ally boots everyone off the
network,” Sites explains.
Days ticked by as Smedley and
crew desperately tried to assuage the
growing frustrations of their players
and negotiate for better internet
access, but UUnet would have to
physically lay more cable between
San Diego and Los Angeles first. That
would take weeks. Meanwhile, a
rotating team of three parka-wearing
employees took eight-hour shifts
rebooting crashed servers for days on
end. Fortunately UUnet was able to
reroute traffic and free up bandwidth
as an interim solution while they
expanded their physical pipeline, and
players were finally reliably able to
explore Norrath for the first time.
Despite how painful that initial
week was, people quickly forgot.
EverQuest was revolutionary. By
April, EverQuest had sold 60,000
copies. Six months later – 225,000
copies, doubling Ultima Online’s
already record-breaking numbers in
half the time. Though brutally
punishing and complex, EverQuest’s
blend of whimsical fantasy, gruelling
adventure, and gorgeous graphics
encouraged players to bond and form
online relationships that became
more engaging than its tedious grind.
“We created this vehicle for people to
come together,” Rappaport says. “But
the community really created the
game themselves. They are the ones
that made it what it was.”
“I think part of it is just being in
the right place at the right time, but I
also think that Brad really tapped into
such a pure Dungeons and Dragons-
style experience that it really
resonated,” Smedley says.
Overnight, McQuaid and his team
became celebrities not just to their
fans but in the gaming industry at
large. At its height in 2004 EverQuest
had sold over 3 million copies andhad released a whopping eight
expansions (another 17 would follow
in the decades after). Blizzard
Entertainment President J. Allen
Brack would later admit that “[Wo rl d
of Warcraft] took a lot of great ideas
from EverQuest” and that “EverQuest
is the big foundation for WoW”. And
even today’s MMOs still follow the
blueprints of class and world design
that EverQuest canonised.
Sony, quickly realising that
EverQuest wasn’t doomed, re-
acquired Verant Interactive and
merged it with Sony OnlineEntertainment, forming an entirely new PC games
division under Smedley’s rule. It was a triumphant
moment for the “Ghouls and Goblins Guys” but there are
no hard feelings about it. “I have to give Sony credit,”
McQuaid says. “They never really threw us to the kerb.
They paid for half the funding of the game, even if they
were always hedging their bet. It was definitely
vindicating, but when I think back, if it wasn’t for Sony
and the different executives there at the time, and John
running interference and protecting the game, then there
wouldn’t have been an EverQuest.”
But back then, no one was really thinking about it. Sure
they had achieved what seemed impossible, but Bill Trost
and the other developers had pages filled with notes of
new continents and stories that didn’t make it into the
initial launch to think about instead. There was always
more work to do. “We didn’t take a lot of time to dwell on
it,” Trost laughs. “We just divvied up resources and started
working on the expansion.”
EVERQUEST SOLD 10,000ON ITS FIRST DAY. NO
ONE WAS PREPARED
EverQuest’s visual
style has changes
significantly over its
20 years.