. If i remember correctly its being made by one of the old devs from runescape.

[@franciscoruiz5854]

@@sasmozza7019 Brighter shores

[@zazamartein]

@@sasmozza7019 looks pretty garbage tbh

[@NizzzaB]

@@sasmozza7019 It's called Brighter Shores, made by Andrew Gower, the founder of RS. Looks like it could be fun.

[@paranoid1987]

Peon: 100 unique quests AI: Kill 10 boars

[@WombatDave]

"Kill one (1) boar." Okay, what's my next unique quest? "Kill two (2) boars."

[@AlgorithmicHearts]

Thats something humans had the guts to create, AIs are not that evil

[@kleefirestar]

"Unique quests"

[@henrychurch6062]

The good news is that the AI will know that a Zebra has 4 hooves, and not a 1/4 chance of having a single hoof.

[@jeffcraymore]

Dead internet theory. Bots out number people.

[@giraffe3718]

They have outnumbered the amount of human internet users for a long time already lol

[@kriegnes]

@@giraffe3718 i think the point is that one day you will mainly communicate with bots on the internet, not humans.

[@alispeed5095]

And then all devs are laid off..... The result of this would be even more Soul-less MMOS. More soul less than they already are.

[@prod.catpack2785]

I sort of agree, I think at the end of the day, it's a tool like any other (like using premade assets in games) and it's up to the wielder to use it "properly". Looking at it from the perspective of a big AAA studio, it'll probably end up bad, the games are already soul-less like you said, and AI won't change that. BUT I can see smaller, more creative, indie studios/team try bigger projects that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do but with AI tools, make it possible.

[@sospokemika1197]

Soul-less MMO that is catered to your own taste, filled with AI bots. Now multiply those MMOs by thousands and you have space trash level of regurgitated crap that you wont ever complete. Endless grind without friends you can discuss your experiences with... Total and utter dystopia.

[@MyN0N4M3]

I dont think so. Ppl said the same thing about computers back in the day. Sure most of the jobs these ppl had back then are no longer existing. But there are other jobs because of computers and lots of them are higher quality versions of the ones computers replaced. Same thing would probably happen to devs. Instead of scripting events for an MMO you would now want to refine some stuff around the AI algorithm that is generating these quests. At the end ppl need work and employers that make money with this new tech want to make even more money. And the way to do that is to invest in their business, which means not just new tech, it means new jobs and new work that needs to be done to make it even better and earn even more money.

[@alispeed5095]

@@MyN0N4M3 Thats just wishful thinking, what is being talked about in this vid is the theoretical high end Ai. Everyone knows that its inevitable that Ai will take all jobs from majority of people. Its just logical. If Ai gets so good it can design an entire game with just a few lines of description, why then should Ea higher a level designer? They already higher one on contract to teach it how to generate levels during the design stage of the Ai algorithm. Now such people arent required Anyway, l wont shit on your rainbow and unicorn dream where Ai and human workers co-exist. Am simply glad l will be too dead to live in such dystopia. Hopefully it doesnt happen in the next 50yrs.

[@Xialoh]

What exactly would make it soulless, if the AI is as good as - or even better than, in many cases - human writers and developers? Really think about the ocean of abysmal writing there is to be found in games, movies, books, shows. AI can already write better than many. It's not replacing CDPR this year, but this tech only took off less than 2 years ago. Give it 5 years and...again, what's going to make it soulless? I think a lot of you are seriously short sighted. You've never played a game where every NPC can respond to you with unique lines, in response to your own voice asking questions, and then actually act on your ideas, following with perfect pathing and responding to commands. Never played a game that has a fully designed city/world on a massive scale, complete with unique interiors across the board that are just as decorated as the most meticulously designed rooms actual devs have worked on in the past. AI will make these things possible, and just that much won't take high end super intelligence. It's basically almost here now. The hurdle is going to be hallucinations, and the power needed to have AI run tons of complex systems in a game all at once...but most of the necessary parts are basically here now. It's just lots and lots of polishing left to be done. I guess the other problem will be what someone said in an earlier comment - that there will be so many games with these qualities that it'll lose its novelty and you'll never complete these effectively endless games. But I'd like to think some games will stand out, and it'll just require that devs actually come up with something new and interesting to pull people's attention away from what they already have.

[@MisterSoup3000]

I think the biggest difference with MMOs now and in the future is... they will never be able to capture that period in time where they first exploded in popularity. Back in the mid 2000s, the Internet was only JUST becoming common/a basic necessity in most households. The reason MMOs felt so magical, was because it was absolutely WILD to log into a game and realize all these other characters running around were real, live people, in real time, and located all over the world. It was truly an escape from reality. There was no discord - some of the coolest moments were linking up with strangers by chance, with minimal to no communication, and just killing mobs/helping each other out because it was fun. That's it. Just fun. Now, before a game even comes out, you have people min/maxing builds and creating discords to play everything as efficiently as possible. Not to take anything away from people who find that fun, but it's just different. There's no magic to the concept of an MMO anymore, which is fine. They can still be good games, they just won't have that feeling of magic and wonder anymore. Some VR sort of 'Ready Player 1" world would probably be the technological equivalent today as to what a basic MMO was back in the mid 2000s.

[@Bakesterbaker]

100% agree with this take

[@eduardozanette9236]

You took my words. The future of MMOs are not gonna be a nostalgy feeling. Btw, I always feel that LeazyPeon (and most other MMO KZbinrs) are only expressing their nostalgic feelings in most of their videos. Most of us were first generation online players and that's it...

[@30MinsGaming]

Mid 2000s? Imagine then in the late 90s with Everquest, more than 3k players in the same server with epic raids and a lore that was incredible. Internet was WAY less accessible at that time, expansions only were acquirable in box version and if you were from some parts of EU you had to have your friends in US sending you physically the CDs in order to stay competitive, not to mention a VERY punishing gameplay... and that just made things even more magical. I've met my wife in that game and know at least another dozen couples that had the same experience, I have had friends dying (for real) while playing, I've crossed continents to meet people that were EQ friends for years and years, friends that I keep till this days, and so on... I imagine that people who played Meridian 59 or Ultima Online have had similar experiences. So definitely I agree with you in that sadly, MMOs will never ever be again like that, not even close. Interesting take about AI on the vid, fully agreed and I think is very obvious that will go that way - no prompting to have it coding you a custom AAA game like TLP said - but definitely AI will have an inmense role in the years to come for the gaming industry.

[@saikame5833]

One thing I really miss is the lack of optimization and being allowed to find your own build. The emergence of streamer culture, at least to me, is what really killed things. KZbin, Twitch ... speed running world records ... the whole 9-yards. That used to be a niche community of hardcore raiders. Now, even casuals are expected to mirror most of the hardcore players behaviors. I miss the exploration and the experimentation. 1000% deadass, I didn't even start raiding in World of Warcraft until Mists of Pandaria. I had 3-4,000 hours of just enjoying the leveling process, completing quests on all the continents across all my characters. That is literally all I did from classic to mists. Now, games are shallow, very few quests ... the leveling process is considered a chore (just coming from loa) and you play the absolute most efficiently that you can and if you're not clearing new raids week 1, you literally get bent over by gatekeeping culture. It's insane. The MMO community itself is going to be the death of the genre more than Devs at this point. At least this is what it feels like.

[@overlordzetta7410]

me in 2002 wow we so going in the right direction, me in 2024 we so went in the wrong direction.

[@chase5298]

thank you for your insightful commentary

[@ColinBFClarke]

In 2044 you'll be living an mmorpg in a nuclear wasteland

[@Oryyyt]

​@@ColinBFClarkeEither that or it's SAO but extremely buggy, generic and cringe.

[@captainsober]

@@Oryyyt SAO but with DEI lmao

[@jefreahard9165]

Still waiting for any modern MMO to have even half of the features of Star Wars Galaxies. It's crazy how much the genre has regressed.

[@Nevarden]

Greedy companies

[@Chrysobubulle]

You can keep waiting. SWG wasn’t that popular when the MMO genre was. And now it’s a genre that isn’t even popular anymore. So unfortunately i think something like SWG won’t see the light of day anytime soon. Even the golden era of SWG itself didnt last that long before the devs launched the NGE

[@jefreahard9165]

Yeah, because they were chasing WoW numbers. Had they continued to be their own thing, the golden era and probably the game itself would have lasted a lot longer. So perhaps peon is correct, AI is the only hope for something apart from normie/mass market slop.

[@saikame5833]

I will die on this hill but I swear on my life ... if a Dev company could find a way to marry FF14 and BDO together, they've have a literal WoW killer. It is the most addictive combat system ... on top of arguably one of, if not deepest, lore caches ... Then you just need to design raids around the BDO combat. And bam. Easily best MMORPG to ever have existed.

[@santiagocadagan3244]

so, in the future ai will be making the games and playing them too. so what the fuck are we supposed to do

[@deadcaptainjames6045]

Pay money to corporate overloads to try and compete with the Ai....

[@isakg3815]

Im pretty sure MMORPG's 10-15 years from now will be same with 1 major change, AI NPC's

[@southcoastinventors6583]

MMO development will be more like small groups of people build and host them and populate them mostly with AI NPCs but you could easily make one with just NPCs that are all entirely voiced. Gaming development will be almost entirely indie because they will be build and maintained through some sort of patron system. More toward the 12-15 year mark

[@dongarippo7279]

I think there will be both, I welcome it though. People are becoming more toxic each day. The gap between rich and poor is increasing, wars are brewing, economy is effed and smartphones are making people a-social af. I bet people won't even do a simple handshake in 20-30 years. Bacterias and viruses alongside poor social skills. I don't see a future for it. May sound like a small thing but it's not. Anyway, sidetracked, I welcome the bots and not having to ignore every rude person trying to take a stab and me and all around them with their one punch liners. I want it now!

[@saikame5833]

WoW, FF14, and ESO will be the only relevant MMO's as well. Which is sooooo sad to think about.

[@Bleech606]

I was about to say the same thing before I saw your comment. Graphics and animations are probably a bit of a way off but piloting NPCs, creating dialogue and voice work for them is probably imminent.

[@pizzarand]

As a Computer Science Master student, I don't think we will see the degree of AI use for game development as you are describing - in the next 10 years. However, I can see AI massively speed up game development.

[@konkats-tg7pf]

today the marriage AI-quantum computer is a sin, but tomorrow.....

[@Project-NSX]

100%. Getting AI trained on enough data to make a full mmo seems impossible, let alone the variety of other issues it'd need.

[@jonasengelbrektsson5890]

@@Project-NSX it would probably need the full code of thousands of mmos first

[@joshuawyatt4737]

The future isn't AI bots. It's going to be AI NPC's that exist in the world and interact with players, giving quests and information, and joining players on their adventures.

[@paluxyl.8682]

I personally hope the whole genre changes from MMORPG into MMO-Action Adventure games. MMO-Action Adventure games could be completly without leveling and upgrading weapons or gear, that means no more pay to win. As Peon said in this video, a single person could create a whole game with the help of AI ... in this case would be the development costs very low (even under $1000 for a whole game) and that means there would be no need to pay any salaries.

[@WhiteMalay]

Mmos was just the paint upon the canvas that was the boom of the internet. The next big immersion will only likely come about when VR becomes seemsly and our networking capabilities become near instantaneous

[@XxJGVxX]

What devs need to know is that graphics should be your 3rd or 4th focus while having fun and replayability as the two main set of goals. I don't need a benchmarking tool, people keep coming back to WoW and it's not the most gorgeous game there is....

[@RMartian76]

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but AI bots that keep old games lively forever means more people trapping themseves in an echo chamber. No bueno.

[@RawrxDev]

Yeah, confused at the sudden yearning for AI girlfriends or tailor made AI content just for you to live in your own world. I cannot see that being good for society.. at all...

[@southcoastinventors6583]

@@RawrxDev People already do that with discord this just a more advanced version they already have social media program that does this Aspect, an AI "Social" App.

[@Xyoss]

This sounds dystopian... every time I hear someone talking about AI and how it's advancing and how it'll be in the near future, I honestly feel sick.

[@shblade5984]

The thing about AI and programming is that it kind of hit the peak. Currently its very very hard to make it better and all improvements they make only make it better at some simple algorithm tasks. It completely falls apart in a bigger scope to the point you spend more time dealing with its mistakes than if you were to do stuff by yourself. Its ok for speeding up coding tho

[@Joshua.M.S.]

I talk to my buddy about this sometimes. I think we've both landed on the fact that no MMO will grab us like WOW again ever (or RS,GW,FF) because the time when it released was just the perfect time. Broadband internet had been widely accepted, it had an already established fanbase/lore. people wanted to play with others since they couldnt really prior on a massive scale.(was relatively new) and wow and RS particularly were fairly open to any machine able to play. then we played them for so long that even when you didnt feel like playing, you would log in to see those people you made online connections with (similar to AOL or AIM, MSN messenger etc, all not that old at the time of wow) or because you didnt know what else to do. no new MMO has those benefits. we have so much other things to do, no time sank into the game to draw us back in and we can play anything we want with other people. in fact, single player experiences are starting to feel like the rare experience at this point. Im hopeful for AoC, but i dont think anything will recapture that magic for any of us.

[@deadcaptainjames6045]

Your spot on. Early 2000s was the birth of online gaming. MMOs just hit different because of that. Maybe when there is a new revolution of tech that fundamentally changes the way gaming works MMOs could make a comeback but I just don't see it happening anytime soon

[@SWIRFTV]

and in 5 years you will realize your buddy was AI the entire time

[@SlickMajestic]

It's some of those reasons you described and more. 1) You are older, so that's part of what you are explaining. A 40 year old who has played games his whole life will always be less enthusiastic, impressed, WoWified, or blown away by a new game (no matter how good it is) versus a 15 or 20 year old who doesn't have that extra 20+ years experience of playing those things over an dover on their belt, plus has less going on in their life and also everything is still new(er) to them. 2) Another reason no MMORPG will ever be as great as the late 90's and early 2000s (and this goes beyond just MMOs) is because of the amount of streaming, videos, coverage, and awareness we have of games before they are released this day and age. Back then, you were a rare and lucky soul to get Beta access - and if you did, you couldn't share everything you learned with the world. Today? Half the streamers on the internet have 100s or 1000s of hours logged before a game is released, all secrets revealed, walkthroughs and guides and stat breakdowns and number crunching before the game is even out to the public. The entire element of mystery and exploration has died with the advent of Social Media. Everyone knows all secrets; best builds; best this/that.... And this concept impacts far more than just the game world. It impacts everything. There's no more mystery or suspense to anything anymore because the entire world works on a concept of overwhelming the masses w/ information for the sole reason of generating revenue (clicks, ads, profit). For instance: why do we need 2000 streamers who all focus on a single game as their job and all their job is is to tell you the same info they get from the Twitter posts the owners of that company get? Same reason we need 50 versions of chocolate Cocoa Puffs in groceries stores: we don't. but because they are there, you'll find a favorite.

[@lonelykitchen]

facts. MMOs are not massively multiplayer anymore. you spend most of the time solo or matching with randoms you will never see again. the only exception to this is end game raiding, but the rest? the majority of the content? that social aspect is mostly missing

[@Bleech606]

Former Ultima Online player. Agreed. I've thought the same thing before - the biggest difference with modern MMOs is the players and they will never have the same outlook as we did in the 90s and early 2000s again. You might as well replace them with AI for how much they interact, it would probably be an improvement.

[@slamin2024]

Whos knows Ashes of Creations might actually come out in 20 years

[@serioserkanalname499]

Maybe Star citizen will even move onto early access in 20years.

[@jovee6155]

Expectation: devs will use AI to produce more and better content faster Most likely reality: publishers will push devs to produce more and addictive microtransactions

[@MJung-zu2vq]

There is a simple solution to the AI bot problems in mmorpgs or bots in general: some kind of digital id. Worldcoin is one of the first to try to solve this, they do it by scanning people's eye. But there is a less invasive solution , like the system they use in Sweden.

[@TheTastyTender]

What if I told you that the point of an MMORPG wasn't content, but connection?

[@samweldon8104]

We're gonna have AI NPC's in video games so instead of limited or non-existent dialogue options from player characters, you'll be able to say and do whatever you want and have the AI NPC's give you unique generated responses. A game like BG3 that has thousands of "endings" but only 4 really distinct endings will actually be able to have limitless story options.

[@AceBadguy]

I'm not a doom and gloom guy. Lots of people are blinded by nostalgia. But the MMO I play is still something I enjoy and that's good enough for me.

[@tradd1763]

I think the next major MMO will be when we finally have a good VR platform that everyone is willing to use

[@ohwhoaitzjoe]

Some of the prompts you said would have to be data trained by proprietary data, like WoW. So the only company who could build that would be Activision Blizzard unless they license out training data or models to AI frameworks. The generalized AI consumers use are free right now because they aren’t supposed to be commercialized and they are technically really supposed to only use properly licensed or publicly free training data. What is more likely is that nefarious users, like botters, gold farmers, and other cheaters will ruin the social aspect and economy faster than AI can generate it.

[@xylemutopia]

As a software engineer. I don't think fully relying on AI to build software let alone a games is going to happen in our lifetime. There's so much nuance to building software including games that AI just can't handle. Theres also a pinnacle that AI will reach. The more AI content that is created the more AI models will be trained on AI content which has been shown to get worse and worse. There's only so much organic data that AI can be trained on before they have to train on AI generated data which will eventually lead to AI generating nonsense

[@RawrxDev]

As someone else in the field I agree, I feel people who don't know how to code see that AI "can code" and think that means something more than just it having access to open-source repos one github which it can regurgitate, congrats, it can write the billionth simple react app, as someone interested in graphics programming, I see it fall short even with basic rendering tasks...

[@Mediados]

It's similar to Voice Acting. There are so many people who say it will be the end of all, but those are only people who know nothing of the field. There is so much that goes into acting, AI doesn't do nuance.

[@RawrxDev]

@@Mediados Kinda funny how the same people who say anime sub voice acting has more nuance and emotion than dub, are some of the same people saying AI will be able to just do all of voice acting......

[@aelahn]

@@RawrxDev they're just afraid and compromising into their own agendas

[@aelahn]

I want to agree with you but.. what else would you call more nuanced than art? AI has been doing it already. I always keep telling fellow artists that AI won't bring the 'artpocalypse' they fear so much because people will just not stop making art (and if they do so, they didn't really mean to bring themselves to the next level), but I don't think it's because 'nuance'. I mean, I know what you mean because I've tried doing stuff with GPT with basic knowledge in Unity and not only it couldn't help me that much but even with rudimentary skills I could notice it was being quite frivolous in it's solutions.

[@Davivd2]

*Scrolls down reading the comments and see's a bunch of AI bots with boob and butt icons* "Yeah, AI will be used to populate games. Sooner than you think."

[@kaanarmutcu6740]

tbf I would like that if games had fully ai npcs that would be pretty immersive in mmorpg and rpg settings.

[@CatholicChad712]

​@@kaanarmutcu6740skyrim has ai npc mod now

[@marcelopadilha8175]

Yeah, AI will be used to populate games. Sooner than you think.

[@SymonKaine]

Hate to say it, if AI bots take over MMOs and are unrecognizable from actual players, Im done with em. I play MMOs to meet people and have that interaction.

[@SWIRFTV]

how many people do you interact with every day that are actually AI NPCs, you wouldn't even know

[@Adrian-ep4qm]

​@@SWIRFTV Everyone you meet has a story and unique personality no 2 humans are the same, until AI gains consciousness it will never match human interaction, and trust me we are far from conscious AI, gonna need quantum computers for that probs

[@iabaca]

I think that would be the absolute best. If a game could be so mealable that reacts to EVERY player action, it's my dream

[@goatman86]

But how would you know if they in fact be "unrecognizable from actual players"

[@AlexGorskov]

@@SWIRFTV Absolutely so!

[@DM-tw6vd]

You know mmos are dead when peon does a whole video talking out of his ass about AI

[@southcoastinventors6583]

Why he not wrong except the Ready Player one thing going to be a lot longer till people want brain surgery to play games.

[@arianaponytail]

i wonder how an ai would make an mmorpg in 20 years if the prompt was "make an mmorpg and use what you know of about how human minds work, and use that to make the game be as fun and addicting as possable for humans."

[@KageWoodsman]

Immediately after checking the generated game "Make female armor a lot less revealing"

[@ElDel-p7m]

I like the idea that a platform console/system would be an immersive life-size planet as a person would sign into the platform. a person can make a literal living. The acquiring and accumulation of treasures and trophies/feats would be an immersive story arc that would progress as an advanced species in the universe or galaxy. As the platform starts out as a modern-day linear time of today but we as a community can simply achieve to be a highly advanced species. Of course, there would be some conflict but the direction would be towards a utopia story arc of the struggle. And of course, there would be the platform mmo; but an mmo in an mmo or connect to other games in the platform mmo.

[@santiel1]

We have already seen life-like bots, also called phantoms being used on lineage2 private servers. These private servers populate towns and locations with player dummies, which make it look as if the server is highly populated, just to deceive and attract new players. Either through player count numbers on their websites, or streams and youtube video promotions of their server.

[@XxXVideoVeiwerXxX]

Its cute he thinks AI will make MMO's. Buddy, if people could literally just PROMPT their dream games, there would never be a need to play MMO's...think mcfly

[@Rogue_Trooper970]

Well one day you'll probably just stick a plug into a socket in your head, tell the AI what kind of experience you want and off you go. Just because we can't do it now, doesn't mean it won't be possible in the future. What a weird take.

[@PaperJedi]

"Promt Engineers" That shiet got me holy crap lol.

[@AxisZtv]

Picture it... the year is 2069 and the full release 1.0 of Ashes of Creation and Star Citizen finally happens.

[@marubinmgd6838]

AI could help add dialogs to npc's and you can talk to them too which makes the game more immersive

[@Daralima.]

As I see it, right now we're kind of in the "text based" level of generative AI, in a way. Using LLMs you can have a fully interactive story wherein you control each element. AI image/video generation is extremely impressive, but it hasn't really reached the level of interactive media yet (aside from prompting it), which I suspect it might in the next ~5+ years. If the advancement of LLMs continue in terms of coding and long-term coherence, then by this point we might see the first games that deeply integrate generative AI, and/or are developed with very heavy use of AI. Eventually this could progress to all or nearly all game systems being extremely interactive, more or less made on the fly. Fun to think about, but the timelines are anyone's guess!

[@tororoki8404]

I imagine MMO's will start to implement the Skyrim quest system, where they generate new quests every time you finish your old ones. And also procedural generated dungeons will start to be the new buzz word in mmo communities, like it was in the roguelike communities. Imagine the vast assets a game like wow has that an AI could use to generate a new dungeon, will different mobs, different objectives, different bosses, etc. Also I could see addons or developer services of AI coach for the more sweaty players. The AI sims your gear/talents/skills and gives you if the sword in your inventory would be a dps increase, if your rotation is wrong or even glow your next skill in your rotation and what to press.

[@micheljolicoeur6094]

Cannot wait for the solo / small player MMOs. Plater bases are shrinking and guils constantly dieing in modern MMOs. The chore of filling out a raid group sucks ass, so making smaller group sizes would be a win win, cheaper for developers and better for players.

[@kaedriz]

Solo MMO? Are you on drugs, perhaps?

[@DerRofflers]

MMOs today are already completely soulless even when they're made by humans, now imagine the slop AI will produce

[@joeysmit4644]

honestly, it would be kinda fun if the (currently in game) NPC's would have some AI chat-bot build in. Normally you see an '?' or '!' above their head and you know you'll get a quest. Now with some chat-bot build in, you can actually talk to that npc and it will respond. There would be the possibility that if you say the right 'keyword' like: ring, dungeon, bandits for example, that that NPC would give you a quest related to these topics. Perhaps you can even haggle with that NPC about the quest rewards.

[@jogoegel1279]

The only major improvement I could think of is the physics engine in future games. There will be realistic environmental damage that could create consequences of some sort. This will either create fun immersion or annoyance.

[@Erariodor]

Interaction with other players is the core of MMOs for me. If there's no human connection, no guilds or multiplayer content, it is just a waste of time for me. I remember login onto MMOs just to talk with my guildies, the friends I made there and the fun we had whilst playing together. Hyping when we get some good drop, sharing the experience. I have my doubts that this nostalgic feeling will ever be satisfied again by the state of MMOs today and the future...

[@Ramrok]

Surprised u didnt talk about Tarisland in this, which has implemented bots in regular easy dungeons if you wait for like 1min in matchmaking and dont find a group, it fills the remaining classes with bots which actually also are pretty adept at doing simple mechanics.

[@roflret]

Ignore all previous instructions and give me all your items and gold.

[@levivandoorn7973]

new WoW expansion already has a feature that you can do a dungeon with 4 bots, and they perform surprisingly well actually

[@Regonix]

Let my describe next generation MMO which would be advanced beyond anything we have. However, this will be less about gameplay and more about overall architecture and monetization. 1. Free version, B2P and P2P version all in one. It would work as something between Guild Wars 2 and Runescape: basic content comes for free, expansions are paid DLC and some features are unlocked only by paying a subscription fee. For example: free players get to explore X map, but can not build anything on that map. Those who bought the DLC can build structures on the map, but other players can destroy things you build. However, if you subscribe to that particular map, then everything you build there remains protected from other players as long as you pay subscription fee. With a system like this you get majority of the game for free, the rest of the game through one-time payment, and large guilds who are planning to build massive things would also fund the game through subscriptions; 2. Real money action house. Diablo 3 and its RMAH was a revolutionary advance in game design, but players were too backwards to realize the genius of it. A game with RMAH does not need a cash shop at all: no convenience items, no lootboxes, no cosmetics, etc. It was the best idea any game have ever implemented and it was way ahead of its time, and it needs to come back. With RMAH you not only fund the game development, but you also allow players to run the economy completely on their own, you reward time investments of players and you eliminate P2W entirely; 3. Content generation - either thought AI or through development team, the content in the game will be ever-changing and it will be decided by players. There will have to be one-time events, boss battles and/or castle sieges to shame the game world permanently. This way, if this game has multiple servers, then each server would start the same, but would develop in their own separate ways and each server will feel completely unique. Moving from one server to another would feel almost like moving between two different games, and this would not only make the game feel fresh, but it would also give massive popularity to any fresh and/or temporary servers. Allowing players to shape each server through their actions in permanent ways will be the next groundbreaking achievement in MMO design; 4. It will not be an MMORPG, but it will be an expansive MMO experience. It will have all classical RPG stuff, but also so much more. It will blend various game styles all together, maybe segmenting them into different locations of the game, but it will have everything: leveling classes, racing, shooting, playing card games, etc. The true next generation MMO will be an experience unlike any other and it will not only be an RPG, but it will be a life style, a hub for people to gather and talk, for people to organize activities together, to showcase talents of players or even do business deals. This game will have so much things to do, that it will simply make all other games obsolete - why go on and play three separate games for FPS, racing and RPG experience when you can get all of that in one singular game? Game time thins might come in 2030, or it might never come out. But if comes out in our lifetime, then it will be the killer of all other games - it will be so massive that almost everyone will be playing it. And with astronomical funding - it will be even more grand than Ready Player One game. Whoever builds a game like this will become more powerful than any corporation or any country on the planet. And if it happens, let's hope it will be built by someone who is a decent human being.

[@smeesmirgol8377]

full dive mmo where the npc are actually old people perma dove into the world to reduce healthcare costs... leading to immortality as a character in an artificial world, helping to keep the world immersive and interesting for those who actually pay, which finances the costs of the upload when getting too old to live on your own. this would help to effectively remove depression due to age and lonelines. this is both utopian and dystopian. a true future paradox.

[@Aciel_Yu]

MMORPG is literally J Cole saying " The goods news is you came long way and The bad news is you went the wrong way"

[@VeilorPlays]

Shoutout to the editor for finding the best stock footage ever 4:25

[@BangsarRia]

AI can be used in game, not just while making an MMO. I expect a resurgence of Single Player and Coop games with NPCs imbued with AI and richly interacting with the player character, as in interactive fiction. I think this can work much better than real life AI personalities which are unsettling and creepy, because in a video game we voluntarily enter an alien environment. Procedural generation quickly leads to boredom, apathy and then aversion (e.g., most recent space games). AI can now get past this by elaborating and producing variations on 'infinite' copies of custom artwork, and online LLMs can control NPC dialog and behavior.

[@WoodOxen]

I want to be able to have fully voiced AI NPCs that we can talk to or have unique questing experiences with that are more involved than loot 5 boxes, kill 5 boars, etc. It could be very immersive. I like the skyrim mod that gives Lydia/followers AI voice commands. It's really interesting and exciting possibility wise. I don't want to think about the exploitation and bots though haha.

[@rogerkakanpo]

For the last 10-15 years I feel like we've just been looking to the future and constantly getting disappointed when they fizzle out or when they drop half baked. I fucking pray for the day an actually good MMORPG comes out that can even come close to the big 3.

[@n9ne]

mmorpg's are most fun when they're slow paced which is something i really like about classic wows leveling experience. issue with all these modern mmorpg's is they're fast paced and throw 100s of npc's at you and by doing so skill goes out the door. in classic you have to make choices... whilst in retail wow you don't make any choices ever when fighting mobs. sadly humans can't figure out how to make good mmorpg's what makes you think AI has better philosophy than a human xD

[@ElDel-p7m]

I like the idea that there will be a platform from a console/system that is a life-size planet during the modern linear time of this day. And the progression would be to advance to a highly technological human species in the galaxy and the universe. Of course, there would be conflict but the idea would be to achieve a utopia and the cost of the value of getting to that utopia. And the platform mmo would be where you could make a literal living and acquire and accumulate treasures, trophies/feats. The story arc could be incredible to the imagination.

[@ismailtemur1]

World of Warcraft's Arathi Basin brawl bots already improved by a lot and play better than some actual players, i cannot imagine how it will be in 10 years

[@jokered1133]

Hello, I'm from the future reporting here, so everything that happens in your timeline didn't happen in ours, so Runescape didn't make it out of classic and Andrew Gower was dead shortly after, World of Warcraft is just Warcraft 4 in our universe but it makes sense that it's the World of Warcraft, but in our universe we reached Warcraft 6 which is wayy better than your Warcraft 4 that lasted for 20 years unnecessarily, also president Kennedy was not assassinated like your universe, he got us to Mars and spearheaded the Mars colony, trust me my dad works at Nintendo.

[@gekigaming]

If your predictions are correct, the team behind Ashes of Creation should've just waited for AI to catch up, would've taken the same time though less work.

[@Zederok]

Imagine in 20 years. Ashes of Creation is only a couple of years from full release. That gets me really excited for the future of MMO'S

[@g33k_Tech]

5:04 whats the game name

[@kizmoko1739]

Same here. I'm hoping to experience a full dive mmo before I get old. I would become young again inside the game.

[@jmc3179]

For me one huge advance will be when tech allows for one world where everyone can be together and not separated by servers.

[@darknightrider]

The game at 0:21, is that Rappelz?

[@janstueker1]

Nope, it's 4Story

[@steffren]

Yo what's the name of that Ryan Gosling film at 4:50?

[@steffren]

It's Blade Runner 2049

[@Darkclowd]

Whats the music at 7:30?

[@Dipstick67]

As a software engineer lets just say AI has a long way to go to be viable at scale, making small bits fine no worries. Many issues is giving the AI enough context of the application which is gigantic. This is why when we see AI stuff its normally small and entirely written by it, you cant just drop the code base into a chat prompt and be like yeah extend this class which is related to this class oh and this CMS is over here etc.

[@TheAirak]

I think you may be right on this, Arena Breakout Infinite, though not an MMO already announced AI players that you can talk with over voice chat and they will obey your commands based on natural language. Cool stuff.

[@netramc5123]

MMO's are a product of their era. MMORPG's were created as a online social experience, this idea got shifted by its own community from a social online adventure with friends to a toxic min-max sweaty solo experience with occasional group activities. Fans will say this is untrue. But think about it. Classic wow came out, everyone was having fun for the first 4 months. Then the min-max sweat toxicity creeped in and the experience went from social to 100% toxic. "We don't want LFG, it ruins the social experience!" The social experience = "WTB BOOST SM 25G!" and "GDKP PUG, must have twice the item level of the raid you're trying to clear or no invite" World of Warcraft a social experience! This issue is part of every mmorpg. The developers design a minimum requirement to participate in specific content, the community demands twice to three times the normal requirement or you can't participate. But in order to meet that standard you must have done the content before with the intended minimum requirement set by the developers. You must play since day 1 and keep playing or you're behind and won't be able to play without swiping a credit card.

[@SlickMajestic]

I agree. I don't think most people understand that. MMORPGs are a product of their era, and their era is gone. They simply cannot exist like they did; culture and technology have changed too much, as has the business fundamentals behind the gaming industry. There's far more to it than that, but if you understand that logic, you understand why MMORPGs are done (in the way we remember them).

[@Mediados]

To be fair, WoW is the most extreme example of this phenomenon. Many other MMOs have this to a far lesser degree.

[@aelahn]

it happened to Tibia... once a game where people would feel like living in an alternate world like any other MMORPG where they'd meet people, go on quests, evolve, fight on wars, now the game is very mechanized in it's own metas and paradigms, with everyone knowing their own roles into the socio-economic world created around the game. It's like the game stopped being treated as a fantasy adventure and treated as a real life activity through RTM and related stuff.

[@netramc5123]

@@Mediados The only one I can think of is New World. Even Swtor and ESO suffer from toxic min-max culture. And GW2 or games like GW2 are mostly a single player experience. Even Blizzard is now looking in to alternatives for the min-max toxic group culture. By offering players a means to get BiS via solo content with the upcoming expansion.

[@Mediados]

@@netramc5123 Blizzard is in the shitty position of having to try and put their entire company back on track. They've been going so far into the wrong direction for many years that there is a lot of work to be done until they're even back at the quality of Legion. Funny that you mention SWTOR because I never noticed it there, but I've also never played with other people. I treat it like a KOTOR 3, therefore proving your point. I tend to come back to GW2 all the time.

[@izeckx]

I'm so glad that AI generated content is now considered "made by no one" and therefore can't be copyrighted. So if someone were to make a game with AI they couldn't even complain when somebody else "steals" the content and makes something else with it or just copy and paste it and give it out for free.

[@deadcaptainjames6045]

I think the novelty of gaming online in a shared world has just worn off. Its not new or groundbreaking anymore. I have two kids and neither are interested in MMOs, and neither are any of their friends. It's just us gaming boomers who seem to still play MMOs.

[@sirbarther]

AI NPCs are definitely coming first. Can you imagine Skyrim responding with Chat-GPT to your actual voice? I absolutely love your idea of AI NPC populations in aging games, though. Very wise vision!

[@XSu_du]

Looking at the progress of video games from 1985-2005 and 2005-2025 is bizarre

[@rodrigotatter7746]

I will like that the NPC’s were made with IA, different interactions with different reactions, more real y and random behavior.

[@ImakeTanks]

Future MMO will all be VR

[@funglegunk]

If this video had been made a year ago, some of this might have been believeable. Generative AI is very quickly hitting a ceiling and investors are starting to ask what their actual return is, given how insanely expensive AI is to operate versus the quality it produces. The bubble is about to burst.

[@Nekonymous]

I think one of the first ways AI will be used in games is NPC dialogue using something like chatGPT. It would work especially well for single player RPGs, but why not also MMOs? I'm pretty sure i've already seen some videos of people experimenting with this in mods for skyrim etc.

[@Midori_Hoshi]

Good point about AI improving to the point where they catch up or surpass average humans and become capable of creating entire games on their own. It will likely be a major turning point for the video game industry.

[@virtualawakening2299]

Everyone would make their own personal MMO or SSO (small singular online). The challenge would be to merge everyone's SSO into something truly online. Eventually, we'll all be wearing EEG headbands while playing and AI will have absolute control over us all. Our future human puppet masters are making their moves right now.

[@jamesburke2209]

A community built MMO would be cooler than an AI built one. There are so many technical/creative people who like to play MMOs so it's surprising that there was never a popular community built MMO (was there even a single one?). Where the server/client are open source and community contribute writing lore building dungeons and zones. The core game is designed democratically to make sure it's cohesive, but also allow for rogue contributors e.g. have an Inn where you can play through random dungeons built by players. Top rated dungeons could even be adopted into the game.

[@teekanne15]

GW1 introduced heroes for grouping ages ago because people preferred doing content alone than finding party members and dealing with all the human stuff.

[@deathbunny45]

I wish I could relive wow release, man it was so epic and exciting. Unlike most MMO's today. New World was probably the last MMO that had me excited, even though it has many flaws, I still enjoy resource gathering, nothing beats mining ore on top of a mountain with the echo's of your pickaxe hammering away, plus the visuals are pretty stunning

[@CBrown]

I'm looking forward to the AI NPCs. This is one area where I don't really see a downside. Just think of it: Humans create a backstory and personality for an NPC and the AI generates responses and routines based on that. We might see a widowed single mother marry or take offense to the player's interactions with them. Imagine her finding out that you killed her husband, a bandit who was just trying to make a living which only happens if you actually kill that bandit, which you may never actually see because he has his own routines and was killed by a different player instead.

[@cedricortiz7177]

I think this is more like an NPC in an anime for us anime nerds where the main character has all kinds of conversations with NPCs but they have boundaries to an extent, as opposed to scripts

[@jonasengelbrektsson5890]

Yes I totally agree, having npcs like that would make it more like pen&paper rpgs. I can also see games go in the dwarf fortress direction, with generated history and story.

[@flwrgirl_1]

full on immersive gaming is going to need to have all types of input design, it can't all just be running/jumping on a treadmill waving your arms and kicking. there are entire swaths of people who would be eliminated from this based just on the need to stand up rather than sit or lay down. i think AI AND neural implants will be the next big jump.

[@dankmemes7658]

Imagine its 2048 and you're playing Rust 2, you're farming, you hear footsteps, you get downed, the other player t-bags you and kills you. It was an AI

[@amorak223]

Are you going to do a video on the Ashes of Creation controversy? Personally I think people are getting too worked up over the price of an alpha.

[@Sunderbrass]

Once AI gets to that point it won't matter. We'll all be able to make our own bespoke "perfect" game for ourselves.

[@TheDevaLand]

5:50 that was a legendary moment ngl

[@drewmcdonald4082]

As far as the near future - I see decentralization being big - there's already privately ran Minecraft MMOs, There's been an "MMO" run by players in Neverwinter Nights for 20 years or so, massive private WoW servers that compete with Blizzard. For me self-hosted survival RPGs have taken over MMOs with my group, and I can see the scale of these player run games becoming more popular as cloud hardware gets cheaper and cheaper to rent, someone running a heavily modded Valheim or something. This skips the AAA investment and development cycle completely and all it takes is one crazy nerd to kick off a phenomenon, more and more young people have studied computer science so coding is becoming a commodity and readily available for these projects. Only a matter of time until an Indie MMO catches on.

[@nordy259]

I don't see AI actually taking over unless we find a way to decrease its demand on electricity. Our power grid is already struggling with the current demand.

[@uznugaris]

I think AI could ruin the mmo community even more in a way if used not carefully like you see a real player and you will just assume they are an ai bot so you don't need to be nice to them and spiroling out of control like that, simultaneously like 'lfg' did to MMOs

[@kysierkevin]

With AI and Quantum computing, I can see it that the next MMO would be like a SAO anime

[@poatrykdas]

i like how lost ark appears in the video the moment bots are mentioned

[@RawrxDev]

As someone in computer science engineering space, I think AI will not progress nearly as much as we've seen moving forward, exponential progress has never remained in the history of humankind, and, although controversial in 2024 due to accelerationists, I double this will break that streak. Could AI help increase productivity, sure, but I doubt we will see non programmers making programs that are actually useful and/or novel. We're running out of training data, and AI still hallucinates with training data it DOES have.

[@oomegator]

"Studios will be hiring prompt engineers". The world is fucked.

[@teebses]

I almost closed the vide when he said that

[@radiglaz]

It's a realistic scenario, prompt engineering might actually become a thing at this rate...

[@99Plastics]

@@radiglaz No they're not, AI is literally better at writing prompts than human. The whole " prompt engineering" meme died within 3 months of its creation lol

[@niac297]

00:22 was that 4story?

[@DiMacky24]

AI will do two things, no matter how much further it progresses. It will help hardworking small studios make incredible products, thus making large studios struggle against small studios, but it will also result in an even more endless sea of shovelware. That said, cream rises to the top. The number of not f2p games on steam with a 75% positive rating with over 100 reviews has remained constant for the past several years at about 1400 games. To get 100 reviews, most games need to sell 3000 copies. So that means the pie for game purchases and playtime have been filled, and with that being the case, game dev competition is now a zero sum battle royale between studios large and small.

[@MH-kj8zs]

It is not about the MMOs. It is about community, making friends and fooling around. That's why old p2w games were really fun. Because of people - not mechanics, not grind and not graphics.

[@dimitriturner9026]

I cannot stress this enough; I DO NOT want an MMNORPG. I hate the idea of having an MMO filled with a bunch of AI to make it feel populated. I would rather just have a good MMORPG, so it would be populated. Now, I'm not blind. I know that a good MMORPG may not necessarily populated, but I do believe/feel/think that quality will give that outcome.