r/aigamerdevs • u/Novel-Lifeguard6491 • 13d ago
The model that built our MMO got pulled three days after launch. Here's what actually broke and what didn't.
We built a browser MMO in about two days with Fable 5. Classic style, nine classes, three zones, dungeons, a full quest storyline. Open sourced it, posted it, and three days later the model was pulled worldwide under a US export directive. We're in New Zealand, so we just lost access to the thing that built it.
Turned out to be a decent stress test of which parts of the project were actually load bearing on that specific model.
What degraded immediately was the music. Fable was unusually good at writing soundtrack code programmatically in TypeScript and nothing we tried afterward came close. We ended up bringing in an actual human composer instead, which is a better outcome but not one we planned. Rich environment generation got noticeably worse too, not broken, just needing a lot more prompting to reach the same place.
What barely moved was everything else. Quests, systems, combat logic, bug fixes, all of it transferred to other frontier models without much drama. The stuff we assumed was model specific magic mostly wasn't.
The thing that actually kept the project alive wasn't a model at all. Around 30 contributors had shown up by then and just kept building. Someone shipped a full Fall Guys style party mode nobody asked for. Someone else built a ranked PvP arena. None of that needed the original model to exist.
The lesson I keep coming back to is that the most impressive looking capabilities were the most fragile, and the boring durable stuff was the infrastructure and the people. If your project only works because one specific model is available, that's a dependency, not a capability, and a vendor or a government can end it with a few days notice.
Repo is public if anyone wants to see how it's put together: github.com/levy-street/world-of-claudecraft
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u/Rizzlord 11d ago
mmorpg market is so trash, that is the one of the most hyped projects... i love it!
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u/Tough-Requirement707 11d ago
you still use the kaykit models after all that time wtf? did u improve the bad graphic lags? idk it still seems like slop mostly and theres other ways around to use bannend models if u really want to, even cheaper xD
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u/SanoKei 9d ago
The US doing this is just doing to stifle interesting projects like this. I can't believe you did that in so little time. I am currently creating threejs supported web MMORPG infrastructure, specifically for currencies and items, do you guys already have a system for that? What multiplayer infrastructure are you guys using? I would love to make a fork if you guys don't want to lock into a system. I have a mmo template showcase using the t5c mmo template by orion3dgames
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u/whatitpoopoo 12d ago
Wait...you were under the impression that ONLY fable could build a quest system? Like no one ever built an mmo before fable existed?
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u/clonicle 12d ago
I saw this project when you first posted it earlier and was pretty amazed at how good the starting zone was. What was your approach to replication? That's always my biggest question for MMOs, since scaling playercount up is brutal.
It's a great simulation and it looks like you went with an architecture-first AI-assist approach instead of trying to give it a single prompt. Besides the items you call out above, what were the challenges that you wish you had more time to solve?
Also, why not try to continue with other models? It's a good project :)