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EverQuest
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| Developer(s) | Sony Online Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Sony Online Entertainment |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Mac OS X |
| Release date(s) | 16 March 1999 |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer Online |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: T (Teen) |
| Media | CD-ROM,DVD-ROM, Digital Download |
| Input methods | Keyboard, Mouse |
EverQuest, often called EQ, is a 3D fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that was released on 16 March 1999. The original design is credited to Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost. It was developed by Sony's 989 Studios and its early-1999 spin-off Verant Interactive.[1] It was published by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). Since its acquisition of Verant in late 1999, SOE develops, runs and distributes EverQuest.[2]
EverQuest has earned many awards, including 1999 GameSpot Game of the Year and a 2008 Technology & Engineering Emmy Award.
EverQuest II was released in late 2004.[3] Set in an alternate universe similar to that of the original EverQuest, this "sequel" takes place 500 years after the awakening of The Sleeper. The game has also inspired a number of other spinoffs.
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The game's business model includes:
A software package is installed (by download or from CD/DVD) on the player's computer which allows any player with an active membership to connect to the game content and other players on the game servers of SOE.
As of December 2007, SOE offers free 14-day trial accounts which do not require a credit card.
Many of the elements from EverQuest have been drawn from text-based MUD (multi-user dungeon) games,[4] which in turn were inspired by traditional role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.
In EverQuest, players create a character (also known as an avatar, or colloquially as char, charrie or toon) by selecting one of 16 "races" in the game, which range from elves, dwarves and ogres of fantasy, to humans, to cat-people (Vah Shir) and lizard-people (Iksar). Players also select each character's adventuring occupation (such as a wizard, ranger, or cleric - called a class—see below for particulars), and patron deity.
Players use their character to explore the fantasy world of Norrath, fight monsters and enemies for treasure and experience points, and master trade skills. As they progress, players advance in level, gaining power, prestige, spells, and abilities through actions such as looting the remains of defeated enemies and doing quests (tasks and adventures given by non-player characters (NPCs) in which a reward is given upon success).
EverQuest also allows players to interact with other players through role-play, joining player guilds, and dueling other players (in restricted situations—EQ only allows Player versus Player (PVP) combat on the PvP-specific server).
The geography of the game universe consists of nearly four hundred zones.
Multiple instances of the world exist on various servers. In the past, game server populations were visible during log-in, and showed peaks of more than 3000 players per server.
The fourteen classes of the original 1999 version of EverQuest were later expanded to include the Beastlord and Berserker classes with the Shadows of Luclin (2001) and Gates of Discord (2004) expansions, respectively.
The classes can be grouped into those that share similar characteristics that allow them to play certain types of roles within the game when grouped with others. One way of grouping classes is described below.
"Tank" classes are those that have a high number of "health points" for their level and can wear heavy armor. They also have the ability to taunt enemies into focusing on them, rather than other party members who may be more susceptible to damage and death.
The following classes are able to produce large quantities of damage to the enemy in a short period of time. Within the game, these classes are often referred to as 'DPS' standing for Damage Per Second.
The melee damage dealers have a medium number of hit points per level, but cannot wear the heaviest armors and are less likely than a "tank" class to be able to survive direct attacks for a sustained period of time.
The "caster" classes have the lowest hit points per level and can only utilize the lightest of armors.
These classes share the ability to restrain multiple enemies from attacking the party and also have the ability to increase party members' ability to regenerate mana at a faster rate.
The "priest" classes have medium level of hit points per level and have access to healing and "buff" spells.
There are several deities in EverQuest who each have a certain area of responsibility and play a role in the "backstory" of the game setting. A wide array of armor and weapons are also deity-tied, making it possible for only those who worship that deity to wear/equip them. Additionally, deities determine, to some extent, where characters may and may not go without being killed on sight.
The EverQuest universe is divided into "more than 375" zones.[6] These zones represent a wide variety of geographical features, including plains, oceans, cities, deserts, and other planes of existence. One of the most popular zones in the game is the Plane of Knowledge, one of the few zones in which all races and classes can coexist harmoniously without interference. The Plane of Knowledge is also home to portals to many other zones, including portals to other planes and to the outskirts of nearly every starting city.
Generally speaking, gameplay in EverQuest can be divided loosely into: adventuring - questing or gaining experience and loot, trading with other players, social interaction with other players, and tradeskilling - making game items using tradeskills.
Adventuring can be done alone (soloing); by forming or joining a group (grouping) with one to five other characters; or by forming or joining a raid (raiding) with as many characters as a zone can support.
At low levels, all classes have the capacity to solo. At higher levels only certain classes are widely popular for gaining experience by soloing. While some parts of EverQuest can be experienced without the help of other players, much of EQ has been designed to strongly encourage or require grouping. In these cases, a single character within the "design intent" level range for the encounter must often be twinked with equipment or have spell enhancements (buffs) to succeed easily, or at all.
A group (or "party") may form to adventure, trade, or simply socialize. While any combination of classes can form a group, an adventuring group will often consist of a "tank", a "healer", one or more "damage dealers", someone to do "crowd control" and someone to bring the mobs to the group. The last role is called "pulling", and is a tactic used quite often when it is more effective to place the bulk of the group in a "safe", or at least "controlled", location. While a character of any class may "pull", this role is frequently held by a Monk, Shadow Knight or Paladin. A Ranger or Druid using the tracking ability is sometimes especially effective, particularly outdoors. Other groupings can also be effective. Especially popular is Duoing with healer/tank (or at least healer/melee) tandems.
Most parts of the game can be completed with a single group, but some of the most challenging and rewarding (especially in terms of loot) encounters require players to raid. Any number of characters may take part in a raid. EQ's "Raid Window" will only allow 72 participants to directly share in raid experience and automatic raid loot rules. The upper limit for a given raid may be imposed by: the maximum number allowed in the "Raid Window", the maximum number of characters allowed in certain instanced zones, the maximum number the raid leaders can manage, or the maximum number that can be present without causing the zone or the players' computers to crash. The design of encounters in expansions have changed resulting in raid tactics that have become more and more involved.
While "groups" and "raids" are temporary gatherings of players, "guilds" are associations that last beyond a single play session. Guilds are initially formed via an application process to SOE. Guilds may have widely varying goals. Each guild member can communicate with all (and only) other members at once using the GUILD chat channel. A character's guild affiliation appears with the character name when viewed in game. In some instances they are little more than a loose configuration of players who wish to be able to communicate easily. At the other end of the spectrum are Guilds that concentrate on tackling challenging raid dungeons and boss monsters. Such "Raid Guilds" may require members to commit up to five to eight hours per day to the game, up to seven days a week.
As shown above (grouping, soloing, raiding, pulling, etc.), EverQuest has its own jargon.
Abbreviations and acronyms also may aid, or at least shorten, communication among players. Examples include SoW ("Spirit of Wolf" - a popular spell which accelerates run or walk speed), KEI (an acronym for "Koadic's Endless Intellect" - another popular spell which accelerates mana regeneration), PoK (Plane of Knowledge - a major "crossroads" zone for travelers), and "rez" (Resurrect - any of several spells or abilities cast on a corpse to summon the player to it, often restoring lost experience points). "Crack" or "mind candy" refers to mana regeneration spells such as Clarity or KEI. Another such term, used as a verb or noun, is nerf.
DKP(Dragon Kill Points), a raid loot distribution method, originated in Everquest, and is now used within the game World of Warcraft. Proc and Farm are credited as coming to WoW from EQ.[7] Other terms have made their way into EQ from other games, such as the term Zerging from the computer game StarCraft—used when a raid's main strategy is to overwhelm an enemy by sheer force of numbers. Monsters are sometimes called MOBs or mobs; a practice that started in MUDs.
While mostly consistent throughout the entire EQ community, there are also some differences in jargon among servers, and among Asian, European and American gaming communities. For example, KEI is known on some servers as C3 (it is the third version of Clarity). In-game chat may prove quite impenetrable to anyone who has not played EQ extensively.
From John Smedley's initial concept in 1996, throughout various corporate restructurings, Sony has directly or indirectly been responsible for, and John Smedley has guided, the development of EverQuest.[1]
The design and concept of EverQuest is heavily indebted to text-based MUDs, in particular DikuMUD, and as such EverQuest is considered a 3D evolution of the text MUD genre like some of the MMOs that preceded it such as Meridian 59 and The Realm Online. John Smedley, Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover and Bill Trost who jointly are credited with creating the world of EverQuest have repeatedly pointed to their shared experiences playing MUDs such as DIKU and TorilMUD as the inspiration for the game.[4]
Development of EverQuest began in 1996 when Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA) executive John Smedley secured funding for a 3D game much like text-based MUDs following the successful launch of Meridian 59 the previous year. To implement the design Smedley hired programmers Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover who had come to Smedley's attention through their work on the single player RPG Warwizard. McQuaid soon rose through the ranks to become Executive Producer for the EverQuest franchise and emerged during development of EverQuest as a popular figure among the fan community through his in-game avatar, Aradune. Other key members of the development team included Bill Trost, who created the history, lore and major characters of Norrath (including Everquest protagonist Firiona Vie), Geoffrey "GZ" Zatkin who implemented the spell system, and artist Milo D. Cooper, who did the original character modeling in the game.
EverQuest launched with modest expectations from Sony on 16 March 1999 under its Verant Interactive brand and quickly became successful. By the end of the year, it had surpassed competitor Ultima Online in number of subscriptions. Numbers continued rising rapidly until mid-2001 when growth slowed. Sony's last reported subscription numbers were given as "more than 430,000 players" on 14 January 2004.[8] SOE released a Mac OS X version of EverQuest in 2003, incorporating all expansions through Planes of Power. Development of the OS X version has languished since then, but the server remains up and running, supporting a small but enthusiastic user community.
In anticipation of PlayStation's launch Sony Interactive Studios America had made the decision to focus primarily on console titles under the banner 989 Studios while spinning off its sole computer title, EverQuest, which was ready to launch, to a new computer game division named Redeye (renamed Verant Interactive). Executives initially had very low expectations for EverQuest but in 2000, following the surprising continued success and unparalleled profits of EverQuest, Sony reorganized Verant Interactive into Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) with Smedley retaining control of the company.
Many of the original EverQuest team, including Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover and Geoffrey Zatkin had left SOE by 2002.
Verant from 1999 to 2001 and SOE from 2001 to 14 January 2004 issued formal statements giving some indications of the number of EQ subscriptions and peak numbers of players online at any given moment. [8] However, most of these announcements have been archived and are available only by seeking historical copies through online "internet archives" or other sources.
Accepting both Sony's press releases and the internet archives available today as accurate, these records show a rapid rise in subscriptions to "...more than 225,000..." on 1 November 1999. Sony announced the achievement of 300,000 subscriptions on 30 October 2000. By 2 October 2001, Sony stated that there were "...over 410,000...". On 29 July 2002, Sony announced that there were "...over 430,000..." and that for the 1st time 100,000 had played simultaneously. In preparation for the Fan Faire of 2003, Sony announced on 25 September 2003, that there were "... more than 450,000..." subscriptions.
With that single exception, from 13 March 2003 until the final reference on 14 January 2004,[8] Sony releases that contained numbers referred only to more than 430,000 subscriptions, and/or more than 118,000 simultaneous logins. This leaves the peak and current number of subscriptions for EQ to secondary sources.
There have been fifteen expansions to the original game since release. Expansions are purchased separately and provide additional content to the game (for example: raising the maximum character level; adding new races, classes, zones, continents, quests, equipment, game features). Additionally, the game is updated through downloaded patches. The EQ expansions:
The game runs on multiple "game servers", each with a unique name for identification. These names were originally the deities of the world of Norrath. In technical terms, each "game server" is actually a cluster of server machines.
Once a character is created, it can only be played on that server unless the character is transferred to a new server by the customer service staff.
Each server often has a unique community and people often include the server name when identifying their character outside of the game.
Some EverQuest special servers have or had different rule sets than the "standard" EQ servers:
Two servers were set up to better support players in (or simply closer to) Europe: Antonius Bayle and Kane Bayle. Kane Bayle was merged into Antonius Bayle.
EverQuest has been the subject of various criticisms. One example involves the sale of in-game objects for real currency (often through eBay). The developers of EQ have always forbidden the practice and in January 2001 asked eBay to stop listing such auctions. For a time, such auctions were immediately removed, which changed market conditions and allowed a number of specialized auction sites to specialize in this new virtual economy.
Because items can be traded within the game and also because of illegal online trading on websites, virtual currency to real currency exchange rates have been calculated. The BBC reported that in 2002 work done by Edward Castronova showed that Everquest was the 77th richest country in the world, sandwiched between Russia and Bulgaria and its GDP per capita was higher than that of the People's Republic of China and India.[13] In 2004, a follow-up analysis of the entire online gaming industry indicated that the combined GDP of the online "worlds" populated by the two million players was approximately the same as that of Namibia.[14]
Companies created characters, leveled them to make them powerful, and then resold the characters or specialized in exchanging money between games. A player could exchange a house in The Sims Online for EverQuest platinum pieces, depending solely on market laws of supply and demand.
Sony officially discourages the payment of real-world money for online goods, except on certain "Station Exchange" servers in EQ2, launched in July 2005. The program facilitates buying in-game items for real money from fellow players for a nominal fee. At this point this system only applies to select EverQuest II servers; none of the pre-Station Exchange EverQuest II or EverQuest servers are affected.[15]
Due to the difficulty in learning the role a specific class plays within a group, and of learning the best way to fulfill this role, individuals who purchase high level characters without prior playing experience are stereotypically sub-par to those who have developed characters normally. Referring to a character in EverQuest as an eBay character or to an individual as an "eBayer" are derogatory comments used to suggest both that an individual did not develop his own character and that he does not know how to play it.
The 14-day, no-credit-card-required trial accounts have produced a new set of problems in this area. Since the sellers of in-game items and platinum can create new accounts at will, without cost, the quantity of in-game spam from some sellers has become a widely discussed source of annoyance.
Another well-publicized incident from October 2000, usually referred to as the "Mystere incident", involved Verant banning a player for creating controversial fan fiction, causing outrage among Everquest players and sparking a major industry-wide debate about players' rights and the line between roleplaying and intellectual property infringement. The case was used by several academics in discussing such rights in the digital age[16].
Fans have created the open source server emulator EQEmu, allowing users to run their own servers with custom rules. Running such an emulator is a violation of EQ's end user license agreement and could result in a player being banned from Sony's EverQuest servers if caught doing so. It has not gained the same popularity as server emulators for Ultima Online.
The game is renowned and berated (by some psychologists specializing in computer addiction) for its addictive qualities. Many refer to it half-jokingly as "NeverRest" and "EverCrack" (a reference to crack cocaine).[17] EQ is very time-consuming for many people, and there have been some well-publicized suicides of EverQuest users, such as that of Shawn Woolley. Relationships broken because of obsessive playing resulted in the creation of an online support group called EverQuest Widows and sites like GamerWidow.com. An infamous rant titled "EQ: What You Really Get From An Online Game" appeared on Slashdot in 2002,[18] and brought this issue of EverQuest addiction to the forefront of many message boards across the Internet.[19]
For several years, a "Everquest for Macintosh" subscription did not allow the subscriber to create posts on the official Sony "EverQuest for Macintosh" forums. Out-of-game discussions thus took root at another location that became an on-line source of information for technical issues as well as for the various gameplay and sociological aspects that are unique to "EverQuest for Macintosh".[20]
The complexity and popularity of the game led to the creation of third party information sites, such as Allakhazam and EQTraders where players could gain information to play the game more effectively or more enjoyably.
MMORPGs are described by some players as "chat rooms with a graphical interface". The sociological aspects of EverQuest (and other MMORPGs) are explored in a series of online studies on a site known as "the HUB".[21] The studies make use of data gathered from player surveys and discuss topics like virtual relationships, player personalities, gender issues, and more.
In May 2004, Woody Hearn of GU Comics called for all EverQuest gamers to boycott the Omens of War expansion in an effort to force SOE to address existing issues with the game rather than release another "quick-fire" expansion.[22] The call to boycott was rescinded after SOE held a summit to address player concerns, improve (internal and external) communication, and correct specific issues within the game.
On 17 January 2008, the Juízo da 17ª Vara Federal da Seção Judiciária do Estado de Minas Gerais forbade the sales of the game in the whole Brazilian territory. The reason was that the game leads the players to a loss of virtuousness and takes them into "heavy" psychological conflicts, because of the game quests, that can be bad or good.[23]
Kerafyrm, "The Sleeper", is a dragon boss in the original "The Sleeper's Tomb" zone.
While sleeping, Kerafyrm is guarded by four ancient dragons (warders) in "The Sleeper's Tomb". When all four dragons are defeated by players and are dead at the same time, The Sleeper awakes, triggering a rampage of death. Kerafyrm travels through and into multiple zones from The Sleeper's Tomb to Skyshrine, killing every player and NPC in his path. This event is unique in EverQuest, because it can only occur once on each game server. Once The Sleeper awakes, neither he nor the original guardians will ever appear again on that server, unless the event is reset by SOE.
As of 12 July 2008, Kerafyrm remains asleep only on the Al'Kabor (Macintosh) server.
Originally intended to be unkillable, SOE prevented a raid of several guilds on Rallos Zek server from potentially killing him because of a potential bug. SOE later apologized for interfering,[24] and allowed the players to retry the encounter.
"Kerafyrm The Awakened" appears in the expansion Secrets of Faydwer as part of a raid event "Crystallos, Lair of the Awakened" in the instanced zone of "Crystallos."
Since Everquest's release, Sony Online Entertainment has added several EverQuest-related games. These include:
A line of novels have been published in the world of Everquest, including:
Sony Pictures and former Marvel Comics chief creative officer Avi Arad plan to adapt the game to the big screen with potential release in 2009 or 2010. Sony has verified that they are uncertain of when the film will be released and that 300 writer Michael Gordon was hired to write the script.[25]
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