Tobold's Blog
Saturday, September 26, 2026
 
Are MMORPGs and AI related?

In 2009 a games journalist named Ed Zitron wrote a review of Darkfall Online on Eurogamer, giving it a 2 out of 10 rating. That caused quite a shitstorm at the time. Ed Zitron was accused of only having played the game for 2 hours (he later claimed it was in fact 9 hours). As most MMORPG players were aware that these games take considerably longer to get into, Ed Zitron became kind of a running gag in MMO blogosphere, and was mentioned on this blog several times for it. He even received death threats from Darkfall Online fans. Eurogamer was then forced to get another games journalist to re-review Darkfall Online, which raised the score to 4 out of 10. These days I see Ed Zitron's face a lot when watching YouTube videos about AI, as he has developed into a major AI critic. That's what his Wikipedia page says, which curiously doesn't even mention the Eurogamer review. :)

Another critic of large tech and AI is Cory Doctorow. And I also know his name from my MMORPG days. Among other things he wrote a novel, For The Win, about MMORPGs, and contributed to a comic, In Real Life, about gold farming. These days he is mostly known for having invented the term "enshittification", and is also appearing a lot on those same AI critical YouTube videos.

This makes me wonder whether there is some intellectual link between MMORPGs and AI. Or is it just that 20 years ago, MMORPGs were a hot tech topic, and today the hot tech topic is AI? What do you think? Are virtual worlds related to virtual brains?

- posted by Tobold @ 8:22 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
Let’s see. Playing MMORPG’s is the ultimate escapism. If there’s anything at all MMO players have in common, it’s being fine with or even enjoying playing a great many hours into a world where it is not 100% about PVP (like battleground, FPS or arena gamea are). So - would that kind of person be specifically critical to AI? Tuned more into what the pitfalls of AI could be?
# posted by Anonymous Biggles : 26/9/26 16:28
 
We’ve been talking about AI in gaming for decades. I think it’s a natural extension of gaming AI into general AI.
# posted by Blogger Janous : 26/9/26 23:45
 
Given that I think that the one field that will be most impacted by AI is programming, and that video games are in the process of being permanently impacted by the use of AI, I would say yes, absolutely. If the new WoW Forever dealie isn't stealthfully using AI for its back end design and assets, I will be shocked. In my own business (healthcare administration) my programmers are all furiously working to find ways that they can use AI tools to improve their coding, so its only logical game developers are doing the same. For better or worse depends on your perspective (I am of the opinion its going to generate lots of crap for a while until suddenly its ubiquitous and nobody notices it anymore because its too difficult to detect).
# posted by Blogger Doctor Futurity : 8/10/26 00:13
 
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