Everquest and The Development of the MMORPG

Many consider Everquest to be the definitive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, given its relative popularity and release date, and the sheer size of the world it encompasses. But with the historical perspective offered by the eight years of the game's existence, one might find considerable support for the position that Everquest served as a bridge between the original designs of the graphical "multi-user dungeons" and the current spectacular popularity of multiplayer games in general and multiplayer role-playing games specifically.

Everquest and games like it have been described as the geek equivalent of golf. Even if people don't play the games, some passing familiarity with either the genre or at least one specific game world is sometimes the ticket to social credibility in geek conversation, and notable achievements can become the "birdies, eagles and five-under-pars" of acceptance and conversation.

"Everyone has a level-whatever druid," some say, and for the most part they are right. However, huge successes like World of Warcraft require moderate successes. Someone has to make the mistakes and test the designs, and that is what Everquest did. Everquest took the Multi-Player Dungeon and turned it into both a vehicle for culture and a model for business.

Everquest was originally released in March of 1999, picking up the narrative formed by the storied histories of such games as Ultima Online and even the King's Quest series, which, it could be argued, was more of an adventure game than a role-playing game. Nevertheless, the successful gameplay elements employed in the development of even the early PC adventure games had to find their way into the massive genres if for no other reason than no previous games was required to simulate a world on such a large and continuously updated scale before.

The gameplay of the massive genre has been described as an expensively animated chat room with a gameplay goal. This might be a bit simplistic but the essence of the statement is certainly a point well-taken. What makes games like Everquest sustainably popular is not necessarily the game itself, which, it can be argued becomes stale and repetitive for some players, especially those who have been everywhere and done everything with their maximum-level incredibly powerful characters. What makes Everquest popular is the social aspect. Players form groups to overcome challenges, friendships form, shared experiences strengthen those friendships, player relationships are formalized on a large scale by the formation of guilds, and now players are so invested in the comaraderie of their association with the guild that the game becomes as secondary as their phone bill.

With the exception of the creative contributions of the players themselves, the social success of Everquest closely paces the example set by Dungeons and Dragons of the decades immediately prior to the advent of the massive genre. The social aspects of role-playing games, especially those of shared experience, whether fictional or otherwise, were the basis for both the formation and the continuation of thousands of "gaming groups" which soon found their way to other games, literature, performance troupes, renaissance festivals and even charities and businesses.

Everquest's gameplay also essentially formalized a number of the conventions now considered indispensible to a successful massively multiplayer adventure game. While some might consider these elements to be "timesinks" and artificial obstacles, they are basically necessary given the speed with which especially skilled players can consume new content. This consumption velocity creates a race which the developers of these games know ahead of time they cannot win, so players will find that worlds like Norrath, Azeroth, et. al. are replete with not only a variety of time-consuming activities, but goals which are placed at the extreme far end of a "to-do" list that rivals the man-hour requirement of a master's thesis.

Again, this does have an arguably positive aspect on the social culture of the massive genre, because the more challenging the obstacle, the more valuable the achievement of defeating it. Long-time members of Everquest guilds, most of whom have defeated dozens if not hundreds of the most legendary challenges in their game worlds, are, at least within the game world, walking museums of this kind of achievement. Each weapon, piece of armor and treasured gold coin is a symbol of the defeat of some invincible well-guarded foe deep in an adventure few see and even fewer complete. One is almost sad to know so many epic adventures are taking place with none to record the accomplishments of their heroes.

Find monster, defeat monster, loot treasure, complete quest, accumulate powerful treasure. Some of the games that preceded Everquest had portions of these gameplay elements, but Everquest's world was the first place where so many successful conventions of the massive genre were assembled in a working design. Support for this is easily found in the considerable growth of the massively multiplayer category after the original Everquest became such a success. Games like City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer and World of Warcraft might not have ever been built at all if Everquest had not built a foundation for them from which they could advance the genre.