By Alec Meer on January 31st, 2012.
I can’t help but wonder how many of today’s crop of MMOs will manage to last 13 years. Running expenses are surely so much higher than they were in dear old EverQuest’s day. The major precursor to the dark age of grinding and number keys that we know so well has indeed managed a baker’s dozen-sized lifespan, and while its days as a subscription game are not yet numbered, it now also wears a free to play coat on its aged frame.
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By Alec Meer on November 10th, 2011.
Right then, what’s left? Everquest 1, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Lineage… What else yet stands firm against the free to play tide? The latest to switch is SOE’s 2004-launched Everquest II, which will offer itself to the microtransaction gods next month.
It’s dabbled before with a F2P parallel client, with but as of the Age of Discovery expansion free-to-play will be active on every one of its servers. It’ll retain subscriptions and expansion packs for those who want to stick to the old ways, however. Full details on exactly how it all works are in this Massively post; apologies for not summarising here, but I’m still a zombie after power-playing Skyrim. Also, I want to go and play some more Skyrim.
Train to zone
By RPS on June 18th, 2011.
This week in our series of highly personal retrospectives on landmark computer games, videogames PhD researcher and independent games developer Mitu Khandaker looks back to the wonder, exploration and lofty world-building of what might well be the most defining entry in the history of MMOs: EverQuest.
Everquest was like magic.
I feel like I’m cheating a bit writing this; after all, this isn’t about one of the games that I played when I was the tiniest, my perception of the world at its most plastic. The games I played then – illicitly, on a Commodore 64 that wasn’t mine; and later, on a series of hand-me-down consoles – certainly defined a lot about the person I would become. However, not all of our most formative experiences happen when we are tiny, young, and impressionable. Instead, many happen when we’re at our most vulnerable, our most confused, our most lost: during our mid-teen years. When I was 16 years old, EverQuest made me.
LOADING, PLEASE WAIT…
By Jim Rossignol on August 9th, 2010.
EQ’s Fan Faire event in Las Vegas has had a big reveal: the working title for the next Everquest title is… Everquest Next. Which is exciting, I suppose, because it means that there really is another Everquest game in the works. EQWire totally blogged the panel in which the new game was mentioned, and although details remain fairly scant, it seems that Everquest Next will be more like the original game, and with a lovely PvP focus for people who like the fantasy mega-biff.
So that’s that. What about PlanetSide Next, eh? We await with mild anticipations.
By Kieron Gillen on June 13th, 2008.
Ah, I’m late on this. I meant to post it a couple of weeks back, but got distracted by laserbeams firing from the heavens. But it’s still relevant, so it’s getting a quick nod here, in time for the weekend. After all – you weren’t planning on going outside or something crazy? In short: Sony announced that anyone with an inactive account for either Everquest or Everquest 2 could play until July 31st absolutely free. Details of it here. I haven’t played either since their respective early days. Does anyone think it’s worth returning?
By Jim Rossignol on March 18th, 2008.
The MMO that spawned so many imitators has now been running for nine years. To celebrate, the EQ dev blog have produced a gigantic super-detailed timeline, recording all the major events of the game over that not-quite-decade. You can see the entire graphic here. Massively.com conducted a big old interview with EQ’s player-turned-lead designer, Travis McGeathy, to celebrate the anniversary.
By Kieron Gillen on October 23rd, 2007.
Pre-empting my Rainz was a Patsy JFK/Lord British feature idea, The Escapist has an interview with Fansy the Famous Level 5 Bard, the infamous old-skool Everquest Griefer.
For those not aware of Fansy’s infamy… well, get to the page, already. In short, on the original hardcore PvP Everquest server – i.e. anything goes – he found a loophole which he abused in such a dramatic way to make the developers pretty much change the whole world just because of him. Anyone beneath level 5 was invulnerable in PvP. So he headed out into the wilderness, and dragged back enormous chains of monsters to pound on everyone else, while maintaining a faux-naif personality in all OOC chat. Which he then shared with us in the aforementioned website. In any other server, he’d be a monster. In a place devoted to beating on people… well, he’s a little like the guy who would walk into Arkham Asylum in Gotham City with a portable Nuke strapped to his chest (While laughing). Yes, crazy. But – at a distance – a kind of admirable crazy. JohnH in the Escapist Comments thread sums Fansy’s achievements succinctly: “In a world made for griefers, Fansy succeeded in becoming the Grief King, and doing it in a way that brought to them a bit of that all-too-scarce commodity, karma. The real stuff, not governed by any game-tracked variable.” Anyway – read the interview.
