"You're in our world now." This bold tagline led Sony's 1999 ad blitz for
EverQuest, the year's most anticipated massively multiplayer game. Though just five words long, it challenged players to live in a virtual world beyond anything they'd experienced before--and delivered. The game that proved the MMORPG's potential,
EverQuest outsold all prior entries in the genre and was the most popular subscription game in North America for five years until Blizzard's 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 game's 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.
