EverQuest 10th Anniversary Interviews

Adele Caelia: What do you feel needs to be done to give EverQuest another 10 years of life? What are the parameters for saying, ‘This game is now finished, shut off the servers?’

 Ryan Barker: Well I don’t want to give away all our secrets but we’re confident EQ will be around for quite a while longer. The most important factor in EQ’s continuing success is giving the players new experiences while staying true to our roots. It’s a tricky balance to hold. You have to keep adding to the game to keep it interesting and fresh, but you don’t want it to start feeling like a completely different game. The gradual evolving EQ has done over the years is key to its success. It’s really up to the players how long the game will go on for. As long as people keep logging in and enjoying EQ we’ll keep making it for them!

AC: Looking back, what are your favorite moments, and why?

RB: There have been many, but the best have been at our yearly Fan Faire. It’s really rare that developers get to interact with their player community on such a personal level and in an ongoing way. With other games you’re most likely talking about what you could be doing in the sequel, but with EQ you’re talking about things that can get changed in just a few days.

AC: How has EverQuest impacted the world of gaming? Why do you believe it has had such an effect on other virtual worlds?

RB: A whole lot of it is just being the first game of its kind. If you look back it’s a pretty obvious progression really. It started with MUDs, and then you had Ultima Online and then EverQuest. It provided a framework for people to work their mind around the idea of a persistent world in full 3D with such a massive scope. I don’t think there were very many people that could really understand that concept and how it would play out until they saw EQ and then it all kind of clicked. There have been lots of MMO flavors to come out since then, and I think it’s safe to say most of them used EQ as a guideline for what they were doing, even if it was a situation where they were saying “we DON’T want it to work like EQ”.