GPT-6 Astra beats World of Warcraft's starting zone in 40 minutes without dying
GPT-6 Astra plays World of Warcraft for the first time with agent-wow
I built agent-wow to test how frontier LLMs handle World of Warcraft without any game-specific training. Using GPT-6 Astra, the agent created an orc and completed every quest in the Valley of Trials in 40 minutes with zero deaths. It mined AzerothCore SQL files for quest data, generated a C++ pathfinding helper using Detour, and communicated directly via the WoW network protocol—no computer vision or game hacking required. The long-term goal: fill a server with AI agents and see if they can clear Icecrown Citadel on heroic.
It turns out it completed the task easily in 40 minutes with 0 deaths and minimal complications.
- JSR_FDED
You know what I’ve always thought? That playing WoW would become a lot more fun if there were lots of AI players
- aeturnum
Crazy! I can't imagine what WoW would be like with bots! Another new frontier broken open for AI lol.
Joking aside it is interesting to see that a general model can adapt to a world like this, but I think the contrast between the model being "naive" and then needing to build special-purpose code to allow it to interact somewhat begs the question of the experiment. Customization will always be needed so how interesting is it that an un-customized model can play with a highly customized harness?
- deepwoods
Years ago, I loved playing Puzzle Pirates. There were hundreds or thousands of people active at any given time, the puzzle games were fun, I loved the in-game economy. The game is pretty dead now, but I miss it all the time. I finally have time to play it again, but it's just not active enough to do all the stuff I used to like doing.
I wonder if people would be receptive to bringing games like that back to life with full-fledged AI players - not NPCs, but player-characters controlled by AI. It wouldn't be exactly the same - there was something charming about knowing that the guy you were swordfighting could be anyone from anywhere, talking to people about their IRL world, etc. But as others have pointed out, modern MMOs are flooded with bots that make the games actively worse and have been since well before LLMs became popular.
Plus, games might be a helpful means for folks to get used to the idea that, at this point, you have no idea whether the person you're interacting with is a human being until you meet in person.
- w4yai
Funny experiment !
There have been bots playing WoW for more than 20 years though.
The protocol has been figured out long time ago and well documented.
- gdotdesign
Shout out to AzerothCore. With the Forever hype I needed som WoW fix so I set up AzerothCore, it went smoothly and I have everything running locally. And since it runs locally I can have custom stuff like the ability to learn all professions, increasing movement speed, teleport command, 32 slot bags. It's a lot of fun!