This RuneScape-looking 'simulated MMORPG' has all the nostalgia without the drama because all the other 'players' are NPCs

The ideal MMO experience is one where everyone is happy to join your party and your teammates never stand up to go take a dump during a raid—which is exactly the idyllic throwback MMO-like experience filled by Erenshor, the "singleplayer simulated MMO" where all the other players around you are NPCs. It's got a demo out now and a newly announced early access launch date too.

Erenshor calls itself "a singleplayer nod to the MMORPGs of the past," and yeah, it's hard not to compare it to RuneScape at a glance with those low-poly characters and bright colored, cartoony world.

It really screams 2005 all around with the auto-attack and hotbar combat, vaguely medieval European world of every RPG of the era, and low level bandits and spiders crawling all over town. Ah yes, it's as if I'm sitting in front of a 4:3 aspect flat screen in my high school bedroom at 1 am on a school night.

I may not have been a RuneScape person myself, but Erenshor immediately reminds me of the thousands of hours I spent in the original Guild Wars in the same era. Fake players shout out familiar things like "WTB Godless Amarion, offering 710 gold," and give a pleasant "Hey hey hey :D" when joining my party.

All the text chatter isn't run on AI in the way we've been hearing so much about lately with NPCs spouting generative text, the developer clarifies. "SimPlayers do not use LLM or any other emerging AI model. They are run by a mixture of state machines and decision trees."

What I couldn't quite get a sense of in a quick 30 minutes bopping around the demo was whether this is a short-lived nostalgia gag or something entertaining on its own merit. Erenshor's developer Burgee Media (solo developer "Brian") makes it sound like it's an experience you're really meant to marinate in as your NPC pals evolve over time.

"The SimPlayers all have their own personalities and motivations, and their own opinions of you and of the other players," its Steam page says. "You'll find favorites, and together you'll conquer the world of Erenshor one rare drop at a time.

"These players will level up alongside you (whether you're online or not), they'll find new items on their own and they'll find them with your help. They'll ask for loot drops, they'll buy and sell loot, join and leave guilds, and even invite you to raids as they get to know you. They'll remember you and how you treat them."

I sure hope it skips over replicating my less fond memories of aughts-era MMO playing where your guild mates would get really weird about you being a teenage girl and start DMing you overly-personal things late at night. Yeah, simulated players probably are better company. Maybe getting to know my new buddy Leliril of the "Make My Dei" guild will actually be fun.

You can give it a go yourself right now in the Erenshor demo or wait for its early access release next month on April 14.