Everquest Next AI break down and a world of conflict video.

giga1000

Here is a video we have been waiting to be made since SOE live. 

This is the full video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gJgZDZdnHc.

For me I like this for AI and mass props to SOE for even trying it. Progress +1

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gJgZDZdnHc

 

What do you all think about this?

Lobotomist

After all these years. And virtual death of MMORPG genre. There is the light at the end of the tunnel.

We are finally seeing the game that is trying to actually be more complex than Ultima Online.

 

 

BurntCabbage

lol are you serious?

Archlyte

This technology is great. I look forward to games that come out beyond EQNext that use the Storybricks approach. This is very revolutionary stuff.

Rydeson

Originally posted by DMKano

Still waiting to see it in live gameplay with 1000s of other players running around and interacting with NPCs.

 

What is the scalabilty of storybricks? - What are the hard limits of the system?

Again the idea that 10,000s of NPCs would all have a deep branching AI system with 1000s of players interacting with them (and NPCs interacting amongs eachother) ... it's a hard pill to swallow.

I am sure that it can be pulled off - but at what cost? How many Storybricks servers/processes are needed to handle X number of NPCs?

Heavy AI comes at heavy CPU cost - that's why I am questions the scalability as well as depth and breadth of actual final implementation of Storybricks in EQN.

 

Is every single NPC in game going to be running on Storybricks - or only select "key" NPCs?

 

     I agree.. and as a devils advocate, what happens to OLD sections of the world that no one plays in anymore.. Will storybricks turn those parts of the world into unplayable, or unreasonable?  We all know that there are tiers in the world, and history shows us that eventually communities become top heavy as players mature..

     Lets use their demo example to explain a potential problem.. Remember the part where the Kobalds own most of the land and only one section was under influence by the dark elves..  What if, to unlock the Shadow Knight class you have to push back the mobs.. That is great and quick early on in the game when 20 players are all trying to do the same thing, but what happens months later or even years, when most everyone is tier 5 and already unlocked that class..  Will newcombers be forced to GRIND extra time to unlock that same content because players "moved on" from that location?   I haven't heard anything yet about how old content doesn't become obsolete over time, or trivial.. 

     Without the need for alts, how do you keep newbie areas populated?  I question the effect storybricks will have on low tier (aka abandoned) areas of the map.. I hope SOE knows what "Murphy's Law" is.. 

Lobotomist

Originally posted by Rydeson

Originally posted by DMKano

Still waiting to see it in live gameplay with 1000s of other players running around and interacting with NPCs.

 

What is the scalabilty of storybricks? - What are the hard limits of the system?

Again the idea that 10,000s of NPCs would all have a deep branching AI system with 1000s of players interacting with them (and NPCs interacting amongs eachother) ... it's a hard pill to swallow.

I am sure that it can be pulled off - but at what cost? How many Storybricks servers/processes are needed to handle X number of NPCs?

Heavy AI comes at heavy CPU cost - that's why I am questions the scalability as well as depth and breadth of actual final implementation of Storybricks in EQN.

 

Is every single NPC in game going to be running on Storybricks - or only select "key" NPCs?

 

     I agree.. and as a devils advocate, what happens to OLD sections of the world that no one plays in anymore.. Will storybricks turn those parts of the world into unplayable, or unreasonable?  We all know that there are tiers in the world, and history shows us that eventually communities become top heavy as players mature..

     Lets use their demo example to explain a potential problem.. Remember the part where the Kobalds own most of the land and only one section was under influence by the dark elves..  What if, to unlock the Shadow Knight class you have to push back the mobs.. That is great and quick early on in the game when 20 players are all trying to do the same thing, but what happens months later or even years, when most everyone is tier 5 and already unlocked that class..  Will newcombers be forced to GRIND extra time to unlock that same content because players "moved on" from that location?   I haven't heard anything yet about how old content doesn't become obsolete over time, or trivial.. 

     Without the need for alts, how do you keep newbie areas populated?  I question the effect storybricks will have on low tier (aka abandoned) areas of the map.. I hope SOE knows what "Murphy's Law" is.. 

Jeez ! I hope EQ Next developers are reading these forums. Because they surely didnt think about such problems.

Thanks god for all armchair game designers we have here at mmorpg.com !

Apraxis

Originally posted by Lobotomist

After all these years. And virtual death of MMORPG genre. There is the light at the end of the tunnel.

We are finally seeing the game that is trying to actually be more complex than Ultima Online.

That is so damn true. After UO my mind was blown away with the possibilities what could happen. And then every game after it was less complex, more simplified.

Who knows how good EQN will be, or how far actually will go with it. But at least a few basic technologies(advanced Voxel Engine, Emotional AI/Storybricks) are introduced, which will actually boost the genre. And most probably not only the MMO genre. Those two aspects are the first new elements since UO(except 3D and server clusters).. everything else are just tiny design tidbits.

EQN may actually the first next gen MMO(with UO to ESO/Wildstar the first generation).. however, i somehow doubt SOE will go far enough with the game itself, and it may need another developer utilizing those technologies. On the other side SOE could surprise me once more. But Emotional AI(Storybrick like AI) and advanced Terraforming through Voxel Engine will influence the MMO genre most probably the most in the next 10 years.

Apraxis

Originally posted by Rydeson

     I agree.. and as a devils advocate, what happens to OLD sections of the world that no one plays in anymore.. Will storybricks turn those parts of the world into unplayable, or unreasonable?  We all know that there are tiers in the world, and history shows us that eventually communities become top heavy as players mature..

You are so deep stuck into the EQ1/DikuMUD model that you can't even imagine other approaches? Never played UO? In UO there was nothing like a "old section", and as in EQN already announced it is a more horizontal world design. Yes, they will have 4 Tiers as much as i remember the prasentation, but all of them will be valuable all the time for everyone.. very much like UO 16 years ago. There will no lvl 1-5,6-15,16-25,26-35 and ongoing zones, it will not be that much gated and vertically separated.

See the 4 Tiers a little bit like that:

- Tier 1: Easy to medium Content, Single Player

- Tier 2: Hard Content for Single Player, Small group Content

- Tier 3: Group content of varying difficulty

- Tier 4: Raid or large Group content, or very hard group content

And yeap.. it is really that simple.

Archlyte

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Originally posted by Rydeson

Originally posted by DMKano

Still waiting to see it in live gameplay with 1000s of other players running around and interacting with NPCs.

 

What is the scalabilty of storybricks? - What are the hard limits of the system?

Again the idea that 10,000s of NPCs would all have a deep branching AI system with 1000s of players interacting with them (and NPCs interacting amongs eachother) ... it's a hard pill to swallow.

I am sure that it can be pulled off - but at what cost? How many Storybricks servers/processes are needed to handle X number of NPCs?

Heavy AI comes at heavy CPU cost - that's why I am questions the scalability as well as depth and breadth of actual final implementation of Storybricks in EQN.

 

Is every single NPC in game going to be running on Storybricks - or only select "key" NPCs?

 

     I agree.. and as a devils advocate, what happens to OLD sections of the world that no one plays in anymore.. Will storybricks turn those parts of the world into unplayable, or unreasonable?  We all know that there are tiers in the world, and history shows us that eventually communities become top heavy as players mature..

     Lets use their demo example to explain a potential problem.. Remember the part where the Kobalds own most of the land and only one section was under influence by the dark elves..  What if, to unlock the Shadow Knight class you have to push back the mobs.. That is great and quick early on in the game when 20 players are all trying to do the same thing, but what happens months later or even years, when most everyone is tier 5 and already unlocked that class..  Will newcombers be forced to GRIND extra time to unlock that same content because players "moved on" from that location?   I haven't heard anything yet about how old content doesn't become obsolete over time, or trivial.. 

     Without the need for alts, how do you keep newbie areas populated?  I question the effect storybricks will have on low tier (aka abandoned) areas of the map.. I hope SOE knows what "Murphy's Law" is.. 

Jeez ! I hope EQ Next developers are reading these forums. Because they surely didnt think about such problems.

Thanks god for all armchair game designers we have here at mmorpg.com !

I guess that means that there are no such things as bugs and glitches. If it were as you imply, all professional developers would anticipate every flaw and bug before hand and players would never see them. There will be bugs and problems with the AI.

SlyLoK

The video was just a bunch of words using a simulator that shows nothing really. I think people need to pump the brakes on the storybrick hype until it actually happens in the game world. I mean some people think that NPCs will be self aware with no scripts for crying out loud. The demo they showed with the NPCs was heavily scripted and hardly anything SOE has hyped up. They scripted NPCs to kneel , use a scrying stone and follow you which is nothing new.

 

flizzer

Im still unclear how this is radically different than the GW2 approach.  Although the GW2 approach is different from a guy with a ring or exclamation mark above his head, it does get boring quickly and I feel dynamic events are not a good way to tell compelling stories. It remains to be seen how this will work in EQ Next. I hope I am wrong.  We need to actually see gameplay video soon hopefully.

mmoguy43

It's a good start. I knew SOE was the only one that could make a quality sandbox happen. A great AI is just one part.

DarLorkar

Why do some think this will be so great?

 

The difference between a coder telling a npc to stay in one spot. And another to follow a path and do certain things is what? More code yes?

 

Still just going to do what is coded. Should make the world feel a bit more alive, yes..but to be the holy grail that some here seem to think? Just do not see anything here that is going to be a huge leap forward or the best thing since sliced bread:P

 

Of course i am always hoping that games will get better, and this has the potential to do this. But not by leaps and bounds that some folks seem to have in their heads.

Sovrath

Originally posted by Rydeson

 

     I agree.. and as a devils advocate, what happens to OLD sections of the world that no one plays in anymore.. Will storybricks turn those parts of the world into unplayable, or unreasonable?  We all know that there are tiers in the world, and history shows us that eventually communities become top heavy as players mature..

     Lets use their demo example to explain a potential problem.. Remember the part where the Kobalds own most of the land and only one section was under influence by the dark elves..  What if, to unlock the Shadow Knight class you have to push back the mobs.. That is great and quick early on in the game when 20 players are all trying to do the same thing, but what happens months later or even years, when most everyone is tier 5 and already unlocked that class..  Will newcombers be forced to GRIND extra time to unlock that same content because players "moved on" from that location?   I haven't heard anything yet about how old content doesn't become obsolete over time, or trivial.. 

     Without the need for alts, how do you keep newbie areas populated?  I question the effect storybricks will have on low tier (aka abandoned) areas of the map.. I hope SOE knows what "Murphy's Law" is.. 

Well, first, create real incentives for high level players to go back to newbie zones by ...

Not having "newbie zones"  but "newbie friendly zones".

Meaning, make the world "the world". Parts of it are very dangerous for low level players and parts of it are only dangerous if new players aren't paying attention.

Add reasons for players to be in any part of the world and in any city. Because it's a city not because it's a "new player city".

And make it is in the interest of high level players to revisit that kobald area because it taking over an area is bad for the world as a whole. Stifled trade or making deals with demons, etc.

 

Quirhid

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Originally posted by Rydeson

Originally posted by DMKano

Still waiting to see it in live gameplay with 1000s of other players running around and interacting with NPCs.

 

What is the scalabilty of storybricks? - What are the hard limits of the system?

Again the idea that 10,000s of NPCs would all have a deep branching AI system with 1000s of players interacting with them (and NPCs interacting amongs eachother) ... it's a hard pill to swallow.

I am sure that it can be pulled off - but at what cost? How many Storybricks servers/processes are needed to handle X number of NPCs?

Heavy AI comes at heavy CPU cost - that's why I am questions the scalability as well as depth and breadth of actual final implementation of Storybricks in EQN.

 

Is every single NPC in game going to be running on Storybricks - or only select "key" NPCs?

 

     I agree.. and as a devils advocate, what happens to OLD sections of the world that no one plays in anymore.. Will storybricks turn those parts of the world into unplayable, or unreasonable?  We all know that there are tiers in the world, and history shows us that eventually communities become top heavy as players mature..

     Lets use their demo example to explain a potential problem.. Remember the part where the Kobalds own most of the land and only one section was under influence by the dark elves..  What if, to unlock the Shadow Knight class you have to push back the mobs.. That is great and quick early on in the game when 20 players are all trying to do the same thing, but what happens months later or even years, when most everyone is tier 5 and already unlocked that class..  Will newcombers be forced to GRIND extra time to unlock that same content because players "moved on" from that location?   I haven't heard anything yet about how old content doesn't become obsolete over time, or trivial.. 

     Without the need for alts, how do you keep newbie areas populated?  I question the effect storybricks will have on low tier (aka abandoned) areas of the map.. I hope SOE knows what "Murphy's Law" is.. 

Jeez ! I hope EQ Next developers are reading these forums. Because they surely didnt think about such problems.

Thanks god for all armchair game designers we have here at mmorpg.com !

Because EQ Next developers don't A) oversell what they've created, make mistakes or C) lie outright?

Not everyone is as gullible as you.

Brabbit1987

Originally posted by SlyLoK

The video was just a bunch of words using a simulator that shows nothing really. I think people need to pump the brakes on the storybrick hype until it actually happens in the game world. I mean some people think that NPCs will be self aware with no scripts for crying out loud. The demo they showed with the NPCs was heavily scripted and hardly anything SOE has hyped up. They scripted NPCs to kneel , use a scrying stone and follow you which is nothing new.

 

 

Actually, the simulator shows interaction between players and NPCs in a massive scale. NPCs will not be self aware. NPCs will just be a whole lot more dynamic. Also it's a whole lot less coding. Instead of having to script everything multiple times for every single scenario, you only have to script it once time and the Storybricks engine puts it all together where it's needed.

Originally posted by flizzer
Im still unclear how this is radically different than the GW2 approach.  Although the GW2 approach is different from a guy with a ring or exclamation mark above his head, it does get boring quickly and I feel dynamic events are not a good way to tell compelling stories. It remains to be seen how this will work in EQ Next. I hope I am wrong.  We need to actually see gameplay video soon hopefully.

Normally in order to make all these types of events happen, you would have to script it in it's entirety. You can create some choices, but the script will always come to an end. It's all predetermined.

Story bricks, isn't predetermined. They create the scripts, but they are all broken into puzzle pieces that mix and match and can only be used if certain requirements are met. This means you could run the same game over and over again ,and it essentially could play out in almost an infinite amount of scenarios. Yes, they all do have to be scripted in, but it only has to be done 1 time for that particular event, but it can play out anywhere in the world or at anytime even in different ways and orders.

All these things change depending on how the players and NPCs effect the world. You could actually classify EQN as being a actual world simulator.

 

Originally posted by DarLorkar

Why do some think this will be so great?

 

The difference between a coder telling a npc to stay in one spot. And another to follow a path and do certain things is what? More code yes?

 

Still just going to do what is coded. Should make the world feel a bit more alive, yes..but to be the holy grail that some here seem to think? Just do not see anything here that is going to be a huge leap forward or the best thing since sliced bread:P

 

Of course i am always hoping that games will get better, and this has the potential to do this. But not by leaps and bounds that some folks seem to have in their heads.

Read above and you will understand what the difference is. Normally if a game script something, even if it has choices it will only play out with in those parameters. No matter how many times you repeat the script you already know all the choices and possible scenarios because there really are not that many.

Storybricks makes it so every time you run the world .. everything can unfold in a different manner pretty much every single time. There is no way you can predict the exact outcome even if you designed the engine yourself. You could probably make an educated guess, at best. The engine puts the stories together instead of having the developers putting it all together. Each story being triggered by certain requirements. NPCs actions in the world can be effects by the player.

Again, as I said above ... it's a world simulator.

 

BTW when I say simulator .. I am not talking about the game Genre. I am talking about actual simulations.

Mordith

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Rydeson

 

     I agree.. and as a devils advocate, what happens to OLD sections of the world that no one plays in anymore.. Will storybricks turn those parts of the world into unplayable, or unreasonable?  We all know that there are tiers in the world, and history shows us that eventually communities become top heavy as players mature..

     Lets use their demo example to explain a potential problem.. Remember the part where the Kobalds own most of the land and only one section was under influence by the dark elves..  What if, to unlock the Shadow Knight class you have to push back the mobs.. That is great and quick early on in the game when 20 players are all trying to do the same thing, but what happens months later or even years, when most everyone is tier 5 and already unlocked that class..  Will newcombers be forced to GRIND extra time to unlock that same content because players "moved on" from that location?   I haven't heard anything yet about how old content doesn't become obsolete over time, or trivial.. 

     Without the need for alts, how do you keep newbie areas populated?  I question the effect storybricks will have on low tier (aka abandoned) areas of the map.. I hope SOE knows what "Murphy's Law" is.. 

Well, first, create real incentives for high level players to go back to newbie zones by ...

Not having "newbie zones"  but "newbie friendly zones".

Meaning, make the world "the world". Parts of it are very dangerous for low level players and parts of it are only dangerous if new players aren't paying attention.

Add reasons for players to be in any part of the world and in any city. Because it's a city not because it's a "new player city".

And make it is in the interest of high level players to revisit that kobald area because it taking over an area is bad for the world as a whole. Stifled trade or making deals with demons, etc.

 

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why recent MMOs have not grasped onto this concept.  For the most part, this is something that original EQ did very well and new MMOs just went with the themepark concept where you started at point A and eventually finished at point Z without ever having a need to go back to point A (or other points on the way).  Make zones so that higher and lower level players have reasons to be in them for one reason or another.

Archlyte

I'm wondering how player wealth factors into this like someone else said. Can the NPCs take your stuff if they kill you? If they don't then what does it matter if the players are wealthy or not?

What do Kobolds consider wealth? Sounds like they were going through the areas harvesting the crystal veins.

Aelious

Archlyte

I was wondering the same thing about both subjects, actually lol. I wonder if NPCs will have coin amounts on them. Say you come into town and spend a ton on supplies, can they then flourish more? Building more or better structures?

That also made me think about how much coin or armor value players have. Can those values be used as something the "world" reacts to? Would a member of the Order of Truth treat you differently if you have 1,000 plat as opposed to 10?

I hope NPCs harvest actual world resources, not just virtual ones that the world shows should be there. That would open up additional avenues of playability, such as slowing the Kobolds territorial advance by getting to the crystals first.

Archlyte

Originally posted by Aelious
Archlyte

I was wondering the same thing about both subjects, actually lol. I wonder if NPCs will have coin amounts on them. Say you come into town and spend a ton on supplies, can they then flourish more? Building more or better structures?

That also made me think about how much coin or armor value players have. Can those values be used as something the "world" reacts to? Would a member of the Order of Truth treat you differently if you have 1,000 plat as opposed to 10?

I hope NPCs harvest actual world resources, not just virtual ones that the world shows should be there. That would open up additional avenues of playability, such as slowing the Kobolds territorial advance by getting to the crystals first.

If it actually tracks the geographic wealth down to that level then they will have created something truly special. That would be a feature that might make some of the spreadsheet barbarians from EVE take notice. They made mention of trade routes, which makes me wonder if they will actually take wealth from player and npc movement along a road.

Would seem like this would be something at least the Dev display should give them if it's that much of a Drive: Complete monetary value of a sector.

Jagwar_Fang

Originally posted by DMKano

Still waiting to see it in live gameplay with 1000s of other players running around and interacting with NPCs.

 

What is the scalabilty of storybricks? - What are the hard limits of the system?

Again the idea that 10,000s of NPCs would all have a deep branching AI system with 1000s of players interacting with them (and NPCs interacting amongs eachother) ... it's a hard pill to swallow.

I am sure that it can be pulled off - but at what cost? How many Storybricks servers/processes are needed to handle X number of NPCs?

Heavy AI comes at heavy CPU cost - that's why I am questions the scalability as well as depth and breadth of actual final implementation of Storybricks in EQN.

 

Is every single NPC in game going to be running on Storybricks - or only select "key" NPCs?

 

I had a lot of the same thoughts/questions myself.  If it works great, but I just can't put a finger on what doesn't feel right.  Maybe its just me being tired of getting burned by SOE or the entire genre lately I don't know, but I just can't get my hopes up.

As far as the CPU cost of the AI goes, I have always thought that is why they went with the Disney character models and you can't forget that not only the NPC AI but the entire voxel aspect of constantly having the environment changing around you will require massive amounts of data to eat up bandwidth.  That is unless they have addressed this already and I just missed it.  Life has gotten in the way of entertainment these past few months so I very well may have missed info regarding that part.

We shall see what SOE can come up with though.  I just refuse to get all hyped up anymore though.

Incomparable

Great ideas by soe. I do have to wonder about how npc alignment plays towards the character and what is the  late game ( read end game for eqn ) for players that have the best gear already in a dynamic world?

seiging, shaping events, and other activities?

Also how are players rewarded for their Actions in a losing situation, which might be a question regarding alignment.

Also on unlocking content as well regarding being on the losing side. Or a question about for example helping kobolds and that not unlocking new content, or is the interactive npc always about unlocking more content regardless of side. It seemed by helping nature against the dark elves was mostly the right thing to do that also does not unlock new content. Maybe again alignment might unlock more content?

kjempff

It all sound good on paper, or in this case from a very high perspective. If they can actually achieve half of their claims, it would surely deserve the much misused term "next gen". For me it is still a case of I want to see it work before I can beleive it.

I have several concerns, the main one beeing faith that SoE can and will react fast enough to fix those things that will surely go bad in this first generation of such a new concept.

AI gone into stalemate situation, AI becomming repetetive and non evolving, Underestimating how destructive players really are, How selective players are (those dryads will never be favored over elves with b00bs).. And all kind of situations that neither you, me or developers can foresee.

I see only one way to deal with these problems (and very much in the beginning of this new untested AI tech), and that is to have real people constantly and with little efford control and correct AI issues. Also real people to make the game interesting for the players would probably be needed.. AI mechanics are very likely to become a dead experience and players will learn the patterns quickly and it can become slightly pointless (gw2 syndrome).. The "now I didnt expect that to happen" element is important and AI wont do that alone, it needs to be triggered by humans - Yes I beleive real Game Masters are needed.

Also the human nature has a hard time with 100% dynamic, there needs to be some holding points, some "never changing" that you can rely on.

 

About cpu cost of controlling storybricks ai, I don't beleive that isan issue. Sound like they are much more on a top perspective of things, and not down to the specific actions of a single npc, thoseare likely to be scripted and does not need to be run by the Ai system.

About the dynamic voxel world problem, I think clever mechanics can solve that.. Dynamic loading, timestamping and only getting changed voxels, and uhm stuff.

Xiaoki

This is definitely one of the biggest steps towards a virtual world for MMOs.

Having an MMO world that does not need human participation for conflict to take place is incredible.
No more static worlds with NPCs just standing around doing nothing.

It does all come down to implementation and iteration but if SOE can pull this off then it would be very difficult to play any other MMO out there.

Fdzzaigl

I really like the fact that they're focusing a lot on augmenting the NPC's behaviour. Making the NPC's story tick is one of the things needed to really make a living story imo. Recent MMO's have failed in their attempts to do so.

Still, we'll need some gameplay footage of that too. Just a presentation isn't enough to show how fun your system is ingame.

Rydeson

Originally posted by kjempff

It all sound good on paper, or in this case from a very high perspective. If they can actually achieve half of their claims, it would surely deserve the much misused term "next gen". For me it is still a case of I want to see it work before I can beleive it.

I have several concerns, the main one beeing faith that SoE can and will react fast enough to fix those things that will surely go bad in this first generation of such a new concept. (Murphy's Law)

AI gone into stalemate situation, AI becomming repetetive and non evolving, Underestimating how destructive players really are, How selective players are (those dryads will never be favored over elves with b00bs).. And all kind of situations that neither you, me or developers can foresee. (agreed, SWG and other games showed me just how crazy the player community can get if not put in check)

I see only one way to deal with these problems (and very much in the beginning of this new untested AI tech), and that is to have real people constantly and with little efford control and correct AI issues. Also real people to make the game interesting for the players would probably be needed.. AI mechanics are very likely to become a dead experience and players will learn the patterns quickly and it can become slightly pointless (gw2 syndrome).. The "now I didnt expect that to happen" element is important and AI wont do that alone, it needs to be triggered by humans - Yes I beleive real Game Masters are needed. (agreed 199%)

Also the human nature has a hard time with 100% dynamic, there needs to be some holding points, some "never changing" that you can rely on. (again I agree as I am one of them.. I like dynamic worlds, but I also want and demand a sense of stability or static content..  Just like in life, when I'm in the mood for Taco Bell, I know EXACTLY where it is.. I don't have to go hunting for it, like a food truck each day to find where is the "hot spot" it parked..  There needs to be both DYNAMIC and STATIC NPC's.. in my opinion..

 

About cpu cost of controlling storybricks ai, I don't beleive that is an issue. Sound like they are much more on a top perspective of things, and not down to the specific actions of a single npc, thoseare likely to be scripted and does not need to be run by the Ai system. (yeah, hardware wise, I'm not worried about the cpu and code requirements, however I am worried about software code bugs.. As they say, the more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to plug up..

About the dynamic voxel world problem, I think clever mechanics can solve that.. Dynamic loading, timestamping and only getting changed voxels, and uhm stuff. (personally I hate the whole idea of voxels and world destruction.. lol   I enjoyed dynamic resources like it was in SWG, but I think EQN is going into a direction that won't attract me one bit) 

But I sit here and wait and see.. Things could change between now and then, history has shown us that..