Future with AI

Hello,

AI is advancing every day, and ignoring it or refusing to adapt only holds us back while the rest of the world moves forward. I'm wondering if Warmane has considered using AI to improve the gaming experience.

I've been thinking about ways it could help with existing issues, and one idea came to mind. If Warmane trained AI models using RDF tank behavior, we could potentially have AI tanks similar to retail Delves. Their quality could vary (some good, some bad), but it would completely solve the tank shortage.

Another idea would be to add AI NPCs that act like real players (farming, gathering, questing, etc. ). It would make the world feel more alive and thriving. Right now, on Icecrown, many zones feel empty and a bit depressing.

Changes like these could really help bring back that feeling of childhood, when WoW felt vibrant and full of life.

What do you think? Do you agree?

Well that sounds like a not bad idea on paper. But well, it would bring more harm than good when implemented badly.

First of all, issues you mentioned of course can be a problem for ones but benefit for others.

Like for example tank deficit issue, this one is beneficial for tanks, because they get instant queues, people are nicer toward tanks, this one is especially beneficial for people starting tanking and trying to learn to tank because people wont just go instakick for every minor mistake, some will try to give some tips etc. Of course there are clinically stupid people who also have too big ego to listen to anyone but well. we dont live in perfect world.
Imagine AI tanks get introduced in way that they instafill every slot in each df group, less people will ever try to tank because unironically deficit of tanks can also encourage someone to try tanking, but when we have tank abundance in dungeons then less people will tank which means there will be less tanks for raids, and speaking of new tanks, most likely every new tank will be votekicked by every minor mistakes just to be replaced with AI tank. More fair option would be if AI tank will be added to groups that are stuck in queue for long enough time like 15 mins or 30 mins.


Second, adding AI NPC's to the world unironically wont help, people who want to farm are happy with fact that they wont have any competition, but imagine you add automated bots that just walk around and pick up every herb, rock or quest item. It will piss people off and will also cause inflation as AI bots picking up resources make them harder to farm therefore more expensive.

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Originally Posted by OOFMAN

Well that sounds like a not bad idea on paper. But well, it would bring more harm than good when implemented badly.

First of all, issues you mentioned of course can be a problem for ones but benefit for others.

Like for example tank deficit issue, this one is beneficial for tanks, because they get instant queues, people are nicer toward tanks, this one is especially beneficial for people starting tanking and trying to learn to tank because people wont just go instakick for every minor mistake, some will try to give some tips etc. Of course there are clinically stupid people who also have too big ego to listen to anyone but well. we dont live in perfect world.
Imagine AI tanks get introduced in way that they instafill every slot in each df group, less people will ever try to tank because unironically deficit of tanks can also encourage someone to try tanking, but when we have tank abundance in dungeons then less people will tank which means there will be less tanks for raids, and speaking of new tanks, most likely every new tank will be votekicked by every minor mistakes just to be replaced with AI tank. More fair option would be if AI tank will be added to groups that are stuck in queue for long enough time like 15 mins or 30 mins.


Second, adding AI NPC's to the world unironically wont help, people who want to farm are happy with fact that they wont have any competition, but imagine you add automated bots that just walk around and pick up every herb, rock or quest item. It will piss people off and will also cause inflation as AI bots picking up resources make them harder to farm therefore more expensive.

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crazy pfp bro.

I don't think it's a terrible idea. An actual AI character to assist players in a game like this would be interesting. In theory you could actually make a toon that's virtually indistinguishable from an actual player. You could have conversations with it and it would react differently in every scenario. Weird to think about. What if everyone on this server is already AI? What if this change was implemented years ago already? What if the developers aren't even real people? What if I'm not even a real person?

Ehh warmane has 12k players on paper and even then it's not uncommon to get 2-9 minute ques especially for lvl 80 heroics vs normals or leveling dungeons.

If you want to level in dungeons, rolling a tank or healer and gearing them with looms is usually sufficient. Even then a lot of players have a "RUSH RUSH RUSH" mentality. And there's servers like solocraft with like 100 players online built for that.

Even then there's a huge issue where if the bots are too weak "why bother?" if the bots are too strong, it turns wow from dungeoning in a group to being a pikmin master. As someone who was interested in solo craft to skip out on the drama of 40 people having work / flaking / leaving / being hard to replace, i was interested. But the ai just isn't there for a bot that can literally do everything, path every dungeon, know what pulls to make, wait on heals, etc.

I think solocraft ended up having very basic bots that ended up a lot like pikmin. Instead of grouping with bots, the raid guides showed them summoning 35 mage bots or 35 rogue bots with 1-2 tank bots and -3-5 healer bots with commands to heal, tank, teleport/walk to areas and people would say "gear is optional outside of being alive to issue commands and a class that can move to issue commands" (like hunter/melee).

As someone who tanks, i don't think that tanking after gearing past say ilvl 230/4.8-5k+ gearscore is that bad. Wotlk heroics are notorious for 'being ez', outside of the spiders hitting like 45% of your hp in that 1 spider kingdom zone.

Cataclysm featured frequent one shots / healer silences/ healer mind controls / stuns, tbc featured HIt very hard mobs + cc + pull too many and die high number stat bricks with less mechanics.

Wotlk/Warmane mostly has a 'pull as many as you want, as long as the healer heals above 1-2k hp/s aside from Pit of Saron heroic / Paletress TOC and you have a ability to get aggro on all of them. And also be able to hold aggro against the guy who got/bought shadowmourne and spams 10-15k instant front loaded dungeon dps on a fury warrior where wotlk tanks only seem to hold like 3-4x threat and you're expected to hold 5k-15k+ tank dps worth of threat on like 20 mobs while most tanks on the server do like 1.5k-2.5k threat dps.

It's honestly not too bad tanking dungeons compared to ICC where everyone spends like 1-3 hrs grouping then insta leave on 1x 8% hp wipe and a raid implodes. There is a problem where most people don't want to teach or bother with first time learners and also have work and just bail if anyone has a problem. But i dunno if ai bots are the solution for here.

Again solocraft has them but on a mostly unmodifiedish vanilla client all they can seem to do is teleport to the wielders location and i don't know if the logic for pathing can exist in a addon.

If anything you might as well make a nerfed/stronger solo gear mode for a solo or mythic+ dungeon scaled icc than bots tbh but i think that's beyond the scope of wotlk vanilla. 2-9 minute ques at 80 really aren't so bad though, retail had 30-49 minute ques regularly at one point until the 900 g bonus bags for tank/healers.