EQEmu Bots question...

[Draugr]

Hi All.

I used to visit these forums a lot and I played on a few of the emulated servers years ago. Today, I was curious to see how the project is going and I'm glad to see it still being developed and plenty of people still playing.

I just noticed that EQEmu now supports bots. This is great because for players like myself who liked to run their own PEQ DB LAN servers, the addition of bots makes playing EQ a bit more ballanced. I did read through the bot posts on these forums, but I had an idea and was curious to see if the bots were just there to assist a player in a party/group, or are they possibly fully independent NPC players that can go about their own business emulating a real life player.

Can anyone tell me whether the bots are just simple group assistants for a real life player, or are they also able to be used as individual players in the world that have an extremely advanced AI where they emulate almost all the things a real player would do.

While reading about the bots, I had the following thoughts come to mind.

"If these bots are or can be actual independent NPC players that emulate real players, it might be neat to have some spawn at all the starting locations and then let the server just run for a week or more. Then login with your GM character and go about trying to track down the bots and see what they have done, or accomplished over the past week. How much wealth and loot have they gathered, what level have they obtained. Did they complete any important quests, how far have they ventured from their start location, ect...

I know that making lifelike bots even at a basic level has got to be difficult, but I could just imagine the fun one might have running a server with fully independent bots that can do all or most of what a real player would do. Is there any bots like this in EQEmu, or are there any plans by anyone to try and attempt this?

When I say independent bots, I mean bots that can...

1. Adventure alone or in groups with/without other bots or real life players.
2. Travel about the world solving quests. Zoning, etc...
3. Gathering loot.
4. Gaining Levels.
5. Buying and selling items.
6. Going to the Bank to store items, or deposit/withdraw gold as needed.
7. Casting and learning spells.
8. Group with others, or deny grouping with certain others depending on each bots race/alignment, level etc...
9. Grouping with actual real life players
10. Accepting and completing quests.
11. Binding at bind points if they travel far enough from their current bind point and then begin exploring their new locales.

Ok, now I know that creating the AI for such a bot is probably very difficult and probably requires lots and lots of coding and time. Not to mention a person, or persons with great logic and AI skills. I just wanted to ask about this because it could add some great features to running a large or small real player server. If this is not something that is possible yet, has there been any thoughts on this type of project and if so, is there anyone working on such a project?

Sorry, for the long message, but the thoughts of being able to create these type of bots in game and just let them run free is kind of interesting to me. Might add a totally new aspect to running a server. Think a EQ life simulation, or EQ SIMS! LOL!!!

Thanks,
John