A former EverQuest producer, WoW vets and Elden Ring devs are making an MMO filled with AI-generated NPCs
With a load of blockchain to boot
A bunch of MMO veterans led by one of the original producers of genre granddaddy EverQuest are working on a new online game that will use AI tools to create characters and have them interact with players. There's also mention of blockchain-like asset ownership and ambitions of being the next metaverse.
Avalon’s team is headed up by Jeffrey Butler, who was a producer on the original EverQuest before serving as lead on its cancelled reboot EverQuest Next. Joining Butler at Avalon studio Avalon - yes, the company and game are called the same thing - is apparently a team of industry vets made up of more EverQuest alumni and devs with credits on World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Elden Ring and Diablo.
Avalon: The Game’s headline feature is that it’ll span a variety of settings and genres, from fantasy to cyberpunk, and let players hop between them while contributing to the game’s own setting and lore as they add to the world.
Helping to create those many worlds is a load of AI-powered tech behind the scenes, including procedural generation character creation tool Popul8 - which churns out a bunch of variations on NPC character models, and was recently used to make all those overly-teethy civilians in Cities: Skylines 2.
Even deeper down the AI hole is Avalon’s use of Inworld AI, which acts as a sort of built-in ChatGPT for NPCs’ interaction with players, generating dialogue and personalities for characters based on prompts and details given to them by devs.
The result of all this tech, at least going by the game’s brief teaser trailer, appears to be a generic-looking MMO with unremarkable snippets of combat that switch between bad-looking hack-and-slash fantasy to bad-looking third-person shooting against sci-fi mechs. There’s also a bit of Sims-like house building and city-building-esque layout of a settlement shown, but mostly it looks like one of those video games that is only played by fictional characters in a TV show. Wow, AI really is the future.
If that wasn’t enough to sour the taste, there’s also mention of a virtual economy and “digital sovereignty” that will let players own assets and worlds and transfer them between worlds and other games and platforms, all “authenticated by Avalon through the DAO”, which very much smacks of blockchain integration.
To complete your bingo card of off-putting buzzwords, a comment from Avalon: The Company SEO Sean Pinnock adds that the MMO aims to “make something that fulfills the promise of the metaverse” by letting players build the world for themselves.
If the crashing-and-burning of pretty much everything to have aimed at becoming the next “metaverse” or touching the blockchain is anything to go by, Avalon’s got some work ahead of it to deliver on its lofty ambitions. Work that its creators would apparently prefer AI or players to do, it seems.