plaguelands.comLong Live EverQuest
Last week EverQuest reached a pinnacle in longevity celebrating its 7th season since helping kick-start the genre. The game should really be called ForeverCrack, what a remarkable accomplishment. Until death do us part, I swear some EverQuest players must have made a vow to keep playing this game until they die or the game does, and from the looks of it, EverQuest won’t be dying completely off anytime soon, despite the mudflation, the competition, the downsizing, through the ups and down EverQuest continues to thrive.
Brad McQuaid also wrote some sincere comments and toasted EverQuest’s anniversary.
Ah man, how time flies! It seems like ages ago in one sense, but then like yesterday too — hard to explain as I am filled with almost surreal emotions…
So Happy 7th Birthday EQ! And congrats to all of those who have contributed to keeping the game going for all of this time, from the original members, to the live teams, to each expansion team, to the CS teams, operations, sales – amazing work, commitment and tenacity all!
Man, if someone had come to me early on in EQ and said the game would be around 7 years after launch, as love with the game as I was (and as proud of it as I remain to this day), I think I still would have laughed in disbelief. Certainly Steve & I never planned or designed for mechanics that would keep the game going for nearly that long (so again, big kudos to those people post our time there who have kept the flame burning and alive).
Another b-day just passed recently as well. On March 4th, 1996 Steve Clover and I started work at then SISA to begin development on EverQuest. It was just the two of us, tasked to design the game and begin coding it. So 7 years since EQ’s launch, but 10 years now — a decade — since work began on that project! I remember those days well – the day perhaps a month after we began when Steve came into work with the name EverQuest is memory I will always treasure. Drawing up Norrath on our white board too, and coming up with the names of the continents and starting cities… Building the team… getting to know Keith Parkinson and working with him on the EQ covers… I could go on and on…
A huge thank you to John Smedley who hired us March 4th, put his trust in us, took a chance on us, etc. And also big thanks to Milo Cooper (who had worked with Steve & me before on our first little shareware game, WarWizard). He was already working at SISA on the playstation Gameday franchise and I know Smedley asked him what kind of people we were and whether he should take a chance on us — thanks Milo, for putting in a good word for us, for moving later to EQ (Milo left a very profitable franchise at the time to join the EQ team — a huge risk for him at the time), and another thank you to both Milo and Steve who are now at Sigil cranking on Vanguard — you have my eternal gratitude for your continued faith and perseverance.
There are also many other people for whom sincere thanks is warranted (Bill Trost and Kevin Burns who did the art on the WarWizard 2 demo that caught Smed’s attention and then later joined the EQ team, Jeff Butler for taking over as EQ’s 2nd producer after I was promoted to VP at Verant and then CCO at SOE and simply didn’t have the time to focus completely on EQ, and so many more – simply too many to mention). But let me specifically also mention Kevin McPherson. He was hired at SISA shortly before Steve and me and was working at that time on Rally Cross. When I was promoted from programmer to producer on EQ, Kevin left Rally Cross to join the EQ team to replace the programming slot that I left open. Now Kevin is also at Sigil, doing an amazing job in the programming department.
Lastly, a big thank you to Sojourn/TorilMUD from which Steve and I learned so much – how and why MUDs were so compelling and what made them tick. May we all do an ever better job with Vanguard in capturing that magic but then also translating it into a 3d world…
What an amazing 10 years… and while I can imagine the next 10 years to some extent and certainly dream and plan big, I’m sure the MMOG space will continue to exceed my wildest dreams and surprise me quite pleasantly over the next decade. So while remembering and celebrating the past is very cool, here’s also a toast to the future, the next 10 years, and what it will bring!!!!!
Kudos to Brad for being able to celebrate the anniversary, but bad Brad for using it as another publicity stunt. There were a few too many “oh and this dude works at Sigil now too, see” mentions in there for this to be considered truly genuine. Either way, congrats to EverQuest and everyone who has been on the team for keeping it going strong.
I disagree, McQuaid still has a close relationship with EverQuest, in his own way, the memories and what not and I ganked his toast from the VG forums, so evil of me for using it as publicity stunt for Vanguard if I were a mega Vanguard vanboi, which I’m not.
I felt it would be appropriate for the occassion to share it with the few readers here who still play or played EverQuest. I’ll gladly post any other thoughts from others, I’d love to read a speech from Trost, hell, even Smedley too. I didn’t come across any other “tributes” at the time of writing. Do you know of any others?
I didn’t meant to imply that you are trying to publicize Vanguard in any way. It just bugged me that he talked almost entirely about people he remembers who happen to work at Sigil now (not completely, since he still talks about Trost). I guess it’s possible that he doesn’t have any fond memories of working with people who are employees of other companies, but it seemed to me like it was purposeful.
Purposeful in that he likes to reiterate time and again how many former EQ devs now work at Sigil. I wouldn’t have taken it has a publicity stunt if I hadn’t seen it happen so many times before. Brad McQuaid is a marketing genius. Or close to it. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just calling him on it.
Perhaps saying the speech was not genuine was a bit strong. It seems genuine, but selectively injected with a little self-promotion. That said, I’m not sure if there were any official speeches from anyone else who launched the game. So to summarize… Touché.
Evil lies, how dare you take McQuaid’s name in vain! I was being sarcastic with the vanboi comment, but hard to tell on your end, I should have dressed it up with the funny.
Of course McQuaid sounds like a broken record, it’s habitual, a natural reflex. Yea, McQuaids zomg’ we have the best team who worked on Everquest! Vanguard will roxorz your boxors. I get tired of that bullshit, especially since two keys developers who worked on EverQuest left Sigil in the last year, very few core members of the vision era former EverQuest players were familiar with are actually still with McQuaid at Sigil.
But in his defense, if McQuaid thanked a slew of developers still working on EverQuest that could make him look, not bad or weak, but questionable, meaning it could set off the wrong impression with the Sigil employee’s and vanbois who read it. McQuaid does thank everyone who has worked on the project, an over generalization, but eh, I guess if I were in your shoes, I would feel more strongly about it as well.
“Lastly, a big thank you to Sojourn/TorilMUD from which Steve and I COPIED NEARLY LINE FOR LINE”
There, fixed that for you, Brad McBling.
And as for marketing genius? Its closer to marketing autistic.
Ax the two devs in my prior post, the number has bumped up to three total. No pun intended with the ax.
Darby you sound jaded, bitter and upset, what happened?