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Everquest (EQ) is, for all intents and purposes, the father of the MMORPG genre. And while subsequent MMO's may have surpassed it in total users or technological achievement, EQ will forever remain the first king of the [MMO] universe.
Everquest is not, of course, the first online game. Nor is it the first online RPG, nor even the first one with graphics. Those honors are bestowed upon the old MUDs and games like Ultima Online and Meridian 59. It was, however, the first game to gather widespread acceptance. It was a success, both among players and critics. It was also a huge economic success and a steady stream of revenue for Sony Online Entertainment.
Everquest introduced a huge, expansive world in a high fantasy setting. It provided all the typical races and classes, as well as comfortably familiar sets of enemies, spells, weapon types and the like. Sticking to this formula made it instantly familiar to any fan of the genre.
The game itself is centered around players, and more specifically, around players grouping up to hunt enemies and accomplish goals. The requirement to join groups with other players, rather than to go it alone in the world, becomes increasingly obvious as you gain levels. At some point early on you realize that you can accomplish more things faster and safer with a group that you could ever do alone. While this is not necessarily the case for all classes, it is generally true for most classes and players.
The game world provides a persistent state. This means that the world will go on, even when players log off and come back later. The game does not have a single storyline for any player or players to follow, so there is no specific ending. Rather, the game is littered with quests of all difficulties and scales, spanning entire continents or the entire world and beyond in some cases. This allows players to find and experience quests and content wherever they happen to be, or to seek out specific quests as they choose. Unfortunately, if you play EQ for a long enough period of time, you start to realize that most of the quests are based on one or two simple systems: keywords and fetch quests. Keywords are just that. If you provide the right keywords in the right order, certain quest NPCs will respond by giving you quest information or items or move the quest along to the next step. Fetch quests are the other major quest function. These are simply lists of items that you must provide to a target to complete. While this is not a bad system, it can become stale and rather boring if you are a veteran of the game.
Everquest was officially released in March of 1999. The world was big and, for most players, completely new. As a low-level character, it was a frightening and dangerous experience to venture too far from the guards and front gates of your home city. As you gained in levels, you might venture further out, but it was risky business and you could get lost if you strayed from the path. It was truly high adventure to get into a group and venture out to fight enemies and hunt for treasures and riches. Those times have long since passed by. It is rare to see any low-level character that isn't quickly outfitted with gear far beyond his/her reach. It is easy to find maps online with enemy and item locations for just about every place in the world. The same goes for lists of equipment with the best stats, as well as the best places to get the most experience to advance quickly.
Everquest also suffers some issues with balance in later levels. As you progress, you will find that enemies at your level will slaughter you almost instantly if you are alone. Unfortunately, the same is true for enemies many levels below you as well. The "endgame", which is players at or near the maximum allowed level who are playing to experience the highest level content, has problems as well. In the old days, the game had two mighty dragons hiding deep in their lairs. A raid on these dragons could take many many groups of people and many hours to accomplish. The dragons then would respawn after a week. As more players reached the levels required to go on these raids, it became a scheduling issue to determine who would get to raid which dragon. Soon this process boiled down to more of a scheduling and logistical challenge than any kind of adventurous quest for a group of heroes.
Despite these problems that emerged after years in action, EQ was still a great game that offered memorable experiences and new friends to many players. All in all, EQ was an excellent first leap into the MMO era and will remain the first of its kind.
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