2019-05-01_PC_Gamer_(US_Edition

Steve’s demo online and contacted

him, we immediately meshed well,

and he had a great creative vision,”

Smedley tells me. “The only thing

was that Brad didn’t know how to

make a professional videogame, but

I had that experience.”

McQuaid jokes and says he

didn’t have the money to play the

graphical online games that

worlds together—only everything was

described through text. “They were

mostly played by kids in colleges who

could telnet into the college

mainframe or minicomputer. I don’t

know how they didn’t get kicked out

of school, because they were just

playing nonstop,” McQuaid says.

When Smedley said he wanted

this game to be cutting edge,

McQuaid saw an opportunity to do

something completely unheard of—a

MUD with 3D graphics. Two days

after that phone call, he and Clover

resigned from their IT jobs and

joined SISA. “It was an opportunity

we could not pass up,” McQuaid says.

“It was an amazing, life-changing day

for sure. I felt absolute excitement.”

What McQuaid lacked in

professional game development

experience, he made up for in project

management knowhow, extensive

programming skills, and raw creative

vision. The two dreamed up an

outline for a graphical MUD and

created a 20-page design document

to act as their bible. In that

document, McQuaid and Clover

cemented the foundation of its

systems, like class-based combat, an

emphasis on player-versus-

environment exploration, and the

basic layout of a high-fantasy world

that became known as Norrath.

Clover gave it a name: EverQuest.

Smedley loved, but he and Clover

saw the future in a very different kind

of multiplayer game. Called MUDs

(Multi-User Dungeons), what these

text-based multiplayer roleplaying

games lacked in fancy graphics they

made up for in depth and scale.

Similar to traditional pen and paper

roleplaying games, players could

socialize and explore virtual fantasy

ABOVE: EverQuest’s

look was inspired by

fantasy book covers

from the ’90s.

RIGHT: New zones

are being added for

the 20th anniversary.

November 15,

2011

Veil of Alaris

October 8,

2013

Call of the

Forsaken

November 18,

2015

The Broken

Mirror

December 12,

2017

Ring of Scale

October 12,
2010
House of Thule

November 28,

2012

Rain of Fear

October 28,

2014

Darkened Sea

November 16,

2016

Empires of

Kunark

December 11,

2018

The Burning

Lands