Are There Other Players in Overlord Besides Ainz?

Although Overlord never really became a major title like the “Big Three“, it still has a large following within the otaku community around the world and quite the powerful characters. This specific isekai story attracted a lot of fans due to its uniqueness. Overlord has given us some truly memorable characters, but are any of them actual players or just in-game NPCs? In this article, we are going to explore this theory and discuss whether Ainz is the only player in the Overlord game or whether there are other players as well.

So far it is known now, Ainz is the only current player in the game. Although we have seen evidence of other players’ presence, as far as we know, Ainz is the only one currently playing the game. We know that other players have been part of the game as well, but they seem to have died, as they’ve played the game a long time ago, which would make Ainz the only current player in the series.

The article you are about to read is going to explore Ainz and his role in the story. We are going to tell you about the protagonist of Overlord and how he ended up in the game in the first place. We are also going to explore the history of the lore to determine whether Ainz is a unique character of if there were (or still are) others like him. Some spoilers might be present in this article.

How did Ainz end up in Overlord?

Before we explore other aspects of the series, we are going to tell you about Ainz Ooal Gown, the protagonist of the series, whose real name is Satoru Suzuki. He is the head of the Ainz Ooal Gown guild and ruler of the Great Tomb of Nazarick. Initially, he was one of the strongest and most famous players of Yggdrasil, known under the pseudonym of Momonga, who, bored by his monotonous life, on returning home from work, spent the rest days in the video game. Shortly after being catapulted into the New World, he decided to change his name to that of his guild so that he could be more easily traced by any comrades who had suffered the same fate as him.

The avatar with which he appears in this world is a wizard-class lich with immense powers who do not need to eat or sleep and cannot be poisoned. He has various instant death and summoning spells at his disposal and is in possession of a number of items purchased for real money in Yggdrasil, which grant him special abilities such as instantly casting spells that would normally take a long time to cast. Over time, he also honed his skills in combat with physical weapons and gained fame among humans assuming the appearance of the black knight Momon, who was given the nickname “Momon the Dark Hero”.

Now that we have introduced you to the story’s hero, let us see how he ended up in Overlord. In 2126, the DMMORPG (Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Yggdrasil was launched, which stands out due to the unusually large number of ways to interact with the game. However, after 12 years, the servers are to be shut down. In the game, there is the guild Ainz Ooal Gown, which calls itself the strongest guild in the game.

However, due to their real-life obligations, the majority of the guild’s members have given up playing Yggdrasil. Ainz Ooal Gown’s guild master, Momonga, will remain alone until the servers are shut down. He discovers that he cannot log out or perform other standard player actions when the servers shut down. After discovering that even the NPCs speak to him and have personalities, he decides to take the game seriously and search for other real-world participants in this new universe. He starts exploring this new world under the alias Ainz Ooal Gown in an effort to learn the truth about what transpired.

As you can see, Satoru ended up in Overlord because he liked the game too much. He was, arguably, the game’s best and strongest player, and out of sheer loyalty, he wanted to be there until the very end. What he could not anticipate, however, is the fact that he would end up trapped inside the game, and we seriously doubt that he would have accepted such a thing had he known about it beforehand. Still, when the game’s servers shut down, Ainz remained in the game and is now in search of both a way out and for other players as well, with the stakes being much higher than he’d initially suspected they would be. Overlord suddenly became his life completely, while before, it had only been part of his life as a form of leisure.

Is Ainz the only player in Overlord?

Now that we have told you Ainz’s story in Overlord, we can proceed with the other question – is he the only player remaining in the game? Well, as far as we know, at this moment, Ainz remains the only active player in the game. The game was massively popular, but by the time the servers shut down, most players had already moved on with their lives. Ainz was, as far as we can deduce, the highest-ranking player that remained in the game as it was about to shut down. Whether he was the only one remains a mystery, and the light novel has given us some clues about potential other players, but we still don’t have a definitive answer for you.

Now, we can tell you that there probably have been numerous players in the game before Ainz, but they have seemingly died because they played the game a long time ago. Some examples, as listed by fans, include:

• The 6 great gods of the Slaine Theocracy are probably human players that saved humanity 600 years ago, which is why they are revered as gods now;
• The 8 Greed Kings that conquered the world 500 years ago also could be human players. They killed the great gods and later perished while fighting among themselves;
• The Boastful Sage, a minotaur warrior who ruled a nation of minotaurs 200 years ago, managed to lead the humanoid races from being foodstock to slaves. He also introduced chirugy as a treatment for illnesses and was responsible for proposing many items that were practical for daily usages, like refrigerators. Sadly, since he was a warrior, he never actually created any of them.
• There is also a theory that the King of the Elves, who is incredibly strong but rules his kingdom like a hedonistic tyrant, could be a player.

None of these theories have been officially confirmed by the author, but they strongly suggest the human presence in the series. We’ll just have to wait and see whether Ainz remains the only human in the series; both solutions would be interesting. On the one hand, it would be interesting to see how the story ends with Ainz being the only player in the series, especially in relation to his return to the real world. On the other hand, it would be intriguing to see him interact with someone new.