EverQuest
FEATURE
and cultivated a garden. When he
wasn’t building art assets or helping
design the user interface, he was
dreaming up Norrath’s pantheon of
deities, penning the histories of its
people, and molding a vast army of
non-player characters that would
populate the world. But much of the
work had already been done.
“A lot of what became the world
of Norrath and EverQuest, I used
from my Dungeons and Dragons
campaign as a kid,” Trost says. That
included EverQuest characters like
Mayong Mistmoore, a spymaster and
elf who would become Norrath’s first
vampire. He was actually Trost’s
primary D&D character.
Meanwhile, Rappaport was
bringing EverQuest’s aesthetic to life
in much the same way. “High fantasy
at the time was coming from book
covers or 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 gray
because at the time roleplaying
games were brown and gray,
everything was wood and stone. I
wanted everything to have more color and personality,
because color is another voice that creates a story.”
Trost also wasn’t a fan of overly serious fantasy. The
dreamed up quirky twists on fantasy staples, and pulled
inspiration from unlikely sources. 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 devised one of EverQuest’s
most iconic creatures, the Bixie—part bumblebee, part
pixie. “That was Bill and I wanting to create colorful
creatures that would make the world more fun and
interesting,” Rappaport laughs.“IF THAT UNDERLYING TECH
WASN’T THERE, THERE
WOULD BE NO EVERQUEST”