The Big Picture
Here’s the aspect of botting that intrigues me. Sophisticated botters could script a tank bot (knight/assassin) for leveling a new mage, or script a buff bot (priest) for leveling a new melee character. One could imagine the AI becoming smart enough such that you could script both and let both run at the same time. Or what if you could script your own dungeon-crawling group? A collaborative botting model introduces several new themes:
Character –vs- Entourage: The focus on individuality can be seen in video games. Most games have you controlling one character at a time, or as an overseeing god-like power without avatars (except in some RPGs). What if you controlled interacting characters instead of single characters in MMORPGs?
Persistent Characters: Interestingly, the only thing not persistent about persistent worlds are the characters that inhabit it. Your character is gone when you log off. So much for persistence. Bots allow characters to be persistent, in fact making the world more persistent.
The Nurturance Model: There’s something appealing about watching and being a part of a character’s growth – watching them grow from fledglings into masters of their disciplines, but that aspect is actually independent of the grind itself to a large degree. People get attached to plants and animals even though they grow and go about their existence when you’re not around them. Current game models try to get you bound to the grind (because the grind is what levels you up and grows your character), but that model severely cripples casual players. A nurturance model hooks the player on the character itself rather than the grind process.
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