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EverQuest: The Making of a Classic
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While EQ eventually just became too painful for me to continue playing I still have not found a game that stirs the same feelings in me as EQ. I joined EQ and quickly made friends that I still have to this day. I have yet to find a game that allowed these types of friendships to occur on such a scale. Most of my fondest MMO memories are with EQ (followed by UO). I can remember getting my first SoW and getting lost in Greater Faydark, corpse runs to crushbone and the first trip to Freeport, finding my way to North Ro where I stopped to gape. Oh and those maps by Muse, a sight to behold.
I've played just about every MMO that gets releases for awhile there and I think this drive was an attempt to recapture that lost "EQ brotherhood".
Excellent article. I had forgotten voodoo cards altogether until reading this.
Some of my best MMO memories are because of this game. I actually laugh when I now watch my nephews play "suspense" games in the horror genre. I just think to myself "You should play an EQ Enchanter that needs "Charm" to kill something..." I don't think I even had fingernails left after those sessions.
Regardless, no other game has brought out the type of emotion that EQ did. What I remember most however was that amazing sense of community. I have to keep reminding myself that people once had manners online and were more than happy to help each other out. Here's hoping the next-gen MMO developers will look back at something besides the code when moving forward.
I've never felt such a feeling of wide spectrum of love and hate since EQ. It was the game that got me hooked on MMO's. Admittedly I'm still looking for the same sense of virtual world, thrill, depth and community. Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever see another MMO with this kind of depth and especially this kind of sense of danger just walking around the world. Each zone had it's own feel and with rare spawns there were mobs to farm that were actually unique and enjoyable.
Here's hoping that some of the MMO's in the future take a look to the past and consider the reasons why it had a lasting effect on the MMO community.
Great article! I couldn't agree more with Mardukk. The sense of depth, adventure, and especially danger are missing from all MMO's that I've tried since EQ. I doubt it will ever be captured in quite the same way again. In all my years of gaming nothing can come close to the awe-inspiring experience that I had with EQ.
Indeed. What a lot don't understand is that lows are required to emphasis the highs, and without them all you have is a middle ground 'meh'.
On a side note,how sad is it what happens to these guy over the years? Look at Smed and EA in general... compare what they started out being to the money grubbing cash whores they ended up becoming. All passion and vision for the product gone, onlylove for the bottomline left.
I am sure they are all a lot richer, but I wonder if what they sold was worth it.
Best game ever.
Interesting read. Missed the article when it first came out. Wish I was in on EQ when it arrived. Always wanted to be, but I was a kid with limited funds and couldn't build a computer to handle it back then.
It's a proven historical fact that beer saved humankind.
Sometimes to get your stuff from your corpse after dying you'd need the help of a group or someone with special skills to retrieve your corpse or lose all items due to the time limit on retrieving your corpse.
I've not seen another like it and that's both good and bad. At the height of it's popularity they had gotten really arrogant. Anyone remember the slogan "You're in Our world Now!"
People fell in love and got married in the game and out of the game too. Some got divorced.
People committed suicide playing the game. Support groups sprang up because of the game. It wasn't called EverCrack for nothing.
It had the best and the worst of everything.
Eventually because of competition they had to ease up on how hard the game was.
Somehow or another I ended up playing on the test server where it was easier to play. I remember one night there was a food bug and I made endless fun of the bug in serverwide chat and pissed off some devs. Who knows how high up the chain that went.
They pretty much hounded me after that. lol. If I told you all that went down I'd bet you wouldn't believe me. Every once in a while I get the bug to go back and play and if they discover it's me they start the hounding again.
I suspect the only way there could be another Everquest of old is if it has some new technology that few have so there's little in the way of competition. That being said EQ will always have a hardcore fan base because no one else is offering the blend of immersiveness that they have.
There's a very fine line between certain qualities and some of the people who made EQ know how to use them effectively in making a MMO but in my opinion they need special circumstances to be successful if they stick with extremes as before.
EQ came at just the right time to be successful. Few would go for an EQ if they had plentiful easier options as exists today.
I mean who would prefer a horse and buggy to a modern car today, but in it's heyday a horse and buggy was way better than walking and to have the benefit of the horse you had to take care of it, feed, wash, brush, trim hair and saddle. Manage how much, when and where you rode, in other words forced immersion which is ok if you want the benefit.
Likewise who would drive in a car from southern Mexico to northern Canada when you can get on a plane and be there a lot faster.
And so to stay up and running, EQ has adapted and survived at the expense of some immersion and because of flexible computer technology they can keep up with popular trends within some limits like graphics.
I think going forward if they can moderate extremes and fix the ghost town effect from too many zones they may have another winner on their hands with EQNext, EQ3 or whatever it will be called.
One last note. 3D gaming is just over the horizon and is the next big opportunity for EQ1 style extremes and if SOE was one of the first to 3D MMORPG gaming then they just might be able to resurrect the dead slogan "You're in Our World Now!" at least for a while till new competition catches up.
Love these historical articles! Nice job.
My personal experiance with EQ was through watching friends play and thinking 'This game sucks.' EQ (along with UO) kept me from playing MMOs for years. But different strokes and all...
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
EQ really was something else...
It wasn't my favorite game of the Golden Age of MMOs, that goes to Dark Age of Camelot, but it had so many amazing fluff features that made people work together and made the world feel real.
I wish WoW had copied the good features of EQ instead of the bad ones.
I always thought Everquest : this is soo awesome. Now every game is going to be like this but better.
Guess what . never happened
they got worse and worse.
So I still play classic Everquest on mac [mod edit] or progression servers.
New games = instas, quest hubs to level , item Requirements. NOTHING LIKE classic Everquest.
just different tastes - i dont think it has anything to do w age
i was 37 when I first played EQ in 1999 and loved the game
EQ2 fan sites