EverQuest
FEATURE
ou don’t know what
success feels like until
you’ve tanked the
biggest internet
pipeline into San
Diego for a week
minimum. Sure, most
online games have
network issues on day
one, but in 1999
EverQuest wasn’t just
coughing out innocuous error
codes. It was so popular that the
internet provider hosting its
servers had to physically run more
cables to Los Angeles just to
accommodate the tens of thousands
of players dying to explore its
cutting-edge 3D world.
“We used it all,” laughs John
Smedley, one of EverQuest’s
creators. “All of it. It was the largest
internet connection into San Diego,
and it was constantly going down.
It messed up internet here in San
Diego for a good solid week.”
During that seven-day
nightmare, every corporation on
that network had their online
operations sabotaged by a bunch of
nerds who’d somehow been given
$4.5 million dollars and a mission to
create something extraordinary.
And for its time EverQuest was
nothing if not extraordinary.Y