I absolutely loved EverQuest and it’s still probably holds some of my fondest gaming memories. My favorite feeling about it is that it felt like a real world first, gameplay second. It had a real sense of danger and wonder that I think will be almost impossible to recreate.
Going from Qeynos to Freeport, or crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous. It was wonderful, but not something I would want to play today now that I have real life obligations.
> crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous
Given the way death was implemented ("LFG @ EC tunnel for a corpse run to Guk!") and the fact that you could fall off the ships in the middle of the ocean when the game lagged, it _was_ epic and dangerous. I remember the first time it happened to me and players in public chat coached me through a 20 or 30 minute swim to get my wizard and stuff to an island with a portal.
My only nit to pick with this article is their definition of PvE. They said it stands for “player vs enemy” where I’ve always heard it defined as “player vs environment” where environment explicitly means not-other-players.
I can nearly single-handedly credit EverQuest with my career. I got my start in the ShowEQ and eqemu sphere, first building little PHP apps to manage servers and such, then reverse-engineering -- I learned x86 and then C++ all to get the lifts in Kelethin working. Hell, nearly 25 years later, any time I work on some new graphics API or game engine, I end up writing an EverQuest zone renderer.
Not my favorite game of all time, but certainly the one with the biggest impact!
Edit to add: also, huge props to that community for both humbling me and teaching me more than I could've imagined. Went from a dumbass 13 year old saying "ROT13? Isn't that some unbreakable encryption?" In the ShowEQ IRC channel because she couldn't imagine saying she didn't know something, to a competent reverse-engineer. I cannot imagine how insufferable I was haha.
> Gijsbert van der Wal’s famous 2014 photograph of Dutch teenagers ignoring a Rembrandt masterpiece in favor of staring at their phones has become for many psychologists, social theorists, and concerned ordinary folks a portrait of our current Age of Digital Addiction in a nutshell.
While a great photo, to me it looks like the kids are just doing some kind of school / field trip assignment.
I loved EverQuest. I still have some great memories of it. My friends and I still go back to playing it every once in a while. EverQuest also gave me some fantastic typing skills (from having to type in a significant amount of things for activating quests and for chatting) that have turned out to be well worth all the time I invested.
Oh EverQuest... funny to see this even posted here. I still occasionally log into P99 for a few hours here and there to play around at the low levels. 1 to around 24-30 is peak MMOPRG before it slows down and turns into that raid grind...
Everquest was my first warning about game addiction. Every teenage kid by the year 2000 had spent too much time in front of a game, of course.
But not like this.
I was sitting with a friend of mine at a computer café. This was more prevalent at the time, since a capable computer with all the modern games on it was still somewhat pricey.
So my friend starts taking to our side guy, who is playing EQ. Nice fellow.
"Hey guys, I gotta stop playing. Been here 24h straight. If I don't go to work they'll fire me."
My friend and I leave for the night.
My friend comes back to the café one night later. Our buddy is there, in the same seat.
"Shit dude, they fired me. I haven't been able to get up and go to work. This game, man."
"Sorry to hear it, what was your work?"
"I'm an attendant at a computer café."
"WTF, which one? Why didn't you just sit there and play?"
"The one across the street. Because I couldn't stop."
There was a time in my life where I would have said that EverQuest caused me to fail out of college and lose a full scholarship.
~25 years later, I no longer believe that to be the case. Undiagnosed ADHD and depression caused those issues; EverQuest was merely the drug that I used to escape the pain at the time.
Is it a coincidence that this shows up as John Smedley launches a new MMO (yesterday)?
As much as I loved EverQuest, it has informed my view that the world is full of addictive substances. And most people probably need a disinterested third party who loves them and helps them manage the addiction. Until they build their own defenses.
In this game, there was a city where I did so many quests for the guards that my reputation with the "corrupt guards" fell low enough that they would kill me on sight. Playing a good-guy character got me killed, and then I couldn't play anymore in the city where I'd spent most of my gametime.
I would have been angry at the unfairness, but it was such a unique quirk to see in a game, and I've never seen it replicated anywhere.
Corrupt Qeynos Guards -- Qeynos is SonyEQ spelled backwards. And, depending on your race / class, it didn't even take that much to make them hate you.
Killing the corrupt guards, often one at a guard tower in the Plains of Karanas west of town, and turning in their bracelets to a non-corrupt guard at the bridge to South Karanas, was great XP for quite a few levels in the midgame. And it is possible to repair the corrupt guard XP (slowly) with low-level quests.
Early EverQuest required groups to progress because trash mobs were hard, the environment was vast, dungeons had traps, there was no auction house and players hung out in tunnels shouting their wares.
26 years later, the nostalgia hits me every so often and I spin up Project Quarm or Project 1999 where it still plays the same, and it’s fun for awhile but I’m not enjoying it as much as I enjoyed the memories.
I enjoy the luxuries afforded by modern games, with three kids and a busy job, I wonder how anyone found the time to play as long as EverQuest required.
I never played because I saw my friends get addicted. I'm not judging that as "bad". People are free to spend their lives however they want. But, ... just to pass on...
My friends had a company. Then they got into EverQuest. I don't know what percent of "work time" they spent playing. Maybe zero. But, they would stay at the office after work to play. I visited one day and saw playtime in the corner of the screen of one friend at ~36 days. My first thought was "what could they have done with over 5 months of "work time". If you work 40 hours a week then 36 days of game time = 846hrs = 21.6 weeks = ~5 months or work. Note: I use tons of time in my own life in ways that others would not (like spending time on HN) so again, not judging, just obsverving, though I often wish I did more productive things that would / would have lead to more future freedom.
In any case, one of those friends encouraged me to give it a try saying it reminded them of when we used to play D&D in high-school. That friend had also spent time becoming a fletcher (maker of arrows). If I understand correctly, the ability to make bows and arrows from materials was a skill. You gathered the materials, then picked "make" and you had a random and relatively low chance of succeeding. If you did succeed though, your "skill" at making bows and arrows increased. Once you passed some threshold you could always succeed. This made you a "fletcher" and people who needed bows and arrows would seek you out to buy them from you. I thought it was amazing that my friend effectively had a 2nd job. I'm guessing that's common a game mechanic in games since then?
Another of those friends also played at home on top of at the office even though they had a spouse and 3 kids under 10. After a while, their spouse demanded they stop. They visibly deleted their character but then made a new one back at work and of course all the "overtime" for the last several months had actually been "game time". 3 months later the spouse found out and said "quit or I'm leaving". My friend quit.
When World of Warcraft came out and blew past EverQuest in its reach that friend told me if I wanted to check it out be sure not to make any friends or join any guilds. They said it's the social obligation that's the addiction. Like joining a sports team, if you're not there your group can't achieve their goals so you feel obligated to participate and that's the addiction. I've never tried WoW either, having seen people spend so much time in it.
Also another random thing, another aquaintaince moved to Thailand and setup an EverQuest farm for a year or two which at the time was a new thing, making a living selling stuff in game. In which games is that common now?
Hehe, a little upsetting that I only see one former UO player in these comments right now. I loved the anarchy and never stopped missing it through FFXI, WoW, and other MMO's.
There was a rivalry between EQ and UO and no one I knew including myself had the time to play both.
As a younger people who didn't live those days, I wish there was a modern game that felt at least close if not as good as classic world of warcraft but that was as in-depth as everquest...
Still holds the most hours spent in a single game for me, and it was 100% worth it. Met a ton of cool people, improved my communication and learned useful skills leading a guild, that I later applied in my career.
I worked for a very successful “dot com” back in the day. EverQuest was like the crack pipe for the tech crowd, people actually got divorced over addictions to it.
Project Lazarus (lazaruseq.com) and Project 1999 for the win. One of the best gaming communities out there still alive and kicking today. And one of the best gaming experiences.
I liked the game before Luclin and the bazaar the most. It started to lose its organic appeal for me after that. Stuff like everyone just choosing to hawk goods in the commonlands was so charming.
One random story I have...I remember there was a legit riot on the Prexus EQ forums I was on because SOE decided to drop Windows 95 support for Everquest. I believe it was because Win95 wouldn't support DirectX 6 or something. I was good to go though...I had Win 98 and a Geforce MX 240 I purchased at Best Buy.
My first pay stub had Verant on it, I joined shortly before the SOE transition.
One thing maybe not well known outside of the company was that the MMO subscription revenue enabled a hotbed of experimentation. There was an MMO RTS which never shipped, and several other takes on “can we make genre X an MMO?” that I can’t remember. And then SWG, obviously.
EQ2 had all kinds of interesting people on it as a result - Ken Perlin did the lip sync work (driving facial animations from dialog), Brian Hook worked on the rendered for a while. I’m sure there were others.
Then there’s all the things we didn’t do. I read the complete Harry Potter series specifically because we were in talks with JK Rowling to do a HP MMO, but negotiations failed.
Crazy times.
[addendum]
Several of the people in the article are no longer with us (Brad McQuaid, and Kelly Flock at least)
The office park that SOE was located in on Terman Court was also demolished years ago. I remember standing at the door to my office on my last day, looking out the window at the eucalyptus trees and thinking I was never going to see the place again.
I never played EverQuest but another game by SOE. I was absolutely addicted to Cosmic Rift throughout high school. Then someone decided it was a good idea to make it subscription only. I still remember being able to login and get trial time as some Guest#374950. Really killed the community and the game died not too long after.
I ended up going back to the original Subspace, which Cosmic Rift was a spiritual successor to, which shortly after had its client redeveloped by the community (PriitK of Kazaa, Skype, Joost fame) called Continuum. Ended up playing this for over a decade.
Interesting! I didn't realize you all experimented with an MMORTS. I was a lead engineer on a never released MMORTS [1] that was developed after WoW became big. Seems that's a tough genre to convert to MMO.
I was too young to get in on the early (and tbh me exciting) age of MMOs, only opting for RuneScape because it had a free tier.
I just finished Jason Schreier's book that covered 38 Studio's implosion and then his next book that covered Blizzard. It was a nice trip down memory lane where I remember crawling through the latest PC Gamer issue to read about MMO experiences or watching G4's Portal act out skits in these massive games.
While there's private servers out there, I'm not sure you could recreate the hype around that era.
I should read that book, but I was pretty close to it.
Kurt was a huge EQ fan, and ended up trying to staff his company by making offers to a bunch of people at SOE (which included both me and my team).
I was not convinced. He spent time around the office and when I met him in person he always came across as a BS artist. I don’t think he got anyone from any engineering team, he certainly didn’t get any from mine (I was TD on EQ2 at the time)
The best talent he did get was Jason Roberts, who was my design partner on EQ2 at the time.
I remember some of us being very confused that Smed let him do that kind of recruiting. I think he an actually held some interviews literally in the SOE office. It really felt like Kurt was taking advantage of him.
EverQuest was my first real brush with agency. I was still a teenager but I loved researching strategies and game mechanics to figure out how my guild and I could play more effectively, and it paid off. We were never world first, but we got closer than we should have for the small server we were on. The feeling that the work I was doing was contributing to the success of an entire organization of people, and that this group of adults was happy to defer to me as long as my work ethic and ideas were good, was so much more powerful and motivating than anything I'd experienced in school. I don't think I felt that empowered again for another ~decade, well into my "real" career.
48 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 69.0 ms ] threadGoing from Qeynos to Freeport, or crossing the ocean on a boat felt absolutely epic and dangerous. It was wonderful, but not something I would want to play today now that I have real life obligations.
Given the way death was implemented ("LFG @ EC tunnel for a corpse run to Guk!") and the fact that you could fall off the ships in the middle of the ocean when the game lagged, it _was_ epic and dangerous. I remember the first time it happened to me and players in public chat coached me through a 20 or 30 minute swim to get my wizard and stuff to an island with a portal.
Not my favorite game of all time, but certainly the one with the biggest impact!
Edit to add: also, huge props to that community for both humbling me and teaching me more than I could've imagined. Went from a dumbass 13 year old saying "ROT13? Isn't that some unbreakable encryption?" In the ShowEQ IRC channel because she couldn't imagine saying she didn't know something, to a competent reverse-engineer. I cannot imagine how insufferable I was haha.
While a great photo, to me it looks like the kids are just doing some kind of school / field trip assignment.
Kind of refreshing compared to all those literally overblown body parts in modern day game graphics.
But not like this.
I was sitting with a friend of mine at a computer café. This was more prevalent at the time, since a capable computer with all the modern games on it was still somewhat pricey.
So my friend starts taking to our side guy, who is playing EQ. Nice fellow.
"Hey guys, I gotta stop playing. Been here 24h straight. If I don't go to work they'll fire me."
My friend and I leave for the night.
My friend comes back to the café one night later. Our buddy is there, in the same seat.
"Shit dude, they fired me. I haven't been able to get up and go to work. This game, man."
"Sorry to hear it, what was your work?"
"I'm an attendant at a computer café."
"WTF, which one? Why didn't you just sit there and play?"
"The one across the street. Because I couldn't stop."
~25 years later, I no longer believe that to be the case. Undiagnosed ADHD and depression caused those issues; EverQuest was merely the drug that I used to escape the pain at the time.
As much as I loved EverQuest, it has informed my view that the world is full of addictive substances. And most people probably need a disinterested third party who loves them and helps them manage the addiction. Until they build their own defenses.
I would have been angry at the unfairness, but it was such a unique quirk to see in a game, and I've never seen it replicated anywhere.
Killing the corrupt guards, often one at a guard tower in the Plains of Karanas west of town, and turning in their bracelets to a non-corrupt guard at the bridge to South Karanas, was great XP for quite a few levels in the midgame. And it is possible to repair the corrupt guard XP (slowly) with low-level quests.
26 years later, the nostalgia hits me every so often and I spin up Project Quarm or Project 1999 where it still plays the same, and it’s fun for awhile but I’m not enjoying it as much as I enjoyed the memories.
I enjoy the luxuries afforded by modern games, with three kids and a busy job, I wonder how anyone found the time to play as long as EverQuest required.
https://www.keithparkinson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/EQ...
This seems to be entirely hand drawn (acrylic painting?) with a lot of skill.
A Google Image search for "Keith Parkinson" shows more of his great paintings. Unfortunately he died in 2005.
My friends had a company. Then they got into EverQuest. I don't know what percent of "work time" they spent playing. Maybe zero. But, they would stay at the office after work to play. I visited one day and saw playtime in the corner of the screen of one friend at ~36 days. My first thought was "what could they have done with over 5 months of "work time". If you work 40 hours a week then 36 days of game time = 846hrs = 21.6 weeks = ~5 months or work. Note: I use tons of time in my own life in ways that others would not (like spending time on HN) so again, not judging, just obsverving, though I often wish I did more productive things that would / would have lead to more future freedom.
In any case, one of those friends encouraged me to give it a try saying it reminded them of when we used to play D&D in high-school. That friend had also spent time becoming a fletcher (maker of arrows). If I understand correctly, the ability to make bows and arrows from materials was a skill. You gathered the materials, then picked "make" and you had a random and relatively low chance of succeeding. If you did succeed though, your "skill" at making bows and arrows increased. Once you passed some threshold you could always succeed. This made you a "fletcher" and people who needed bows and arrows would seek you out to buy them from you. I thought it was amazing that my friend effectively had a 2nd job. I'm guessing that's common a game mechanic in games since then?
Another of those friends also played at home on top of at the office even though they had a spouse and 3 kids under 10. After a while, their spouse demanded they stop. They visibly deleted their character but then made a new one back at work and of course all the "overtime" for the last several months had actually been "game time". 3 months later the spouse found out and said "quit or I'm leaving". My friend quit.
When World of Warcraft came out and blew past EverQuest in its reach that friend told me if I wanted to check it out be sure not to make any friends or join any guilds. They said it's the social obligation that's the addiction. Like joining a sports team, if you're not there your group can't achieve their goals so you feel obligated to participate and that's the addiction. I've never tried WoW either, having seen people spend so much time in it.
Also another random thing, another aquaintaince moved to Thailand and setup an EverQuest farm for a year or two which at the time was a new thing, making a living selling stuff in game. In which games is that common now?
There was a rivalry between EQ and UO and no one I knew including myself had the time to play both.
My first pay stub had Verant on it, I joined shortly before the SOE transition.
One thing maybe not well known outside of the company was that the MMO subscription revenue enabled a hotbed of experimentation. There was an MMO RTS which never shipped, and several other takes on “can we make genre X an MMO?” that I can’t remember. And then SWG, obviously.
EQ2 had all kinds of interesting people on it as a result - Ken Perlin did the lip sync work (driving facial animations from dialog), Brian Hook worked on the rendered for a while. I’m sure there were others.
Then there’s all the things we didn’t do. I read the complete Harry Potter series specifically because we were in talks with JK Rowling to do a HP MMO, but negotiations failed.
Crazy times.
[addendum] Several of the people in the article are no longer with us (Brad McQuaid, and Kelly Flock at least)
The office park that SOE was located in on Terman Court was also demolished years ago. I remember standing at the door to my office on my last day, looking out the window at the eucalyptus trees and thinking I was never going to see the place again.
I was right.
I ended up going back to the original Subspace, which Cosmic Rift was a spiritual successor to, which shortly after had its client redeveloped by the community (PriitK of Kazaa, Skype, Joost fame) called Continuum. Ended up playing this for over a decade.
[1]: https://youtu.be/2JRkogAL3Uo
I just finished Jason Schreier's book that covered 38 Studio's implosion and then his next book that covered Blizzard. It was a nice trip down memory lane where I remember crawling through the latest PC Gamer issue to read about MMO experiences or watching G4's Portal act out skits in these massive games.
While there's private servers out there, I'm not sure you could recreate the hype around that era.
I should read that book, but I was pretty close to it.
Kurt was a huge EQ fan, and ended up trying to staff his company by making offers to a bunch of people at SOE (which included both me and my team).
I was not convinced. He spent time around the office and when I met him in person he always came across as a BS artist. I don’t think he got anyone from any engineering team, he certainly didn’t get any from mine (I was TD on EQ2 at the time)
The best talent he did get was Jason Roberts, who was my design partner on EQ2 at the time.
I remember some of us being very confused that Smed let him do that kind of recruiting. I think he an actually held some interviews literally in the SOE office. It really felt like Kurt was taking advantage of him.