It was a Saturday morning in
February of 1996 when Brad
McQuaid picked up the phone. The
man on the other end introduced
himself as John Smedley, an
executive from Sony Interactive
Studios America. As 27-year-old
McQuaid struggled to comprehend
what was happening, Smedley cut
straight to the chase, “I have some
good news and some bad news.”
Many months earlier, McQuaid
and his friend Steve Clover had made
a desperate attempt to realize a
childhood dream. Since he was a kid
playing Ultima 2 on his school’s
Apple IIe, all McQuaid wanted to do
was make sprawling, inventive RPGs
like Richard Garriott did with Ultima.
Two decades and one half-finished
college degree later, McQuaid and
Clover were spending their days
working in IT at a plant nursery
before swapping floppy discs at the
end of their shift and staying up all
night programming a roleplaying
game called WarWizard 2.
This sequel to their relatively
unknown Amiga RPG was their pet
project, but with no money to finish
development and no publisher
offering to fund it, WarWizard 2 was
doomed. Out of options and
frustrated, they posted their
half-complete prototype on the
Usenet bulletin boards and hoped
someone would take interest.
“The idea was that we’d throw it
out there, put a cover letter and an
intro to the game, and say that if you
have any interest in this call my home
number,” McQuaid tells me. “Steve
was like, it can’t hurt. Let’s do it.”
Weeks went by. Then months. Not
a single person called McQuaid about
the demo. So you can imagine
McQuaid was a little confused when
Smedley told him that, despite
thinking WarWizard 2 was verywas working at Sony Interactive
Studios America (SISA) making
sports games for the PlayStation. But
he really wanted to make an online
game like CyberStrike.
Unbelievably, SISA executives
bought into Smedley’s dream, and
gave him a few million dollars and
their blessing to start a PC
development team in a company
dominated by console games and
college sports fanatics. “So I went out
into the shareware world looking for
people who were fairly close by,”
Smedley says. “At that time the
industry was so small, so I had to find
just the right people.”
The right people, it turns out,
were Brad McQuaid and Steve
Clover. “When I found Brad andimpressive, he didn’t want to help
finish it. That was the bad news,
Smedley said. The good news was
that he wanted to tackle something
much more ambitious.HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
The 1,993rd year of our lord was a
different time for the internet.
Napster wouldn’t piss off Metallica
for another seven years, no one found
joy in a creepy 3D dancing baby, and
the entire metastructure of networks
we call the internet was just one of
several online services competing toconnect corporations and computer
nerds. If you’ve ever looked at your
internet bill and grumbled about the
extortionate monthly fee, Smedley
has a sharp reminder for you—that
used to be charged by the hour.
Despite how arcane online
services were back then, Smedley
knew they were the future. In 1993
he started playing CyberStrike, a
primitive 16-player mech game that
was in the vanguard of 3D
multiplayer gaming. “It got me
hooked on online games in a big
way,” Smedley says. Though
CyberStrike cost an eye-watering six
dollars an hour to play, the idea that
16 people from across the world
could compete in a virtual arena was
revolutionary. Computer Gaming
Wo rl d awarded its first-ever Online
Game of the Year award to
CyberStrike. Three years and many
painful billing cycles later, SmedleyEverQuest
FEATURE
RAPID EXPANSION There are a whopping 25 expansions (and counting!) for EverQuest
March 19, 1999
EverQuest
launchesDecember 5,
2000
The Scars of
VeliousOctober 29,
2002
The Planes of
PowerSeptember 9,
2003
Lost Dungeons
of NorrathSeptember 14,
2004
Omens of WarSeptember 13,
2005
Depths of
DarkhallowSeptember 19,
2006
Serpent’s SpineNovember 13,
2007
Secrets of
FaydwerDecember 15,
2009
UnderfootApril 24, 2000
The Ruins of
KunarkDecember 4,
2001
The Shadows of
LuclinFebruary 25,
2003
The Legacy of
YkeshaFebruary 10,
2004
Gates of
DiscordFebruary 15,
2005
Dragons of
NorrathFebruary 21,
2006
Prophecy of RoFebruary 13,
2007
The Buried SeaOctober 21,
2008
Seeds of
Destruction“AT THAT TIME THE INDUSTRY
WAS SO SMALL, SO I HAD TO
FIND JUST THE RIGHT PEOPLE”