Interview with the original EverQuest team

[Mardur]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/10/14/gdc-online-2011-a-nostalgia-trip-with-the-original-everquest-te/#continued

[Diggles]

Wow. Good read.

[Diggles]

"6 months. Please let it run 6 months."

here we are 12 years later.

[Kika Maslyaka]

This is btw is the source of all the inherited EQ flaws - when they made the game they never expected an average player to pass level 30, and did expected that game will die out in 6 months. That how we ended up with just 3 raid targets for entire game world...

[Felwithemagi]

Awesome indeed, glad I was there and here. They don't mention the downsides, all the hurdles and challenges we (them and us) faced, so some of their comments are half-truths to outright lies, fyi. But it was a learning experience for sure. Ah the memories live on...

[Kevlar]

I can't believe they thought it was cool that they fucked over their players bad enough to cause mass protests.

[Mardur]

The monk nerf was warranted though.

A ranger protest I could understand, but they began addressing that in Luclin.

[Galacticus]

So true:


"But the amazing thing to me -- and I've been making games for 22 years -- is that this is the one and only game that I've ever seen that actually resembles the design doc. And it was still to this day a pretty amazing feat to me."

[mwatt]

What amazes me is that some of these guys still don't get it - even though they created it. Corpse runs, death penalities, having to camp rewarding mobs - being ABLE to camp rewarding mobs... these are GOOD things, even though some aspect of them could be deemed bad. When you pull out all the trials, tribulations and dangers you are left with something flat and meaningless - which means there is little drive to play.

[Mardur]

How do you know if that's true or not? You haven't read the design doc.

[Nikon]

+1 Very good read. Thanks.

[Galacticus]

How do you know if that's true or not? You haven't read the design doc.

Have I?

http://www.ign.com/videos/2010/02/05/the-jace-hall-show-tv-evercracked-the-phenomenon-of-everquest-ep-1

[SoulLeech]

Well damn, I'd hoped for a little more than that. There's nothing there that hasn't been said 5 or even 10 years ago.

I hope someone in the know takes the time to do a complete tell-all on the early days EQ eventually. Something that isn't shallow and/or sanitized, that delves into the minutia what was going on day to day. At least to the level of Masters of Doom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom).

[Harrison]

The responses are comedy gold.

heerobya said

Half a heart
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EQ killed UO... and the rest of the MMO genre by turning everything into grind heavy, loot centric, raid or die garbage.

Everything EQ was and UO was NOT.

Thank you McQuaid...

[SoulLeech]

This is btw is the source of all the inherited EQ flaws - when they made the game they never expected an average player to pass level 30, and did expected that game will die out in 6 months. That how we ended up with just 3 raid targets for entire game world...

Every MMO inherits flaws that would be better left behind. It's the law of these open-ended treadmill games that only ever die by attrition.

Think of any great standalone work or even trilogy in entertainment. Would they have been nearly as great or memorable if the creator and been afraid to allow any of his characters to grow, change or die? If he had simply kept writing until his words became unintelligible and no one cared to read them.

That's the story of every MMO.

I'd love to see a full-fledged MMO come along with the guts to have a finite scope, a beginning and an end.

Perhaps there could be some linkage between iterations or titles from the developer to retain "invested" players but nothing that would lock in 6 month, much less 5 or 10 year old design decisions.

I understand that a such a game could never find success with the millions who are completely satisfied with the rote experiences offered today.

[Kika Maslyaka]

I understand what you saying, but developers were too much DnD players, and not enough PC-gamers. They failed to realize, that in DnD environment there are no strangers in the party - in 9 out 10 cases you playing with a group of well established friends, in a RELAXED environment (pizza, drinks, jokes in the middle of combat etc) and you are not driven by mad desire to grind XP for hours and hours. In other words their transition from pen and paper to PC was terrible (Balder's Gates did much better job from this perspective). They desperately tried to push for thing which we today accept as fundamental for any MMO, while desperately clinging to base DnD principles that simply do not work in MMO environment.

Some of the flaws should have been if not anticipated, but at least acknowledged in the first 3-6 months, but it took years for BM to officially recognize even minor issues

[Cribanox]

I wonder what they would say about the time and devotion that goes into P99.

[Lovely]

Damn I was hoping it would be longer! Good read though

[BobSmith]

When you dueled somebody, it would say, "So-and-so beat so-and-so in a duel to the death." In beta we went in there and created a character called EverQuest and a character called Ultima Online. And then we would do a /kill on UO, so it would broadcast to everybody that EverQuest killed Ultima Online.

I can remember people making characters named "Budweiser", and "Coors", and doing the same thing.

[SoulLeech]

I can remember people making characters named "Budweiser", and "Coors", and doing the same thing.

Duel broadcasts were one of the many simple pleasures of old EQ. Though occasionally funny it's a shame they were most used and remembered for that kind silliness. It was a pretty big deal when a couple of "name" players out that name on the line for a duel on classic RZ.