In Erenshor, Burgee Media has come up with an interesting solution to an age-old question. How do you build an MMORPG without having to worry about fluctuating online player counts?
The solution, it seems, is to just do without the online player count. That’s the blunt force method employed for Erenshor, a single-player MMORPG that respects the player’s time, but still offers a living world of sorts and all the quests, raids, and secrets of a typical MMO experience. An ”MMO-Like” as the developer puts it.
But how does that even work? Well, every other player in your game world is computer-controlled. Erenshor’s ”SimPlayers” act like human questers that persistently exist in the game world. They make independent progress when you’re not playing and have their own opinions of other SimPlayers and of you. They even get involved in the chat.
Erenshor Things
The game simulates the wide variety of players typically found in an MMORPG, but this twist comes with some added convenience. Your favorite party pals will always be ready, willing, and (hopefully) able to assist you in your quests and raids. Thus, you can play at your own speed in your own time.
That might sound a bit like alcohol-free beer to some players. It looks and smells like an MMO, and even tastes a bit like one, but it’s that missing aspect that will trouble some. It’s easy to view Erenshor as a novelty with the mindset of a veteran MMORPG player because the social side is huge for a lot of people, but in this modern age of online communication with pals, it’s not quite as singular as it once was (for better and for worse). What Erenshor offers is peace in the chaos. A world that revolves around you, but still ticks on regardless. The anxiety of keeping up or even getting your foot in the door of a years-old MMO is not so much of an issue here.
Crucially, this is a game designed for the individual. There’s no faffing about waiting for the right mix of people to join your party, no quests you get blocked from doing because you and your old crew have adult responsibilities now, and there’s more chance of a meteor hitting the Earth than your schedules lining up. Frustration is primarily kept at the door in Erenshor.
You will still stumble along the way, of course. It’d be pretty boring otherwise, right? It’s best to think of each failure as an experience for the bonfire of progress for the whole ”server”. In a way, Erenshor is a secret management sim. Your server gets stronger over time, and you can and likely will have a big say in how that happens. That alone makes Erenshor a very different beast from a regular MMO
MMO Yeah?
I know what you might be thinking with a server full of intelligent NPCs (regular dullard quest-giving ones also exist, mind). But no, there’s no AI nonsense under the hood of Erenshor beyond the kind that usually exists in games. Burgee Media employs a blend of state machines and decision trees to keep things ticking.
With that in mind, it’s really quite remarkable to see a small developer pull this off, let a lone a solo dev like this. I’m not the biggest MMO fan, but the ones that have clicked with me most are the ones that let me be as much as they could. I enjoy the persistence of it all, but the time investment expectations get heavier the deeper you go. Erenshor is not the perfect solution to that, but it is a cool alternative.
Erenshor is now in Early Access on Steam.
