Dead Private Server Theory

[Zvyrhol]

I'm afraid there is uncertain future for MMORPG genre, especially for private servers. Golden era of WoW private servers might be the past already.
Rapid development of AI might change this genre like never before.. but I'm afraid it will change for worse.



DEAD PRIVATE SERVER THEORY


First corruption of MMORPG genre were bots. Cheaters had to write their own scripts for botting software. If there was a bot in the game, their moving was unnatural and easily seen by fellow players. It was very easy to detect and impossible to script perfectly. Responding on chat was a viable test to prove someone wasn't cheating. So assuming that the game had solid moderation, this botting corruption wasn't widely spread.

A few years ago AI was still primitive, it could be used at most to respond to whispers or something like that.
Using it for personal gain in WoW was limited. However, technology still improves. AI can now generate real voice in real-time and sound like real human - and no human can detect that with their own ears.

But in WoW voice chat isn't even used. Now the technology allows bots to respond to whispers in real time like a real player does. You can't really know if someone you grouped up today for Hogger was a real player. AI is able to gather information from all guides to WoW on the Internet, learn to play WoW especially in 1-60 level range thanks to all these leveling guides and chat with players on top of that, even making friends in-game and to remember relation with them. I think this process hasn't spread that much ... yet.

Imagine what tools bots can use now. They no longer need to script every move, AI can make choices in real time where to go, what to kill. Movement might look natural. If you are GM, you can't really know if someone is cheating because they might respond and play like a real guy. But note that bots are being run to farm gold or reach level 60 fast. If it's profitable for cheaters to sell these characters, they might run crazy amount of them. If it's cheap to run a bot, what stops them to run 10 000 bots that act like real players at once? Bots could potentially become majority of "players" on the server and casual players might not even notice that.

Thus, not only bots are the problem. If bots are able to replace real players, what's the profit for the server then? Bots won't buy anything from cash shop obviously. Take a role of private server owner now. What would you do in such case where there is fierce competition among private server scene. Your goal is to have as many players as possible on your server so that there is higher pool of players who could potentially donate. It's hard to maintain huge amount of population on a private server (yes, Turtle WoW or Octo WoW are exceptions - think about other 100 private servers that are literally dead).

So if server owner's goal is to earn money, optimal strategy is to fake population numbers. Warmane is a nice example, it has been doing it for years. This server was psychologically constructed to make you believe population there was the largest of all servers - I think there was some video on that. With fake queue you could skip for $$$ LOL. But I'm digressing. This is what servers could do before AI age. Now, owner of the server might be encouraged to run their own 10 000 AI bots and advertise their server as massively popular one. Again, casuals won't even notice and fall for this trap.

But the worst thing of all is that you can't really stop this process. Even if the owner of the server is honest, bots will show up eventually. You will never be sure who is really playing behind some character. And what if nobody plays this server except you? What if all players are fake? Why all these guild names sound so cringy? Dead Private Server Theory might be real. Can this game belong to MMORPG genre if all players are actual bots?

Fortunately, at high level we organise outside of game for example on Discord servers so the players from old guild can trust each other. I'm not sure if bots would be able to additionally connect with Discord on top of that and use fake voice. We can still trust old friends and view them as 100% human but can we trust new ones?

But... is there any way to prevent bots from overcrowding private servers? One might think subcription fee could be necessary. That would at least discourage to deploy tons of bots. However, owner of the server won't pay for sub obviously. I don't see how could it be stopped. Private servers might be all fake in the future.



POLITICS...


Though in my opinion this problem concerns firstly private servers. Let's talk about dirty things like politics. Could you predict how the world will look like in 20 years with the rapid growth of AI? I think there will be some attempts from the states to give access to some kind of digital ID. Note; I don't think digital ID will necessarily be enforced by states (depending on a state) but rather it can be freely given by government. MMOs will likely become unplayable due to the bots infestion in games of this genre and some people would actually want their government to distribute such thing. However, I do believe the desire for real humans to play games like WoW with other REAL players won't disappear and something like digital ID would solve the problem. Humans could be verified in real life and get access to this ID. I assume all companies that own MMOs would have to add possibility to play on a realm with access only to people with digital ID if they want their games to keep alive.

But the question is: how would this digital ID be distributed? Will governments only give concession to big companies and with accordance to intelectual property?
If so, there is no way it's going to be distributed to private servers. The only REAL WoW might be the one from Blizzard ... which doesn't sound like a good future for us, Octo enjoyers.
If not, private servers won't be so private. Octo owners must remain anonymous if we want to keep Turtle's legacy safe from Blizzard. That would be death sentence to Octo WoW.

However, note that digital ID won't solve the issue completely. Botting with AI could still be possible but limited to only 1 bot. Or if you are smart enough, you could ask your family who don't play WoW for this ID and run additional bots. ... or in some corrupt countries you could buy fake digital ID. Sorry for the dark humor but I think it might be solution to hunger issue in Africa. Jokes aside, I see imperfections in digital ID idea. AI might consume even original MMOs.


Sooo... what's our future?

[Icantkite]

way too many people using scripts/boting and thats not a good thing

[Maaadcheddarrr]

There's definitely people vibecoding bots to manage AH listings. It's been pretty abysmal.

[Ollie]

not to mention the onybots in orgrimmar who can no longer be killed with an infernal, they read combat log and logout for 5 minutes, then automatically log back in.

Also the "No" guys in stormwind automatically buffing fortitude on passing players is a bot as well.

The auction house has botting on it too as mentioned in previous threads on this forums, the owners of this server know about it and chooses to ignore for some reason.

[Rtas]

I'm afraid there is uncertain future for MMORPG genre, especially for private servers. Golden era of WoW private servers might be the past already.
Rapid development of AI might change this genre like never before.. but I'm afraid it will change for worse.



DEAD PRIVATE SERVER THEORY


First corruption of MMORPG genre were bots. Cheaters had to write their own scripts for botting software. If there was a bot in the game, their moving was unnatural and easily seen by fellow players. It was very easy to detect and impossible to script perfectly. Responding on chat was a viable test to prove someone wasn't cheating. So assuming that the game had solid moderation, this botting corruption wasn't widely spread.

A few years ago AI was still primitive, it could be used at most to respond to whispers or something like that.
Using it for personal gain in WoW was limited. However, technology still improves. AI can now generate real voice in real-time and sound like real human - and no human can detect that with their own ears.

But in WoW voice chat isn't even used. Now the technology allows bots to respond to whispers in real time like a real player does. You can't really know if someone you grouped up today for Hogger was a real player. AI is able to gather information from all guides to WoW on the Internet, learn to play WoW especially in 1-60 level range thanks to all these leveling guides and chat with players on top of that, even making friends in-game and to remember relation with them. I think this process hasn't spread that much ... yet.

Imagine what tools bots can use now. They no longer need to script every move, AI can make choices in real time where to go, what to kill. Movement might look natural. If you are GM, you can't really know if someone is cheating because they might respond and play like a real guy. But note that bots are being run to farm gold or reach level 60 fast. If it's profitable for cheaters to sell these characters, they might run crazy amount of them. If it's cheap to run a bot, what stops them to run 10 000 bots that act like real players at once? Bots could potentially become majority of "players" on the server and casual players might not even notice that.

Thus, not only bots are the problem. If bots are able to replace real players, what's the profit for the server then? Bots won't buy anything from cash shop obviously. Take a role of private server owner now. What would you do in such case where there is fierce competition among private server scene. Your goal is to have as many players as possible on your server so that there is higher pool of players who could potentially donate. It's hard to maintain huge amount of population on a private server (yes, Turtle WoW or Octo WoW are exceptions - think about other 100 private servers that are literally dead).

So if server owner's goal is to earn money, optimal strategy is to fake population numbers. Warmane is a nice example, it has been doing it for years. This server was psychologically constructed to make you believe population there was the largest of all servers - I think there was some video on that. With fake queue you could skip for $$$ LOL. But I'm digressing. This is what servers could do before AI age. Now, owner of the server might be encouraged to run their own 10 000 AI bots and advertise their server as massively popular one. Again, casuals won't even notice and fall for this trap.

But the worst thing of all is that you can't really stop this process. Even if the owner of the server is honest, bots will show up eventually. You will never be sure who is really playing behind some character. And what if nobody plays this server except you? What if all players are fake? Why all these guild names sound so cringy? Dead Private Server Theory might be real. Can this game belong to MMORPG genre if all players are actual bots?

Fortunately, at high level we organise outside of game for example on Discord servers so the players from old guild can trust each other. I'm not sure if bots would be able to additionally connect with Discord on top of that and use fake voice. We can still trust old friends and view them as 100% human but can we trust new ones?

But... is there any way to prevent bots from overcrowding private servers? One might think subcription fee could be necessary. That would at least discourage to deploy tons of bots. However, owner of the server won't pay for sub obviously. I don't see how could it be stopped. Private servers might be all fake in the future.



POLITICS...


Though in my opinion this problem concerns firstly private servers. Let's talk about dirty things like politics. Could you predict how the world will look like in 20 years with the rapid growth of AI? I think there will be some attempts from the states to give access to some kind of digital ID. Note; I don't think digital ID will necessarily be enforced by states (depending on a state) but rather it can be freely given by government. MMOs will likely become unplayable due to the bots infestion in games of this genre and some people would actually want their government to distribute such thing. However, I do believe the desire for real humans to play games like WoW with other REAL players won't disappear and something like digital ID would solve the problem. Humans could be verified in real life and get access to this ID. I assume all companies that own MMOs would have to add possibility to play on a realm with access only to people with digital ID if they want their games to keep alive.

But the question is: how would this digital ID be distributed? Will governments only give concession to big companies and with accordance to intelectual property?
If so, there is no way it's going to be distributed to private servers. The only REAL WoW might be the one from Blizzard ... which doesn't sound like a good future for us, Octo enjoyers.
If not, private servers won't be so private. Octo owners must remain anonymous if we want to keep Turtle's legacy safe from Blizzard. That would be death sentence to Octo WoW.

However, note that digital ID won't solve the issue completely. Botting with AI could still be possible but limited to only 1 bot. Or if you are smart enough, you could ask your family who don't play WoW for this ID and run additional bots. ... or in some corrupt countries you could buy fake digital ID. Sorry for the dark humor but I think it might be solution to hunger issue in Africa. Jokes aside, I see imperfections in digital ID idea. AI might consume even original MMOs.


Sooo... what's our future?

AWWW SCHWEET LOIS!

A schizo post

[Dzielkus]

Seems AI bots may pug your empty raid group or fill up bg que

[Beckett]

way too many people using scripts/boting and thats not a good thing

Yep, big part of the reason I gradually stopped playing this server. It's maddening they do nothing about it and even encourage it. The worst is Arathi Basin and the "players" that just run to the first flag and do nothing else. They buff each other and will (crappily) fight other players. Always the same ones. The claudian responses they give to whispers are enough to fool the GMs if you report them. They've effectively reached the point where they are almost indistinguishable from bad players of which this server has in spades.

That and the other bots people have pointed out just chilling in the capitol. Imagine seeing a few cockroaches scurry by and say "Oh well at least its only one or two" and not wanting to pull up the floorboards to see the real horrors beneath. That's how this server treats the issue.

[Maaadcheddarrr]

Enjoy your slopcoded bot future.