MMO Living World — Stormhaven Shard

A live MMO server in your browser: 64 AI players, /general chat, world bosses, guild raids, epic drops, GM announcements, and a shard reset every 9 minutes.

Try it live → Source on GitHub

Built with: three.jsr160single-file

#3d#simulation#living-world

## What this is A single-file three.js demo that feels like watching a live MMO server. Sixty- four AI players walk, dance, cast, duel, emote, and join guild raids in a 3D town with an auction house, a mage tower, a tavern, a guild hall, and a dungeon portal. A multi-channel chat box scrolls in real time. World bosses spawn at -80z and a dozen players converge on them. Every nine minutes the shard restarts and the world repopulates with fresh names. ## Why this is mind-blowing It's not a fake MMO. It's a real server simulation. /general says "anyone need heals at portal", /guild says "RAID FORMING SE", /trade says "WTS Voidmaw shoulders 4500g", and three of the players actually start walking toward the portal. The director knows when the world boss spawns and pulls WORLD_BOSS_VIEW. A duel breaks out and the camera cuts to DUEL_CAM. The shard restart countdown runs at the bottom and the whole world goes black and rebuilds in front of you — like a real game day.

Prompt

Build a single-file three.js r0.160.0 demo that feels like watching
a live MMO server, not a demo. The fiction: STORMHAVEN, a populated
shard with 64 AI players, all behaving simultaneously.

Constraints:
- Single HTML file < 200KB. three.js from unpkg only.
- First line of <body>: <!-- ROUND14_LIVING v1 -->.
- IIFE + strict mode. Disposables registry. Reseed at shard restart
  every ~9 min. Autoplays forever.

3D world:
- Central glowing fountain. AH north. Bank west. Tavern south.
  Blacksmith with smoking chimney east. Mage tower NW with floating
  orb. Bazaar stalls. Training dummies. Guild hall. Dungeon portal
  at +60x with shimmering gate. World-boss arena at -80z. 60 trees,
  pier + pond, banners.

Living world:
- 64 AI players via InstancedMesh (body capsules + head spheres),
  per-instance class colors (15 classes), state machines per player
  with 8 states. Procedural names mixing 6 patterns plus class, level,
  guild tag.
- Live scrolling chat (right side): say / general / guild / whisper /
  trade / system / GM channels with proper colors, fed every 380–
  1,100ms from templated lines.

Live events every 5–13s:
LEVEL_UP (gold beam+ring), EPIC_DROP (purple beam + banner),
GUILD_RAID (8–10 members line up and march to dungeon), AH_SOLD,
WORLD_BOSS (12–14 players converge on Voidmaw), NEW_PLAYER,
PVP_DUEL, GM_ANNOUNCE.

Broadcast chrome: STORMHAVEN logo + tagline, online/peak/ping/server,
LIVE camera badge with current preset, world-board panel, lower-third
ticker (TWITCH bug, REC dot, scrolling marquee, NOW PLAYING, EVENTS
counter, uptime), nameplates rendered as HTML overlay (top-14 nearest
projected), 200×130 anchor PIP cam following a random player.

Cams: 10 presets (TOWN_WIDE, AUCTION_HOUSE, TAVERN, BAZAAR,
MAGE_TOWER, TRAINING_YARD, LOW_OVERVIEW, GUILD_HALL, WORLD_BOSS_VIEW,
NEW_PLAYER_FOUNTAIN), auto-cycling every 8–12s, with event overrides
(DUEL_CAM, LOOT_CAM).

Forever loop:
- At 8:30 a "SHARD RESTART IN N s" red countdown appears bottom-center.
- At 9:00 a black "STORMHAVEN ONLINE — SHARD RESET — RECONNECTING"
  overlay fades in, disposeAll runs, state reseeds, scene rebuilds,
  chat clears, RAF resumes — repeats forever.

Paste this into Claude, Cursor, or Copilot. Change one thing that matters to you.

Build a single-file three.js r0.160.0 demo that feels like watching
a live MMO server, not a demo. The fiction: STORMHAVEN, a populated
shard with 64 AI players, all behaving simultaneously.

Constraints:
- Single HTML file < 200KB. three.js from unpkg only.
- First line of <body>: <!-- ROUND14_LIVING v1 -->.
- IIFE + strict mode. Disposables registry. Reseed at shard restart
  every ~9 min. Autoplays forever.

3D world:
- Central glowing fountain. AH north. Bank west. Tavern south.
  Blacksmith with smoking chimney east. Mage tower NW with floating
  orb. Bazaar stalls. Training dummies. Guild hall. Dungeon portal
  at +60x with shimmering gate. World-boss arena at -80z. 60 trees,
  pier + pond, banners.

Living world:
- 64 AI players via InstancedMesh (body capsules + head spheres),
  per-instance class colors (15 classes), state machines per player
  with 8 states. Procedural names mixing 6 patterns plus class, level,
  guild tag.
- Live scrolling chat (right side): say / general / guild / whisper /
  trade / system / GM channels with proper colors, fed every 380–
  1,100ms from templated lines.

Live events every 5–13s:
LEVEL_UP (gold beam+ring), EPIC_DROP (purple beam + banner),
GUILD_RAID (8–10 members line up and march to dungeon), AH_SOLD,
WORLD_BOSS (12–14 players converge on Voidmaw), NEW_PLAYER,
PVP_DUEL, GM_ANNOUNCE.

Broadcast chrome: STORMHAVEN logo + tagline, online/peak/ping/server,
LIVE camera badge with current preset, world-board panel, lower-third
ticker (TWITCH bug, REC dot, scrolling marquee, NOW PLAYING, EVENTS
counter, uptime), nameplates rendered as HTML overlay (top-14 nearest
projected), 200×130 anchor PIP cam following a random player.

Cams: 10 presets (TOWN_WIDE, AUCTION_HOUSE, TAVERN, BAZAAR,
MAGE_TOWER, TRAINING_YARD, LOW_OVERVIEW, GUILD_HALL, WORLD_BOSS_VIEW,
NEW_PLAYER_FOUNTAIN), auto-cycling every 8–12s, with event overrides
(DUEL_CAM, LOOT_CAM).

Forever loop:
- At 8:30 a "SHARD RESTART IN N s" red countdown appears bottom-center.
- At 9:00 a black "STORMHAVEN ONLINE — SHARD RESET — RECONNECTING"
  overlay fades in, disposeAll runs, state reseeds, scene rebuilds,
  chat clears, RAF resumes — repeats forever.

What I learned shipping it

Channel-coded chat is the single highest-leverage UI you can add to a sim — it makes 64 idle NPCs feel like a server.
InstancedMesh + per-instance color + 8 state machines is the cheapest possible 'crowd of players' implementation.
Shard restarts (with countdown + reconnect overlay) is what turns a long-running demo into something that feels like an actual MMO.