EverQuest
FEATURE
fantasy at the time was coming from
different book covers or from Frank
Frazetta, who was everybody’s hero,”
Rappaport says. “But I wanted
something more whimsical and
lighthearted for the characters. We
talked about making the really ugly
characters have more comedy to
them, like the goblins having a visible
butt-crack that they’d itch. I didn’t
want anything to be grey because at
the time roleplaying games were
brown and grey, everything was
wood and stone. I wanted everything
to have more colour and personality,
because colour is another voice that
creates a story.”
Though not everyone liked that
light-hearted aesthetic, Trost also
wasn’t a fan of overly serious fantasy.
The two worked closely to dream up
quirky twists on fantasy staples and
pulled inspiration from the most
unlikely of sources. Like any true
Californian, Rappaport and Trost
were fans of alt rock band Blind
Melon. After seeing their music video
for No Rain in which a little girl
prances around in a bee costume,
they had the idea for one of
EverQuest’s most iconic creatures,
the Bixie – one part bumble bee and
one part mischievous pixie. “That
was just Bill and I shooting the shit
and wanting to create colourful
creatures that would make the world
more fun and interesting,” Rappaport laughs.
McQuaid, Clover and the rest of EverQuest’s
programmers were tackling very different kinds of
problems. EverQuest wasn’t just ambitious in its use of
groundbreaking 3D technology, but also the scope of its
world and combat. McQuaid envisioned 14 classes and 12
races that players could combine to create their avatar.
But the real challenge was getting all of that information
to transfer across the slow-as-hell 28.8 kbit/s modems
that most people used. “If that underlying tech wasn’t
there, there would be no EverQuest,” McQuaid says.
Thankfully, there was Vince Harron.
There are two common protocols for communicating
on the internet: TCP/IP and UDP. Though complicated,“IF THAT UNDERLYING TECH
WASN’T THERE, THERE
WOULD BE NO EVERQUEST”