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EverQuest: 10 Year Anniversary Interview
On March 16th, SOE's EverQuest celebrated its 10 year anniversary. MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh recently spoke with EQ Designer Jonathan Caraker about the milestone.
| MMORPG.com: | Tell us a little about yourselves. What have you done with EverQuest and how long have you been with the game? |
| Jonathan Caraker: | I’ve been a huge fan of EverQuest, since the beginning. When I picked up my copy on March 18th, 1999, (I still have the original game and the receipt!), I knew I was going to be hooked. I had been introduced to text-only MUDs in college and was well aware of the enthralling potential of a multi-user fantasy game. EverQuest, rendered in full 3-D, was the next logical step forward from the days of colored text and it was way ahead of its time. I joined Sony Online in 2002 and was a fledgling member of the design team later that same year. By my count, I have contributed to 13 of EverQuest’s expansions. |
| MMORPG.com: | How many expansions have there been in all? Which have been the most memorable in terms of customer enjoyment do you think? |
| Jonathan Caraker: | There are 15 expansions available now, with the high possibility of another in the works. Our player base has mixed feelings on which is their favorite. You will hear a different answer on which were the most successful or memorable, depending on who you ask, but most seem fond of The Scars of Velious and Omens of War. |
| MMORPG.com: | Which was the most significant in terms of advancing game play? Why? What new features were introduced? |
| Jonathan Caraker: | The instancing system, introduced with Lost Dungeons of Norrath, has had the most impact in advancing our game play. We have more control over the pacing and flow of the player’s experience in a private instance over a public zone. And it solves the problems inherent with overpopulation. Even a dank forgotten tomb can feel like a crowded shopping mall the day before Christmas when it fills up with adventurers competing over the content and rewards. |
;)
| MMORPG.com: | Which have you yourself enjoyed and why? What were you particularly proud of in them? |
| Jonathan Caraker: | In my opinion, Depths of Darkhollow and The Serpent’s Spine were titles we could be particularly proud of. This was due to their depth of progression (no pun intended) and compelling storyline. We were able to tap into the story of the enigmatic vampire, Mayong Mistmoore, in Depths of Darkhollow. He is a character who has been shrouded in mystery since the game launched. While his presence has been felt in many expansions, including Lost Dungeons, Prophecy of Ro, Ruins of Kunark, and the original game, this was the first opportunity to see him, face to face. Mayong’s gaudy gothic underground keep ranks among the most gorgeous zones in EverQuest and it was chock full of personality, lore, layers of truth and understanding, and sinister characters. Serpent’s Spine had two parallel progression paths with multiple end-zones, on top of a full level 1 to 75 progression. It doesn’t get much more epic than that. |
| MMORPG.com: | Has the game become “easier” in some ways and let us know how/why? |
| Jonathan Caraker: | We’ve made a point of removing many of the artificial roadblocks, excessively punitive penalties, and confusing mechanics over the course of the EverQuest’s lifespan. With little exception, I feel these changes were for the greater good. Adding in-game maps, showing Tradeskill formulae, not destroying items in a Tradeskill container for a bad combination, reducing experience loss on death, reducing experience necessary to acquire levels and AAs, allowing players to keep items on death, and displaying quest objectives in the game’s quest interface are but a few of the examples of our attempts to make the game as accessible as possible while still maintaining the level of challenge that EverQuest is known for. |
| MMORPG.com: | What do you think have been the greatest improvements in the game? |
| Jonathan Caraker: | In my opinion the greatest single improvement was the switch from the old viewport window that didn’t show the game world in full screen whenever you opened up player inventory. As it only rendered in a small sub window within the application, it’s hard to believe we used to see the world through such a tiny window ten years ago. It wasn’t a clear cut transition, either. There was a time during the Kunark era where you could travel and fight in full-screen but looting, or any other action that required seeing the player inventory, would still utilize the old interface. My poor dilapidated monitor would go black for several seconds and emit a *kuh-CLICK CLICK* noise each time it had to change resolutions when switching back and forth. |
;)
| MMORPG.com: | What is it about that game that keeps players coming back, despite all the other games that have come into being in the last ten years? |
| Jonathan Caraker: | It’s tough to compete with EverQuest’s ten years of handcrafted quests and raids. There are over seventy-five thousand unique text strings and six thousand old-style quests in our database, as an example. In addition to the sheer size of EverQuest is the community. Other players, and the relationships that are built in game, are our greatest renewable content and a large part of EverQuest’s retention. |
| MMORPG.com: | If there were one thing you could change in EverQuest but are unable to at this time due to technical or other constraints, what would it be? |
| Jonathan Caraker: | I would like to rework EverQuest’s dialogue system. It would be cleaner as a visible tree of possible responses to an NPC’s text rather than requiring the player to type in keywords. It can be difficult for players to distinguish between quest text versus lore, or follow the dialogue at all. If you go back far enough, to dialogue interactions from original EverQuest, players often had to guess the correct response or dialogue trigger and many of them were especially unforgiving. |
Jon, is that image on the home page one of Carolyn Koh?
*sighs*
I like dialogue quest system in EQ.
All Hail Classic EQ! Poop on Luclin and after!
Happy Decade EQ you are a living classic.
Happy Anniversary EQ. Still one of the best old school games out there!
bah burn in the lake of fire i say...loved it up until luclin where the concepts they mentioned that were "so great for them" gave me and my fellows a hell as bad as the real world we tried to escape. all of those improvements ( with the exception of fast travel which is another horrible concept) limited interaction between characters. the amazement i felt at seeing a barbarian in steamfont when i wa sa noob gnome and the thrill of killing his tall almighty self was near euphoric. even at the higher levels the thrill was stil there because of the possibility of losing one of my items made the fighting somewhat meaningful. getting looted felt bad enough, having the score system read -10 death streak is by far a worse method of torture and the victories are nigh as sweet.... especially when you can level in safe instanced zones and only see any action when people are ready to fight rather than being a spur of the moment kind of thing and even havens like bazaar and pok were horrible, being able to escape so easily form a fight devolved pvp. potions are horrible, the tradeskills being easily accessible made the game more of a joke. aas, while an amazing concept, was implemented horribly imo. the expansions made the old zones obsolete rather than offering more choices, the new graphic revamps are horrible....i could go on forever. still probably the best game out there but i cant play it because despite it being the best it still sucks horribly and there is nothing out there that compares to it now. but even now it cant compare to pre luclin.
¡¡Happy Anniversary EQ!! My first MMO... i just kept playing for 3 months in 2002 .... *sigh*
I agree with mindwork, tehghost and shadowpod. Jonathan, all the things you talk about as good are what ruined the game. The things you talk about as bad made it unique, challenging, scary (which is good) and engaging. The dialog system is perfect; you actually have to talk to the NPCs! Holy freaking crap! It's almost like an RPG... The open world (non-instanced) is what made EQ fun, the community, seeing people run by, bumping into people, seeing trains (and unfortunately sometimes getting run over). Fear. Risk. This is EQ. You should've just fixed the bugs, like falling to death on zoning. Everything after Velious, including much of Luclin, diluted and destroyed it. So, on behalf of myself and probably hundreds of thousands of people, and Blizzard Entertainment, tell your team thanks. In a sarcastic manner.
I love how you say reducing required experience, making crafting non-risky, and in-game maps make it easier while keeping the level of challenge. You're obviously completely disconnected. The reason EverQuest was fun was that it was challenging, and this largely removes that challenge. Getting lost on a CR is challenging, sometimes frustrating (but the community forced by old EQ helps with that), but it felt great when you accomplished the challenge. Remember when "ding" meant something? Removing that stuff turns your game into a mind-numbing waste of time, which is why it's dead.
If you had any balls you would revamp the game completely, ditch anything after Velious, make it difficult again and relaunch. The world is just too big. It's too static, the engine needs more dynamics and better AI. Make levelling up a great feeling rather than an speed bump. Integrate lore into the NPC text, make people think a little bit about what they need to do, not spoon-feed them everything and let them click through ignorantly. Make it seamless (but not "seamless" like Vanguard). I loved EQ through Velious (though Kunark was it's highest point, IMO). I've tried to go back a few times since then, and it's just a joke now. A sad joke. I think it's possible to relaunch it again, honestly, but it would require real leadership and risk-taking, not complacency.
Whew, that was fun!
You know what I find especially halarious? Sony wasn't largely responsible for luclin. Verant had already laid most of the groundwork for it. Sony took over and finished what was already largely a done deal for the future of the game at that point. I wonder if people would have hated the content so much if sony hadn't taken over. I agree the content wasn't as good and a lot of things changed for the worse, but a lot of things changed for the better as well.
I'm also surprised so few people comment on eq nowadays as well.
Personally, I would have felt the same way. I didn't hate Sony way back when I started playing EQ. :) Luclin just didn't "feel" right to me; the whole premise seemed silly to me and disconnected with the old world zones and style.
I came in well after Luclin, but had fun with my guild & friends & such. They really made the game for me. Even with the quest tools like Allakhazam.com friends and guildies would all know the broken quest lines, help past the hard parts on the epic quests, or help out with the grinding for items or show the good areas. Hours remembered of playing EQ are really about silly stories, chatting while grinding XP and such.
So, I miss EQ & wish they'd drop the charge to something like $5.00/month and I'd make it my 3rd, I'm never gonna cancel you game. It would come after my WoW and LoTRO Founders account and before Guild Wars.
Gratz EQ & Sony on your 10 year anniversary!
That's a good point, which I share. Before Velious I had lots of fun exploring, learning the lore and playing the game. After Luclin it was all about the people and the game was a glorified chat service (like WoW is now, for me). I suppose that's a side-effect of linear gaming, even games like EQ where there are multiple paths you can take. At some point, you use up all the content or reach the maximum level and the priorities change to chatting, which is unfortunate. This is why I suggested better AI and dynamic gameplay in my post above, something that no MMOGs have tackled yet.
Newer MMOGs abuse PvP to attempt to put more dynamic content into their game, which only works to a certain extent, and only for a small number of people...what we really need is AI. Not a script like "Player X sat down, attack it!" but self-determination and organic outcomes. I think EQ is a perfect game to play with this in, but that's probably because my stake in it is gone. :)
Changing it to $5/mo would also bring me back--probably. Really that's what all MMOGs should be, IMHO, but I'm a casual player. Since all my friends probably wouldn't go back, I'm not so sure I would want to. The last time I went back to see how things were the community was downright rotten.
As above, most of the so called improvements are what drove the hardcore gamers away from EQ...
It became a game of no risk.
I also find it funny that someone who works on the game didn't know there has been a full screen option since release, that was not something added later on, you just had to toggle it.
There were many UI revamps, but since day one, you could use the full screen view.
I miss the heck out of EQ. The EQ that meant you had to be a team player and a skillful one at that to advance, rather than
just buy a couple million plat and hit the bazaar for end game loot.
Heh, I love the people who think the old tedious and boring EQ1 was challenging and risky.
It wasn't.
People just avoided anything risky.
I can count on 2 hands the number of times I died leveling up to 50 (then 60), and most of those were due to link-deaths. People never tried anything remotely challenging because of the vast risk (and no reward) involved. Always farmed blues (low blues) in groups, never grouped without the holy trinity, etc. /yawn
Then once everyone got to 50, solb and lguk became so crowded a level 1 newbie could run around naked and not fear dying.
EQ1 was the perfect example of "risk vs no reward" gone horribly wrong in its early days. Sure, it kept the people who couldn't spend 20 hours a day grinding in a group lower level (which is really what people here seem to like to remember, them being "uber" because of the "effort" (time) spent to get anywhere in the game).
Dude, just because you ran around with sissies doesn't mean the rest of us did. Some people enjoyed the RISK part and the reward was defeating the risk.
No, you were probably begging for a corpse loot/drag and a rez from my friends and I...
Are you REALLY trying to start a drama thread here? You must be as bored as I am.