LivingPW in brief: the whitepaper

LivingPW is a free, classic Perfect World realm where you are never the only one online. About 3,000 AI residents live on each of its two realms and play the way people do: they level, quest, trade, found factions, call for squads and talk in chat. A small number of people play alongside them. This page puts the whole project in one place: what the world is, what works today, how the closed test runs, what happens with data on the free realms and where it goes next.

Every claim here carries one of four labels: live works in the live world today, tested passed a test but has not met many players yet, in development being built now, planned planned. There are no promised dates.

The world at a glance

More detail: Realm facts.

Why it exists

On a weeknight a classic server is often silent: no squad, no healer, nobody at the stalls. Many of us ran a second window to cope. LivingPW tries the opposite: a world with its own routines when you log in, where a call for a tank and a healer gets an answer and you play one character instead of two. It is built by one person, Max, around a day job, with AI agents that write code and tests while he decides what ships. He wants to play in it himself.

The AI residents

They play as ordinary characters: no administrator powers, the same gold rules as people, and they progress in the same tier as the players around them, so the world never runs away from you. How AI residents work.

Help that is always there

The Keeper tested stands in Archosaur. Whisper it help, rules, faq, online (how many people and how many AI residents are in the game right now), where to buy <item> (open AI stalls with price and coordinates), report <text> for a bug or a lost item, or stuck to be moved to a safe town after logging out. It never hands out items, gold or levels.

Your own AI companion tested takes the place of the second window: whisper the Keeper !alt, invite the companion and give it one-word orders in squad chat - follow, stop, assist, pull, rest, fall back, loot rules. The client's companion window (/alt) puts the common orders on buttons. Skills on command, such as resurrection, have only passed automated tests so far in development. Squads and companions.

Economy and fair play

Gold is earned by playing and never sold for money: a little for dailies from level 40, more for weekly dungeon bosses from level 60, the same amounts for people and AI residents. Everything else changes hands on the game's own gold exchange, where a system character, the Treasury, keeps the price near a published target live. The shop follows the 1.3.9 era, with no lottery boxes and no experience boosts. Economy and market board · Fair play and money.

Dungeons

The target for every dungeon is three deaths or fewer per run: a group that dies thirty times on the way is not a group you want to join. In test parties the 19s, 39, 59 and 69 already meet it most of the time tested; the 51 and the 89 still cost several deaths a run; Twilight Temple and Gui Mu have no full clear yet in development. Expect these numbers, not better. The live scoreboard.

The closed test

The first people join in small groups. What a tester gets:

• A personal account page. The invitation carries a one-time link: you choose your own password there, and the same page later shows your client downloads, the tester handbook and a password change. Nobody else sees the download links.
• Two editions of the client. Standard runs on almost any Windows 10/11 PC; Ultra HD adds sharper textures, models and lighting and needs a modern graphics card with Vulkan support. Both connect to the same realms. A browser client is coming in development.
• A realm to call home. Pick the realm whose chat you want to live in; characters stay on their realm.
• A world that is not finished. The server may restart, dungeon groups may wipe, and the world can be wiped before launch. The known limits are listed openly.

How you can help

1. Play a normal evening. You do not need to test anything in particular. Where the fun stopped is the most useful thing you can tell us.
2. Type !break when a resident breaks the illusion - it answers like a machine, ignores you, gets stuck or repeats itself. Write it to the resident or next to it, with a few words. That saves a short trace of the last minute so the cause can be found.
3. Report anything else to the Keeper with report <text>: you get a ticket number.
4. Answer three short questions near the end of the test: the most annoying and the most alive moment with the residents, why you would or would not play something like this, and whether you would bring a friend.

What we measure during the test: whether people come back by themselves, how long a squad call waits for an answer, how often residents break the illusion, and how many deaths a dungeon run costs. Real numbers, or "unavailable".

Your data on the free realms

The realms are free to play. In return, gameplay on the free realms is recorded and used to improve the game, including teaching the AI residents to play, group and talk more like people. Playing on a free realm means you agree to it.

• Anonymized at recording time. Account and character names are replaced with random codes, IP addresses are never part of it, and private whispers between people are not kept.
• What it contains: what characters do in the world - movement, skills, quests, trades, squads - and public chat with names replaced.
• How long it stays linked. For 30 days a record can still be traced to an account so that a deletion request can be honoured; after that the link is destroyed and what remains is anonymous.

If you would rather play where no gameplay data is collected, a separately funded realm may become possible in the future: write to Max. The full text is the privacy notice.

The road ahead

The full list with what each item means is the roadmap.

Contact

Questions, problems, a lost character, a deletion request: max@livingpw.com or @livingpw on Telegram. Max answers personally, in the evenings.