EverQuest

EverQuest marked a leap for the MMORPG genre in 1999 similar to what Doom had done a few years earlier for first-person action games — suddenly there was a three-dimensional world in which thousands of players moved simultaneously, not just a handful of text commands like the earlier MUD games. The player created a character from several races and classes, set out into the sprawling world of Norrath, and spent hours killing monsters, collecting loot, and completing quests, but the main focus of the game was really about building a group — without reliable allies, it was hard to survive in the more dangerous areas. Progress was deliberately slow and grueling, forcing players to spend entire evenings in a single location and rely on strangers they met right there in the game.

Technically, the game ran on an engine capable of rendering vast outdoor areas as well as dark underground dungeons, which placed considerable demands on the hardware of the time — new players often complained about long loading times and the need to upgrade their graphics card and internet connection. The atmosphere was reinforced by melancholic music and a persistent sense that the world existed and carried on living even without a logged-in player, including the risk that after death a character would lose experience and have to run back into the dungeon to recover their own corpse, which placed the game among the noticeably harsher experiences of its time.

EverQuest quickly became a phenomenon and for several years defined what a subscription-based online RPG should look like — competitors like Asheron's Call followed just a few months later. The player community around it also created some of the first extensive fan databases, guides, and discussion forums, which became a model for later online games. Today the game is mostly remembered by MMO veterans who miss the slower, more dangerous, and more social take on the online world that modern titles no longer offer, and many still call it one of the founding cornerstones of the genre.

Why play it: For MMO veterans who miss the slower, more dangerous, and more social take on the online world, EverQuest remains one of the founding cornerstones of the entire genre.