Youre in our world now. This bold tagline led Sonys 1999 ad blitz for EverQuest, the years most anticipated massively multiplayer game. Though just five words long, it challenged players to live in a virtual world beyond anything theyd experienced beforeand delivered. The game that proved the MMORPGs potential, EverQuest outsold all prior entries in the genre and was the most popular subscription game in North America for five years until Blizzards World of Warcraft overthrew it. Yet EverQuest lives on, with tens of thousands of players logging in every day.
Based on new interviews with EverQuest developers and veteran MMORPG developers, journalist Matthew S. Smith explores EverQuest's unlikely creation at a studio built to develop sports games, a rocky release which overwhelmed the games ill-prepared datacenter, the enticing game loops that placed EverQuest in a media firestorm around gaming addiction, and the real-money black market for EverQuest items that foretold the future of digital goods.
