EverQuest’s long, strange 20-year trip still has no end in sight

From a hobbyist developer perspective, EQ is very interesting. Unlike most companies, EQ/Sony/Daybreak has allowed emulators (privately run servers) for a very long time. They have come out publicly and made written statements that it’s ok, they do not have an adversarial relationship. As a result, there is a very active emu community, you can find the EQEmu source code and tools on github, and there are emu servers that have been around for well over a decade (ex Project 1999). If you have ever been interested in running your own online world, it’s not a bad place to start. Some people run very authentic servers, others create entirely new experiences with custom graphics, classes, combat systems, quests, etc (Shards of Dalaya). There is also a very active bot maker community, for example with macroquest and redguides. To the point that I have seen individual operators control 20+ character armies to defeat raid encounters singlehandedly. Some very advanced scripting and tooling required. In some ways the company learned from the emu scene, they saw that people wanted a return to the classic game, so they released time locked progression servers that have been very popular. If you can get past the clunky bits from 20 years ago, there’s still some fun and interesting stuff going on with EQ.

I played Everquest some as a kid but when Everquest 2 came out I could not stop playing. I spent every extra minute I had playing that game to the point it nearly cost me my wife and kids... it was a low point in my life.

The game offered you a virtual life that was just so interesting that it basically consumed my real life. My wife eventually said it's us or the game and I quit right then. I still play games now and then but nothing has gripped me like that game.. thankfully.

Lusted after EQ when it came out, but didn't have a pc that could run it until Dark Age of Camelot dropped (loved that game). Migrated from that to City of Heroes... then to WoW. Finally got the MMO monkey off my back at that point because it became way too much of a time sink after college.

I fondly remember playing the version on the PS2 online before moving to FFXI. So much time wasted ;)

FFXI was the only game I found where you interacted with another country (Japan) so deeply. The game had a built in translator!

Wow, I felt like I'd been playing EQ forever when I quit (November 2000), but apparently it had only been a year and a half...