...versus World of Warcraft

5E turning into the 'pen and paper MMO' is doomed to fail. I logged into World of Warcraft recently to check the upcoming expansion, and while this MMO is highly flawed, it is still a better experience than an online 5E game. The metrics we all use as excuses to 'play 5E' get blown out of the water by a halfway decent MMO.

No, World of Warcraft isn't D&D.

But it is an 'activity' like D&D that shares a lot in common:

• Fantasy
• Consumes Time
• Play with Friends
• Adventure and Story
• Character Progression

Finding a game? I have a button to instantly get into a group whenever I want. I am put in the queue, and off I go! Granted, these are not the best games, but unlike 5E, I am not forced to waste weeks figuring that out - and have to give these people personal information and find a shared play space. And in an MMO, I never have to let them into my house. That may sound massively unsocial, but this is the world we live in post-2020.

Chances are I will land in an active and friendly guild on a server if I show interest and the willingness to learn and follow orders. I will always have content and groups. I will never need a dungeon master. I do not need 3d assets or a VTT to run a game. No game prep. No 80-dollar books to buy. There is a monthly fee, but it is cheaper than keeping up on 5E books and Kickstarters.

Granted, this is all an 'I know this' comparison - and a pretty lame article. There is no 'dungeon master' in World of Warcraft - but with AI advancing as quickly as it is, and Microsoft buying Blizzard, this likely is only a matter of time.

MMOs are not roleplaying. Not yet.

But a strange convergence of AI and online adventure is where we are heading.

But I ask myself, what is the Wizards VTT building? A static, non-animated, unmoving version of World of Warcraft with a few limited terrains and towns that we will all get sick of after one or two sessions? Part of the fun of a pen-and-paper game is going to places we have never been to and seeing people and cultures far removed from our experience. How fun will it be to go back to the same damn tavern map and town a few hundred times because the selection in the store isn't that great, and we don't have the money to keep buying 3d maps?

I have been in the 3d industry, especially the 3d asset creation field - building 3d sets and terrains is not cheap, and it can take weeks or months for a dedicated artist to pull off. To make that 3d set work within a VTT engine? That is further work 'editing the map' by a level-design editor, like creating the walkable surfaces the ruler will work on - more time and money spent. Testing? QA? Packaging? Store cloud space? More money is added with each step. Especially if the 3d assets you use are essentially asset flips from game stores, you get into relicensing fees and contracts (and having to pull an asset because the license expired).

Pretty soon, what you thought would take a 3d artist to 'hack out' is taking months to build a dungeon for the next major module release; the testers are complaining a few hundred issues are broken. What you thought you could flip on the VTT store for a few hundred dollars to build, and ship is turning into expensive videogame development in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in sunk development costs - that may release with a thud. You want the VTT Tomb of Horrors to be an 'experience' - of course, we need to sink more money into this!

How much can you charge for this?

The Wizards VTT feels like it is showing more for investors than for gamers. If you wanted gamers, the sets would be modular and snap together easily. You could buy pieces. This feels like a tech demo meant to grab investor attention.

Meanwhile, MMOs are sitting over there with infrastructure, cost data, scale, staff artists, animators, and the customer base to pull it off and make money doing it since they have been down that road for decades. They know how much money they can sink into a 'dungeon' for it to make money, and they have millions of customers ready to pay and allow for a profit margin.

AI plus D&D has a long way to go and is a niche experience.

AI plus an MMO is 99% of the way there and mainstream.

Wizards is trying to build a backdoor MMO with the VTT, which is doomed. Not just from a 'being negative' standpoint, but from an observational one - the level of adoption and success they would need to create the economy of scale to pull this off would be unprecedented.

And sooner or later, they start bumping heads with MMOs.

No, you can't 'roleplay' that well in MMOs. And you can't tell your 'own stories' - but the value and delivery of services are more accessible than a VTT. The costs are far less, especially when it comes to asset creation. Online roleplaying is a niche product, and VTTs are in the novelty market where more effort is needed to make the whole thing work than most people are willing to put in.

What happens when an MMO creates an AI 'dungeon master' that crafts stories around your favorite MMO character, and the game suddenly never plays the same way twice? What happens when the MMO AI DMs dynamically create adventure zones, NPCs, and 3d maps? What happens when your character's story is this complex, amazingly written creation that you have narrative control over, given your actions? What happens when your character has romance options with dynamically generated NPCs and can raise an in-game family and kingdom?

Will you even need a VTT?

An AI-driven VTT is a product designed to play the game we were interested in 10 years ago in the best way possible. It isn't forward-looking. And it will be quickly replaced by AI-driven mainstream options.